I feel you man. Lately I’ve started to try and accept the idea the my government is becoming/already a hostile dictatorship. So the natural decision other than laying down and taking it like a pussy is using the privacy and freedom tech that already exists to keep myself safe in a world where quite literally everyone is out to get your data.

In addition to the Fediverse, I’d recommend you take a look at Tor and I2P. They’re both anonymous networks but I2P is arguably better, with the downside of not being able to interact with the clear-web.

For more practical daily use privacy, look into Tuta or Proton Mail as an email provider. Simple Login for email aliasing (which means you can give a unique email to every service you use). And a pretty awesome and convenient one is Privacy.com for alias credit cards. It’s not completely anonymous because Privacy.com needs your info, but every other service will just see a throwaway card.

Let’s gooooo baby yeah!

I stand by the idea that Proton is a great option for most people. Having a convenient option like that is exactly what the average person needs in order to stick with their privacy journey, and I believe that those that don’t understand or pay attention to privacy tech are those that need it most.

Having said that I much prefer Tuta. The main reason being that they allow for complete anonymity, and proton doesn’t. Tuta allows you to sign up while using Tor, so you don’t have to trust that they don’t log your IP. They also allow payment through Monero or even by mailing them cash. Users have asked Proton for those features for years but they refuse. That doesn’t immediately make them a honeypot, but it does mean that they’re just not for me.

Trustless and anonymous systems give me more faith than “we’re a good company, you can trust us… at least for now”. Like I said Proton is great for people that aren’t in the weeds of this stuff and just want easy tech that works, but Tuta seems like the better option for more dedicated privacy enjoyers

Lol

Lol, sounds about right. Exactly what people have been saying would happen, happened. Shocker

Again more details would be really helpful. I don’t know what platform you’re selling commissions on, or what kind of commissions you are doing, but for receiving payment without giving the client your information there are a few options.

• The most private and anonymous option would be to use the cryptocurrency called Monero, which would require convincing each client to use Monero, so not very practical but it is definitely the most private (other than cash)

• Another option would be to use a service like PayPal. In order to do this you would need to make a PayPal business account, which hides your name and personal information from the buyer. I’m not a fan of this option because you have to give a lot of info to PayPal including a photo of your ID, and they probably sell a lot of data to advertisers. However if you don’t care about that then PayPal might be the most convenient option. (Just a heads up, you have to make a business PayPal account on the desktop because the mobile app doesn’t work properly for that)

• I think there are other services that might work similarly to PayPal, like maybe cash app, but I’m not super familiar with those. They might be better options though, so I would highly recommend you do some research before making a decision

None of these are related to whatever platform you might be using, because you haven’t told me. In the future if you ask for help on a forum, please be much more detailed with your question. I want to help but it’s near impossible when I don’t have all the necessary information

Right but can you give more details? Like are you actually streaming? I only assumed you were based on what I read about livepix. If so what platform are you using? How exactly does the thing show up that has your name? Is there a way you could change it to a username instead of an actual name, or are you also trying to hide the username.

Like I said I’m not familiar with streaming, so I need a lot more details to understand what your trying to do and how livepix fits into that equation. I’m trying to help you but I can’t do that based on that one vague question.

I’m not sure, maybe if you explain exactly what your trying to do and what your looking for I might be able to help further. My thought was maybe there’s a software or plugin that can do whatever you’re trying to do, but I can’t know without more information.

Yeah, someone else mentioned that gold was better for physical savings as well. I’ll definitely keep that in mind.

I think it’s so interesting to see how we can live without the overbearing industries that seem to be facts of life. It’s so easy to forget that the people of the past that didn’t have these systems were able to get by just fine, and they were just as capable as we are now. They didn’t have special advantages that allowed them to live their ways of life, in many ways they had less advantages, but humans are incredible creatures and we don’t need an abundance of simplicity and convenience in order to exist. Often times those systems of convenience just end up becoming systems of control.

Unfortunately no, sorry

I’m not entirely familiar with this field but I took a look at there website and some other stuff online. It seems like they are a middle man between the viewers paying on the platform you stream on and you getting the payment. I’ve heard some pretty awful things about companies like that, so I would definitely be wary. I looked through their privacy policy and here’s what they claim to “generally” collect.

• Full name;
• CPF;
• Date of birth;
• E-mail;
• Phone/mobile;
• Payment information.

Most of that seems fairly reasonable, it doesn’t seem too excessive. I’m not sure what a CPF is but it seems to be a Brazilian thing. According to one user on reddit it’s an identification thing similar to social security but not nearly as harmful if someone gets a hold of it. Supposedly the worst they could do is sign you up for a political party or something.

I also looked at there github page and it’s definitely closed source, and only 7 people follow the repository so either not many people work on it or I found the wrong repository.

Again I’m not super familiar with this or the industry of streaming (which I assume is what you are doing based on the description of what the service is), but from what I’ve found I would recommend that you try to find something else that can offer what you’re looking for, preferably open source, and if that doesn’t exist then this seems like it might not be a terrible option.

If you do go with this I would recommend going through their privacy policy more thoroughly than I did, and also after you use it for a while request a copy of your data. If you discover that you don’t like how much they have on you then stop using them and look for something else.

Hope that helps

Wow thanks, that’s all super helpful!

Yeah sorry, and on that second part I’m not sure. I mean the freedom loving part of me thinks that there’s no way the government should be able to audit you just cause you have a physical safe with money in it, but maybe they do I don’t know

Thanks I’ll check that out

I guess you’re right, I just think there are some gaps in my knowledge on the finer details. For example I know that prepaid debit could be used as a replacement for debit and credit cards, but I’m not sure if there’s a better way to go about that other than just buying visa gift cards constantly.

Also I think one of the big things I’m curious about is if there’s a more convenient or just better way of storing my money other than a safe full of cash (or gold), or crypto.

There’s also probably some catches related to paperwork stuff that I’m not aware of yet. I think taxes should be relatively fine, because my employer will have payment records regardless of what I end up doing with my money, the only thing that might be difficult would be deductions but at least I won’t piss off the IRS with tax evasion.

That’s not necessarily true, my last job would give out physical checks if you didn’t have direct deposit setup, and I could cash them out at my local grocery store without a fee because I didn’t get paid much.

As for a house as far as I know you only need a bank if your getting a mortgage. If you buy it outright then you don’t need them. It’s a tall order I know but I was already planning on attempting that route because I don’t like credit.

This defeatist mindset is exactly what I was finding everywhere else, and most of the time I think it’s just invalid. I know it’s a lot of work and would need to take advantage of niche systems but I really don’t think it’s impossible or even infeasible

Ohhh, that’s clever and really cool!

What’s that character you use for “th”?

I’m pretty sure services like EasyOptOuts automate that process

Couldn’t you avoid ICANN altogether by making a domain on tor? I’m only just now learning how all this works but from what I can tell tor is disconnected from all the ICANN stuff