The illusion of control.
"통제의 환상."
In this increasingly digital worldl, both corporations and governments have a vested interest in pursuing control and observation of your life; we've seen it with the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, Apple's CSAM scanning plan (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/2021-we-told-apple-dont-scan-our-phones), the Korean government serving subpoenas to Kakao in response to purported libel (https://web.archive.org/web/20141210035320/http://digital.asiaone.com/digital/news/south-koreans-crackdown-online-libel-draws-fire), and the ever-growing presence of "big tech" in our lives, to name a few things.
People have seemed relatively reluctant to combat this, almost everyone I know uses Google, Facebook, Instagram, iCloud (and, by extension, iPhones, Mac computers, etc.), and/or Microsoft services and software without considerable hardening. I've heard people say that surveillance is worth it because it "stops terrorism and pedophilia" (by that logic, ISIS, the Taliban, and Russia would be gone by now), I've heard that they "don't care about privacy," because they "have nothing to hide" (then do they not care about freedom of speech because they have nothing to say?), I've even heard that its "too hard" to shift away from these services and software.
Additionally, people somehow see a gain in supporting and even paying for these privacy violators, when far better alternatives exist. There's no reason to use Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp any-more, especially with more privacy-centric alternatives availible (I'd suggest looking into Telegram or Kakaotalk, since both offer more secure groupchat functionality, effectively replacing SNS [Social Networking Service(s)]). Sometimes I question if anyone has heard of email or telephone calls any-more. Even when it comes to the flow of information, Meta (d.b.a Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), Google (search engine, Youtube, etc.) and countless other offenders I need not mention (but to name a few more: Naver, Daum/Kakao, Yandex, Twitter, and AOL/Yahoo/Verizon) are hellbent on censoring and controlling it, just to shove their rhetoric down your throat.
Given the amount of people supporting this nonsense, I wouldn't be too surprised if in the not-too-distant future we're all wearing Google/Facebook/Apple tracking bracelets which monitor our pacification and delusions. Complacency at this point will surely lead to an Orwellian dystopia.
THE SOLUTION...
Its simple. Abandon big tech. Stop using Google Chrome. Stop using Google Search. Stop using Instagram. Switch to Mozilla Firefox (or Naver Whale if you need a Chromium-based btowser), start using DuckDuckGo, SearX, or even Naver (I have found that for non-Korean searches, censorship of non-pornography is nonexistant), and for the love of all that is holy, stop putting your whole life on the internet.
"BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SWITCH!" Any piece of software will have documentation and forums which can guide you through switching, hardening software (mitigating telemetry and security risks), and making the software work well.
For those who live in nations with censorship, its a good idea to look into using Tor or a VPN service which keeps no logs (or, for the wealthy among us, paying for a VPS abroad) in order to gain free access to information, or, if you can, leaving.
For those who live in a surveillance state such as the USA, PRC, or European Union, its a good idea to mitigate your surveillance state with another's surveillance. The Chinese government has zero power over you, so maybe a Chinese smartphone wouldn't be a bad idea (provided that it lacks Google Mobile Services); the Korean government has zero power over you, so maybe using Naver for search and email isn't a horrible idea.
Although, both you and I act of our own volitions. If you're fine with surveillance, that's alright, but don't come crying to us when you're wearing a tracking collar with the word "PROPERTY OF GOOGLE, INC." on it.
