Privacy is possible! "The problem for a company like DuckDuckGo isn’t making people care about #privacy; it’s convincing them that privacy is possible. Many consumers (...) have thrown up their hands in resignation"
https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-quest-prove-online-privacy-possible/
@freddy Most people just don't know the methods to be private because the solutions are FOSS that spend $0 on marketing. I try to explain this to people and tell them that the things I do are easy, although not mentioning how difficult it is to get out of some of the tech traps and the time it took me to figure things out. I also emphasize that it is fun and liberating and offer help to anybody.
@krock advertising is largely pointless, in my opinion, unless you are targeting a very local audience. What I'd advise any FOSS brands/products to do is take a writing course, or buy a book on writing (for example: To Be Clear by Philip Collins). Then, you have learnt a skill - and you have the potential to write a post that will do well on HN/reddit etc... which could easily expand your audience.
@freddy I agree, but it is a fact that most people are totally unaware of what FOSS even is, much less the options. The marketing budgets of megatech are enormous and influence what is published, available in stores.. Most people never see the subreddits or HN. So we all need to be marketers of tech freedom to those we engage with. It is kind of a part time job of mine to promote the most important privacy tools: ideas and awareness.
@krock Indeed. Hence, I see a lot of merit in newspaper/radio/tv/bilboard advertising for products that are accessible such as DDG. For less accessible products, we need to use them, and contribute to the project (on GitHub or via donations) in order to get them to a point where the wider public would use them.
@freddy I totally agree about traditional advertising being a waste of resources in most of what we can provide. Marketing more broadly can be done by all of us at low cost and more effectively by sharing the alternatives to those we know. I contribute wherever I can to both helping to build as well as distribute. Thank you for your good work.