I don’t have a problem with the police entering private homes and installing spyware when authorized by a court order supported by strong evidence. That’s narrowly focused on investigating crime.

What I’m very concerned about is attempts to perform surveillance without individualized suspicion or independent oversight.

If you are trying to get the Wordpress software and install it on a server you own or web hosting account you pay for, yes.

If you’re trying to do something else, like sign up for blog hosting from a privacy-respecting service provider without having to administer software yourself, then no. If you want recommendations for services like that, you should probably make a separate post asking for that, with as much detail about what you want to do and whether you’re willing to pay for it as possible.

Edit: I see you did make such a post. If you’re “not tech savvy” as your post says, I don’t recommend administering Wordpress yourself. While it’s something nearly anyone can learn if sufficiently motivated, it’s much more effort for someone without a technical background.

Wordpress the software is open source and isn’t known to do anything shady. Wordpress.com the hosted CMS product uses tracking pixels.

Google has partly backed away from this plan, and it was only announced for “certified” Android devices, which yours isn’t after rooting.

It does affect you indirectly though. If open source on Android gets harder, fewer people will do it.

media.wmf.zero-copy-nv12-textures-force-enabled

This option is Windows-specific.

I’m old enough to remember the web being primarily text, and turning off automatic image loading being a good way to see fewer ads. I’m old enough to remember popup windows and popup blocking.

I suppose the underlying issue is that if something I don’t like happens on my computer, my first thought is to look for a way to change it, and most people don’t think about computers that way. I’m sad that most people don’t think about computers that way.

Right, I do understand that’s a limitation. I think I’m more puzzled that many people find the presence of ads in a device they paid for to be a minor issue rather than intolerable.

I haven’t moved to a privacy OS on Android yet because of money.

That’s entirely reasonable. You can still block most ads if you want to:

• You can use a web browser that supports extensions. That includes Firefox and its various forks, and perhaps surprisingly, Microsoft Edge. uBlock Origin is still available for both, despite Edge being Chromium-based and Google trying to cripple adblockers there.
• You can use web, rather than app versions of most services so that they’re covered by the browser’s adblocker.
• You can use DNS-based adblocking to reduce ads where you need/want to use apps that display ads.

“But personalised ads are really convenient!”

Not seeing ads is really convenient, and I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn’t block ads aggressively on every device they spend much time using in 2025.

To cover a couple common objections:

It’s a corporate/institutional device and I can’t

Then it’s the institution’s IT department I’m puzzled by. If I was running corporate IT, ad blocking would be part of the standard install. The FBI recommends it for security.

The device is too locked down for that

Why would you buy such a device, or continue using it now that you know better?

Someone logging timestamps for messages received on both ends of a conversation would be able to determine that two people are probably talking to each other given enough data. Signal is probably not doing that, but Signal’s other security guarantees provided by an open source client that encrypts communications end to end hold even if the organization was infiltrated or taken over by a bad actor. The anonymity of participants in a conversation is not protected as strongly as the contents of messages.

I’ll expand this question to my entire social circle.

I haven’t found that anybody cares about my email provider. It doesn’t affect them because email is federated. Nobody has ever asked me why I’m mailing them from a domain I own rather than a service provider they’ve heard of.

Where I do run into a lot of resistance is trying to get people to use Signal. Some people seem to find the concept of having multiple messaging apps objectionable, which has never made any sense to me as long as they have basic computer skills. On occasion, I’m on the other side of that conversation when I’m unwilling to use Facebook Messenger for reasons that should be obvious to anyone in this community.

A quick search suggests all X1 Nano models can run Windows 11, so they won’t be ultra-cheap because of that.

I have never had a web host ask me to prove my identity, and I would probably pick a different one if they did.

They do have my credit card number though, so I’m far from anonymous.

That has a very high probability of convincing me not to use that app or service.

I’m imagining inserting a face-swap program into the software stack powering the webcam. I know it’s technically feasible with Video4Linux.

Fortunately, Lemmy has public modlogs. I do see some accounts banned for antisemitism recently, but they weren’t just supporting Palestine; they were using slurs in post titles or blaming everyone Jewish for the actions of Israel’s government. I would ban those accounts if it were up to me.

I understand Lemmy doesn’t provide a way to fuse multiple signals like the combination of a high-reputation account with a low-reputation IP address and it would be too much to ask volunteer server admins to develop their own. I’m OK with that answer. I don’t expect to dictate the terms by which they give me free services.

The part I didn’t like was their dim view of the fact that Mullvad actually provides privacy to its users. I believe private internet access is valuable to the world even if it enables some harms.

Over the past few years, there has been a great increase in websites using geoblocking. Half the local news sites in the USA block traffic from the EU for example, likely because they want to inject 300 advertising trackers in a manner that would violate EU law. I’ve been using Mullvad for years, and I am happy with it.

Sometimes lemmy.world blocks me from posting from it, which I am not happy with. They were even critical of its strict privacy stance, which I found to be a weird take from a fediverse project.

No. ClamAV can, for example scan Linux ELF executables and its database contains signatures for malware that could affect desktop Linux. The most common use case is servers that are distributing files, but it can be used to scan local files.

The local use case is fairly rare because malware targeting desktop Linux is rare. That’s partly because Linux users tend to have a better understanding of computers on average than Windows users, and partly because the sort of attack vectors that work well against Windows users don’t align with Linux workflows (e.g. if you want to execute a file sent as an email attachment, you’ll have to save it and set it executable first).

This Angelfish?

I put PostmarketOS on a spare device recently. PostmarketOS describes itself as currently being in a state suitable for Linux enthusiasts to try out, not for wider use. That seems about right to me.

On the fun side, it’s proper desktop-style Linux. I can SSH to it from my laptop. I can compile software on it. I can run programs that have no business running on a phone. On the not so fun side, the cameras barely work, data over USB doesn’t work at all, and battery life is not good. Desktop Firefox on a phone screen is pretty bad. Rumor has it there’s some support for Android apps, but I’ve been looking at Waydroid’s splash screen for a long time now with no progress.