Deception, Obfuscation & Misdirection

This is a concatenation of posts I originally made in 2016-2017--even more relevant today...

Most are familiar with the concept of #FUD—short for #Fear, #Uncertainty & #Doubt. It summarizes a strategy often used in marketing and political propaganda. Its effects are pernicious, divisive and lead to exploitation. Examples abound. Fear is a strong motivator! To resist FUD one must understand how it is practiced using the principles of #Deception, #Obfuscation and #Misdirection.

https://mdpaths.com/rrr/commentary/deception_obfuscation_misdirection/index.html

TLDR: trump is causing a #recession (if not a depression), but cnn tries to euphemize it as much as possible.

CNN: Dow falls by almost 900 points in market rout after Trump says he won’t rule out a recession
CNN: Fear and Greed Index: Extreme fear is driving the US market
CNN: Wait, so are we really headed for a recession?

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/10/investing/us-stocks-drop-after-trump-says-he-wont-rule-out-a-recession/index.html

While it sounds like an awful collision, that apparently-newspaper-frontpage-worthy anecdotal story is just yet-another-distraction from the real dangers on the roads: huge vehicles, speed, mobile phones, drugs, poor enforcement...

Have decided to give #ZenBrowser another go, but with conditions:

• #Sidebery, not its unreliable* & not-my-cup-of-tea native tabs
• #FirefoxSecondSidebar https://github.com/aminought/firefox-second-sidebar, not its unsatisfactory native #WebPanels

In case anyone wonders, this [temporary?] change from my hitherto daily [#FirefoxNightly + #Sidebery + #uBlockOrigin + #FirefoxSecondSidebar] has nothing to do with the recent global #FUD wrt Mozilla's #TOU / #EULA, but instead is due to the aesthetic pleasantness of & the desire to use its #SplitTabView #TabSplitView #TabPaneView; two undeniable advantages over Nightly.

* the Zen subreddit is full of users posting that Zen spontaneously lost all their tabs, or all their pinned tabs, or all their unpinned tabs. In my own past months of using Zen with its native #Workspaces & tabs, it also happened to me, twice, & it is most exasperating.

Great write up on why the #EU should adopt #GNOME as a foundation for an alternative operating system to reduce reliance on American tech corporations and as a matter of strategic autonomy and control over digital infrastructure.

https://ergaster.org/posts/2025/02/28-prosthetics-that-dont-betray/

#GNOME is a polished modern and friendly than ever before. Its developers have adopter a more minimalist approach, while #KDE, historically at least, was more tweak-able.

In fact, #Linux on the desktop could have and should have been more ubiquitous. But #microsoft has historically waged war against it when the free software movement started picking up. Most notably the 2003 "Get the Facts"— a #FUD spreading disinformation campaign, comparing Windows to #Linux on cost, security, and reliability.

Back then the worst U.S. companies like microsoft could do was to threat to close a research center in a country in which the government was exploring alternatives. That was often enough for governments to abandon their plans. #Israel in fact is a great example of that submissiveness to U.S. demands.

There’s no doubt the U.S. is using its leverage this way. It’s never been a true competition over Free software advocacy, and Linux in the desktop never stood a chance for sure. Though specific needs persist, organizational dependency on proprietary systems is a conscious choice.

I’ll pin this post and overtime will add short reviews of some of the amazing software built for GNOME I’m using or coming across.

@tokyo_0 Why are peeps stating then requoting this utter bollocks? Bloody hell.

inescapable ad telemetry

Here's how to opt-out, directly in the FF Settings / Preferences UI [pic].

Here's how to force it [if you QAnonly distrust the UI] via either about:config or in a user.js file:

user_pref("browser.send_pings", false);
user_pref("beacon.enabled", false);
user_pref("datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnable", false);
user_pref("datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled", false);
user_pref("accessibility.force_disabled", 1);

Has nobody on the interwebz got any critical thinking skills left?

@zak Sigh. #FUD.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-terms-of-use/

UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.