What skills and benefits unrelated to privacy have you gained by becoming more private online?
Aside from becoming more aware of my privacy, I’ve also indirectly gained a few skills along the way.
Managing my own music library on an mp3 player and learning how to tag my files (resulted from quitting Spotify and YouTube Music). I kinda had to relearn this after having a dependence on subscription services for so long.
Better time management due to not using social media as much. It’s surprising how much time you have during the day when you aren’t mindlessly scrolling.
Designed my own homelab with self hosted services (Ollama/OpenWebUI, Home Assistant) and flashing my routers with OpenWRT.
Learning networking, VLANs, and segmenting my network to isolate smart devices from my personal ones.
Ultimately becoming more technically inclined than I was prior.
Overall, my privacy journey has helped me develop a lot more skills than I realized. I’d like to hear about the benefits you’ve noticed in your lives.
For me it got me back into technology again. Over the last decade the mentality has been technology is now a hostile force that’s becoming more and more of a detriment as every major digital service is now just rent seeking. Having to move off Windows and learn about Linux did recapture some childhood nostalgia of learning about computers and tech as it becomes more DIY as you leave the walled garden of SaaS trash.
I’m actually doing things I got bored of long ago; like keeping up with emerging tech, PC building (even if I’m limiting myself due to this AI mess), and actually enjoy using a computer again.
In the 90s there was a way more techno optimistic sub culture of people who say tech and hacking as a means of self expression, and I genuinely want to hearken back to that without the naivety of that era.