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Discussion on: On freedom and privacy

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ListNUX

Great write-up, I also read your linked article on FOSS and I have similar views with you. I, too, feel very strongly about privacy. It can be frustrating how open source communities are seemingly fine with big corporations being part of open source, especially some corporations that are notorious about how they violate users' privacy and how they collect, manipulate and trade our personal data.

I think freedom of software and open source software is becoming the norm now, compared to 10-15 years ago, and it has long stopped to be a safeguard for better transparency and privacy. I think privacy is a matter on its own, cause it is not anymore guaranteed by open source codebases and FOSS and because many open source contributors are part of the same companies that collect and trade our data. Privacy is a basic human right, but we are okay with our privacy being compromised because the average technology user is not aware of how much data is being collected about them, without informed consent, and how much it is worth and sold.