Browsing Lemmy’s front page has replaced reddit’s r/all for me, usually checking top of 12 hours from all instances.

But I still use reddit for specific forums of certain things, because it’s just the biggest community for the particular subject. I usually try to check if I can find the particular subject from Lemmy and check that out first though.

I’m more of a commenter/lurker and I quite rarely make new posts, but when I do make one:

• If it’s a question about something I need help with, I’ll start with a Lemmy post and then possibly also make one on Reddit - more readers, more answers.
• If it’s just a shitpost/meme/“content”, I only post it on Lemmy.

Genuinely curious, because it’s quite apparently about lifestyle in general: how often do you need a flashlight, especially a good/bright one? I mean, a bright one is nice to have, but it’s not like I’d need one. Basically I can understand why people just pick whatever they happen to find from the first store they walk into, and they’re happy with their purchase.

Currently, I don’t even own a flashlight. I rarely need one and when I do, I’ve just used my phone’s flashlight and it’s been just fine for whatever I needed to do.

I really think this thread is a great example of why the average person doesn’t care that much.

The whole thread is full of comments like “the issues caused by giving away all your data are too abstract, too far away, or too difficult to understand”. This is true by the way, I completely agree.

But I haven’t seen a single comment trying to explain those possible issues in an easily understandable way. The average person (or, at least me) reading threads like this won’t learn anything new. Give me a practical issue that I might face, and if I agree that it’s an issue, I’ll focus more on avoiding that issue.

In other words, an example:

• Let’s say I’m a person using lemmy/mastodon, only using privacy-focused search engines etc.
• If I would now change to using facebook/threads, started using Chrome as my browser, etc the usual mainstream tracking stuff - what problems can this cause for me in the future?

PS. I do agree with the notion of “minimize the data you give away”, which is one reason I’m here, but I really don’t have an answer for these questions. I’m like “I understand the point of privacy, but can’t explain the reasons”.

1. Googled “Lemmy” to see what it even is
2. “wtf is an instance”
3. Checked some of the most used instances. At this point I wasn’t sure if it matters much, but I just figured it’s best to just pick a popular instance.
4. found lemmy.world, and the description goes “The World’s Internet Frontpage - Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.”
5. “sounds good enough”, created account