What do you recommend?
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff - Its quite a dense book and covers so much about how our data is bought and sold in ths background without most users even knowing about it. I would go out on a limb here and say, this is probably the best book on online privacy at the moment.
Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie - The whistleblower of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is insane to read about how much political influence one company had on a global scale. I don’t think this scandal is finished, I really do think there was even more going on at CA that we don’t know about.
Antisocial by Andrew Marantz - Its less about privacy per se but more so about the effects that CA and SMs like Meta have had on people. It focuses in the far right movement in America and I read this book just after Mindf*ck and it was scary to see just how influential CA and Meta were at creating this political division that has exploded over the past decade.
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden - The NSA whistleblower that showed how goverment agencies track everyone online in the name of stopping terrorists. There is a lot about Ed’s personal life in it as well as his experience at the NSA but I still think its an important book for people interested in online privacy, especially in regards to government agencies and the extent to which they can track you all over the internet.
Haven’t read Antisocial yet but the other three I vouch for as well. Very depressing stuff. I don’t recall how much actual privacy advice is given though, mostly they focus on how much it’s violated. Snowden’s was good after you get past the first third about his childhood.
A few years ago, I did the 52Books challenge and I ended up reading these 4 together and that was when I became interested in online privacy, thats why I recommend them together, they really showed me how much governments and private companies want all of your information
I don’t recall how much actual privacy advice is given though, mostly they focus on how much it’s violated
Yeah, the internet is constantly changing so if these books had tips in them, some of those tips would probably be a bit outdated now and with the explosion in AI over the past few months dynamic guides that can constantly be updated are better than static printed books that would constantly need to release updated versions to stay relevant
If you are interested in privacy tips, I would recommend [email protected] and privacyguides@lemmyone their subreddits are more populated but I think both are going dark on the 12th. Also some of Techlore’s older videos were great for people new to privacy
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine
