An Introduction to Digital Freedom

The advance of technology, especially in computer science, has provided individuals with mind-boggling convenience that more or less has been integrated into an important part of our life. We, the users of technology, savor the joyfulness of being able to connect someone thousand miles away with Facebook, share digital documents with classmates using Google Drive, and show off the slickest aesthetically-looking GUI(Graphical User Interface) of our next-gen iPhone. This level of indulgence towards the tech giant is so immense that only few could escape their castle-looking jail.

So what is the price of being in such wonderland of convenience?

Your freedom

Ask yourself this: have you ever carefully read the terms of service of any apps you use on your phone or computer? Hold your answer, because I know you never have.

Your data is constantly being collected legally under the terms of service you agreed without caution. Furtively, the giant tech corps have the ability to know how much money you spent on a product, the exact geolocation you are in, who you've talked to, what you've messaged, and what videos you tend to watch. Maybe google is not snooping on your Gmails right now, there is always the potential and risk of them doing wacky stuff on your data(which they'd have absolute control of) in the unforeseeable future. In fact, the most notorious company for their unmatched monopoly of their technology, Apple, already does that in the name of seeking the unspeakable child content in apple products' emails.

It is an inalienable right for an individual to know how a product they use functions underneath the hood. However, tech companies like Apple and Google don't even give a f**k about sharing the code they use in their products, let alone any freedom they might provide. Narrow-mindedly only paying attention to the result their products produce, we, the users, are psychologically urged to believe that their apps are good as they claim them to be, yet have no idea how they process our data. We refer these apps as proprietary, and whenever you see this term, make sure you picture an evil devil entrapping countless cute-little sheep in his venomous cages.

You might be so scared that you start to involuntarily defecate, and I hope you are. But, there is always a bright side opposing the darkness: free software.

You: But all I use is free software; none of the apps I use cost money.

Kek, kek. Unfortunately, the "free software" you are referring to is not what you think it means. It is "free" as in "freedom", instead of "free of charge".

Richard Stallman, an overly underappreciated living legend, founded the free software movement back in the 1983 by launching the GNU project, an operating system that respects users' computing freedom. In terms of why it is called ambiguously "free", I assume there was no other easy word in English to choose that meant the same philosophy.

As a GNU user myself, I am always amazed by how much freedom I get from the operating system. I get to customize every aspect of my desktop environment through tinkering with the source code of the software I use(all free, of course). My level of control of self-configured OS is so immense that I have the ability to do a lot of things much more efficiently than other proprietary OS users. I will write another post about the details and how I got red-pilled in the first place.

Unfortunately, most of the software people tend to use is proprietary(closed-source and privacy-disrespecting). Even I myself cannot escape the fate of willingly of unwillingly using some kind of proprietary services as the society now sees them as the norm. Saving your freedom is going to be a long and hard journey; but if you truly value your digital freedom and privacy, you are not alone, because I am here to help. Even if you end up using more proprietary software, make sure to be mindful of what sacrifice you have to make for temporary convenience.