James R Kirk

From ArsTechnica:

According to DuckDuckGo, chats on the service are anonymized, with metadata and IP address removed to prevent tracing back to individuals. The company states that chats are not used for AI model training, citing its privacy policy and terms of use.

“We have agreements in place with all model providers to ensure that any saved chats are completely deleted by the providers within 30 days,” says DuckDuckGo, “and that none of the chats made on our platform can be used to train or improve the models.”

So there is some trust involved, but I’m inclined to believe DDG.

Not a mod but from what you’ve said it sounds like your post was satirical, which violates the “on topic” rule.

For what it’s worth, THIS thread violates that rule too.

The topic of this post is that a company is charging money for altering what was previously not a restricted feature. That violates the third rule in the sidebar.

I agree OP has a right to be upset, but this post has nothing to do with privacy.

There’s no need to get upset. If you truly are having difficulty understanding my feelings on the topic and are asking in good faith, I’ll explain it one more time:

The topic of this post is that a company is charging money for it’s services. That violates the third rule in the sidebar.

Whatever mine or your feelings on the topic, it has nothing to do with privacy.

It’s empty venting, and the topic is not about privacy in a meaningful capacity, it’s about a business model.

Allowing venting/drama/gossip threads in a community over time will push out the people (like myself) who care about the actual community topic. And when those people are gone what’s left is a cesspit.

Hey mods just saying… I think a lot of us would appreciate having a rule against offtopic posts.

There is with Reddit! If you browse enough old posts you’ll inevitably come across a profile who’s history entirely consists of “I’ve quit and gone to Lemmy”.

Instagram - posts can still be checked in a browser without logging in. Imginn exists too if you want to browse a profile.

Facebook - Anecdotal, but I have not had a Facebook account in 20 years and I can safely say I’ve never once had FOMO or trouble finding information on an event. If it’s a private social gathering that’s worth going to, someone will invite me.

Instagram/Facebook I would just delete. Maybe make a final post explaining why you’re deleting and say “find me on Pixelfed” just to help spread the word.

For Reddit, I love when see people replace every comment they ever made with a link to Lemmy before deleting their account. Reddit shows comments from deleted accounts so they stay up. There are apps that will do this for you.

For Gmail just hold onto and have it forward to your new address in case someone tries to contact you that way. But also back it up with Google takeout in case Google randomly decides to delete the account (rare but it happens).

I recently asked a friend to remove their meta glasses while we were out to eat. It was awkward for a moment but they were understanding, and we had a good talk about privacy and tech after.