This is how I ask my contacts on WhatsApp to move to Signal:

It is not safe for Europeans to use WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is owned by the US company Meta, whose largest shareholder and decision-maker is Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire Trump supporter. Meta’s business model has always been based on the use and resale of data extracted from and spied on users of its free services for all manner of purposes. The $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp was not an act of charity, but an investment designed to get users’ conversations onto their servers.

WhatsApp’s source code is secret, so no impartial party can verify whether the app’s owner is able to read all message histories or not. Even if this were not currently possible, new updates are released constantly, and a backdoor could be added at any time – for example, if Trump ordered it – and under US law, a company operating there is obliged to comply with government orders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#Switzerland
"
In December 2021, the Swiss army banned the use of WhatsApp and several other non-Swiss encrypted messaging services by army personnel. The ban was prompted by concerns of US authorities potentially accessing user data for such apps because of the CLOUD Act.
"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platforms
"
... collecting biometric data of their Facebook and Instagram users without their consent and then sharing it with third parties and not deleting it in time, despite Meta announcing that it would delete all data it had collected ...
"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Politics
"
Zuckerberg was one of a handful of technology leaders positioned prominently at Trump's inauguration. ... In January 2025, he said: "We now have a U.S. administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning and that will defend our values and interests abroad."
...
Zuckerberg has expressed opposition to EU regulations of his company saying "we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that're going after American companies."
"

The leakage of detailed information to foreign powers is dangerous for Europe, particularly now that artificial intelligence can sift through mountains of data and identify ways in which Europe could be most effectively undermined by manipulating individual citizens.

Europeans mostly use US software and online services, and the data collected from these enables highly accurate micro-targeted advertising.

It is suspected that Brexit and Trump were brought about through the use of personalised propaganda.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

I recommend replacing WhatsApp with a similar app called ‘Signal’, which is open-source and developed by a foundation.

Messages don't move between Signal and WhatsApp, but they can be ‘shared’ one by one from one app to the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

On Signal, finding contacts by phone number has sometimes been a bit hit-and-miss, but searching by username has always worked. You can choose your username in Signal’s settings. When you share your username, your phone number is not revealed to the other party in the conversation unless you specifically provide it, just as with email. Setting up Signal without a phone number is a paid feature.

You can forward these messages:
Menu … -> Select messages -> [tick the whole set] -> Forward

When the person has moved from WhatsApp to Signal, I send them the following messages:

Signal can save your message history to its own cloud, but this does not happen automatically; the setting can be found under Settings/Backups. With the free cloud package, storage time for media files is limited.

If you do not use Signal’s paid cloud service, you can keep your entire message history (including images and videos) safe from device damage or loss using one of the following methods:

• Install Signal on another device that you are unlikely to lose at the same time as your other device, for example in a fire or burglary. Your chat history will synchronise via an internet connection whilst the devices are switched on.
• Download a backup file from Signal regularly and store it somewhere else. A file left on your phone will likely end up in your phone’s operating system’s backup cloud, provided this feature is switched on and covers the folder where you saved the file.

If an old, decommissioned device contains an old message history that you wish to transfer to new devices, simply update Signal to a sufficiently recent version that is capable of synchronising histories between devices. Check whether media files older than the free cloud's time limit were transferred or if you need to pass a backup file.

You can improve the quality of the photos and videos you send by going to Settings/Data usage/Media quality: High. There is no ‘Original quality’ option.

You can bypass compression and resizing, which reduce quality, by hiding media files inside a zip file (or equivalent), which Signal will send as is. This is useful for maximising the quality of an image sent for printing, or if the image contains text that is so small it cannot be read unless it is in its original quality.

You can forward these messages:
Menu … -> Select messages -> [tick the whole set] -> Forward

If the person doesn't believe that surveillance is harmful, or they are interested in privacy and information security, I send them these:

Oblivious human drone swarm attack

Pre-emptive manipulation of society by nudge swarms around vigilant targets, as orchestrated by surveillance capitalist companies

Surveillance capitalist companies study people to better manipulate their behaviour by advertisements. That skill can be used to attack a vigilant target using oblivious mediators as a drone swarm delivering a payload.

https://lemmy.world/post/52470551 (needs JavaScript)

Another way to the same post:
https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11576201

Another way to the same post:
https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2429126/pre-emptive-manipulation-of-society-by-nudge-swarms-around-vigilant-targets-as-orchestr

Try going somewhere without being spotted by a surveillance car made in USA or China. A European in Europe cannot escape a foreign agent.

For people determined to get off big tech:

Changing one app doesn't help much if the whole smart device is controlled by a hostile power.

For your computer and tablet running Microsoft Windows, Google ChromeOS, or even Apple macOS operating systems, Fedora Linux is a good option (there are many others, all open-source).

• If you prefer Apple style or must use a touchscreen, choose the default version of Fedora (or Debian) with Gnome desktop environment.
• If you prefer Windows style, choose a version with KDE Plasma.
  Linux Mint also resembles Windows, and is slightly easier to set up because you can get proprietary codecs for playing media files by checking a box, while in Fedora you have to do it on the terminal.
• Gamers get Linuxes that can beat Windows in gaming performance.

You can buy devices with Linux from many vendors, such as Tuxedo (German, made in Taiwan or China).

If you do a parallel install along with Windows:

• Encrypt the partition(s) with a strong password (long series of unconnected words or nonsense, typed at startup) when installing Linux to stop Windows from accessing your data (also works against computer theft).
• Prepare to repair the boot menu whenever Windows deletes it to make it look like your Linux has disappeared. It's safer to unplug your Linux drive for running Windows, or to install Windows in a virtual machine inside Linux.

For your Android phone or tablet, several alternative operating systems are available.

• AOSP-based ones are almost entirely Android-compatible, best of which is GrapheneOS
• Linuxes (Jolla phone (Finnish) with its Sailfish OS, Nura (formerly PostmarketOS), Ubuntu Touch) can also run Android apps, but I haven't tried them.
• Volla phone (German, not Jolla) has a parallel install of an AOSP-derivative and a Linux selectable at startup.

You can tie your phone, tablet, and computer together with the app KDE Connect (open source).

GrapheneOS (open-source) - maximum security and privacy for phones and tablets

• More Android apps than on other deGoogled OSs
• Very secure (hack-resistant) if correctly set up and used
• Easy to install to the few phones it accepts (some Google (USA), some Motorola (USA) 2027)
• Beginner-hostile, complicated manual setup. Default settings are for the hunted.
• Good website and active forum
• NextCloud works - prefer GrapheneOS sponsors, consider Murena to support /e/OS (another deGoogled Android-compatible OS, beginner-friendly, technically inferior, installable to more devices)
• Battery lasts much longer in sparse use without Android's constant surveillance wasting energy

I use /e/OS (open-source) on a Sony phone (Japanese):

• Beginner-friendly
• Almost fully translated to more languages than other AOSP-derivatives
• Local offline speech transcription (text dictation)
• Battery lasts a week in sparse use without Android's constant surveillance wasting energy

Murena develops /e/OS and sells phones with it, such as Fairphone (Dutch) and Shiftphone (German).

https://www.quora.com/How-does-Murenas-custom-e-OS-compare-to-Googles-Android/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen

China and USA are helping Russia wage hybrid war against Europe online, so people need to be taught to switch to better solutions now.

I put together this package for my mother, who isn’t tech-savvy and doesn’t speak English:

• Operating system GrapheneOS (open-source) (almost entirely in Finnish via AOSP)
• Cloud services Nextcloud (open-source) hosted by Murena.io (French) for €20 per year
• Password manager Bitwarden (open-source). Tedious usage, lacks system integration.
• Email address from provider @proton.me (Swiss) with a different set of cloud services
• I showed her how to log in to online services to change her email address and create random passwords to replace those remembered by her old Huawei Android phone.
• AI assistant Mistral (French) for asking for advice in Finnish speech. Typical LLM GPT, often wrong.
• Translator DeepL (German) for unavoidable English. Tedious usage, lacks system integration.

My mum’s previous laptop ran Linux, and her current Chromebook will run Linux too.

Forwarding these messages from Lemmy to WhatsApp and Signal

Each message to be sent is separated by a horizontal line. Separating them makes WhatsApp/Signal render link previews nicely - wait for the preview to appear before sending each message.

After copy-pasting from Lemmy, you may have to correct the formatting by adding [Shift+Enter] where a line feed has disappeared, or to re-bold subheadings by selecting text and clicking the [B]-button.

Näin kehotan kontaktejani WhatsAppissa siirtymään Signaliin:

Eurooppalaisten ei ole turvallista käyttää WhatsAppia.

WhatsAppin omistaa yhdysvaltalainen yritys Meta, jonka suurin omistaja ja päätösvallan haltija on Trumpia kannattava miljardööri Mark Zuckerberg. Metan liiketoimintamalli on aina ollut ilmaisten palvelujen käyttäjiltä ongittujen ja vakoiltujen tietojen käyttö ja jälleenmyynti kaikenlaisiin tarkoituksiin. WhatsAppin osto 16 miljardilla dollarilla ei ollut hyväntekeväisyyttä, vaan sijoitus, jolla käyttäjien keskustelut saatiin heidän palvelimilleen.

WhatsAppin lähdekoodi on salainen, joten kukaan puolueeton taho ei voi tarkistaa, pystyykö sovelluksen omistaja lukemaan kaikki viestihistoriat vai ei. Jos ei tällä hetkellä pystyisikään, niin uusia päivityksiä tulee jatkuvasti, ja takaportti voidaan lisätä milloin tahansa, vaikkapa jos Trump niin käskee, ja Yhdysvaltain lain mukaan siellä toimivan yrityksen on pakko totella valtion määräystä.

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp
"
Esimerkiksi valtion tieto- ja viestintätekniikkakeskus Valtorissa WhatsAppia ei saa käyttää työasioiden käsittelyyn lainkaan, ja poliisin virallisiin työpuhelimiin sovellusta ei saa asentaa.
"

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(yritys)
"
Meta on jäänyt kiinni käyttäjätietojen luvattomasta jakamisesta ja myymisestä, muun muassa kiinalaisille teknologiayrityksille.
"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Politics
"
Zuckerberg was one of a handful of technology leaders positioned prominently at Trump's inauguration. ... In January 2025, he said: "We now have a U.S. administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning and that will defend our values and interests abroad."
...
Zuckerberg has expressed opposition to EU regulations of his company saying "we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that're going after American companies."
"

Yksityiskohtaisen tiedon vuotaminen ulkovaltoihin on Euroopalle vaarallista varsinkin nyt, kun tekoäly voi seuloa tietovuoren ja löytää keinot, joilla kutakin yksittäistä kansalaista manipuloiden voitaisiin tehokkaimmin heikentää Eurooppaa.

Eurooppalaiset käyttävät enimmäkseen yhdysvaltalaisia ohjelmistoja ja verkkopalveluja, joista kerätyn tiedon perusteella mikrokohdennetun mainonnan osuvuus on tarkkaa.

Brexitin epäillään toteutuneen personoidun propagandan avulla.

https://yle.fi/a/3-10996034

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valvontakapitalismi

Suosittelen WhatsAppin korvaamista vastaavalla sovelluksella "Signal", joka on avointa lähdekoodia, jota kehittää säätiö.

Viestit eivät kulje Signalin ja WhatsAppin välillä, mutta tarvittaessa niitä voi "jakaa" yksitellen sovelluksesta toiseen.

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal

Signalissa yhteystietojen löytäminen puhelinnumeron perusteella on joskus oikkuillut, mutta haku käyttäjätunnuksella on aina toiminut. Käyttäjätunnuksensa voi valita Signalin asetuksissa. Sen jakamalla puhelinnumerosi ei päädy keskustelun toiselle osapuolelle, ellet sitä erikseen anna, aivan kuin sähköpostissa. Signalin käyttöönotto ilman puhelinnumeroa on maksullinen ominaisuus.

Voit lähettää tämän viestipaketin edelleen:
Valikko ... -> Valitse viestejä -> [rasti koko sarja] -> Välitä

Seuraavat viestit lähetän uusille Signal-kontakteille:

Signal osaa tallentaa viestihistorian omaan pilveensä, mutta se ei mene päälle automaattisesti, vaan asetus löytyy valikosta Asetukset/Varmuuskopiot. Ilmaisessa pilvipaketissa mediatiedostojen säilyvyys on rajallinen.

Jos et käytä Signalin maksullista pilvipalvelua, koko viestihistorian (kuvineen ja videoineen) voi pitää turvassa laitteen särkymiseltä tai menettämiseltä jollakin näistä keinoista:

• Asenna Signal toiseen laitteeseen, jota et voi menettää samalla toisen laitteen kanssa vaikkapa tulipalossa tai murtovarkaudessa. Historiat synkronoituvat verkkoyhteyden kautta laitteiden ollessa päällä.
• Lataa Signalista varmuuskopiotiedosto usein ja säilytä sitä jossain muualla. Puhelimeen jätetty tiedosto kulkeutunee puhelimen käyttöjärjestelmän varmuuskopiopilveen, jos se on kytketty päälle, ja jos se kattaa myös sen kansion, johon panit tiedoston.

Jos vanhassa, käytöstä poistetussa laitteessa on vanha viestihistoria, jonka haluat siirtää uusiin laitteisiin, riittää päivittää sen Signal riittävän uuteen versioon, joka osaa synkronoida historiat laitteiden välillä. Tarkista siirtyivätkö Signalin ilmaisen pilvipalvelun aikarajaa vanhemmat mediaviestit, vai joudutko siirtämään varmuuskopiotiedoston.

Voit parantaa lähettämiesi kuvien ja videoiden laatua valikossa Asetukset/Datankäyttö/Lähetettävän median laatu:Korkea. Vaihtoehtoa "Alkuperäinen laatu" ei ole.

Laatua heikentävän pakkaamisen ja kutistamisen voi ohittaa piilottamalla mediatiedostot vaikkapa zip-tiedoston sisään, jonka Signal lähettää sellaisenaan. Tämä on hyödyllistä mm. tulostettavaksi lähetettävän kuvan laadun maksimoinnissa, tai jos kuvassa on niin pientä tekstiä, ettei sitä näe lukea muuten kuin alkuperäisellä laadulla.

Voit lähettää tämän viestipaketin edelleen:
Valikko ... -> Valitse viestit -> [rasti koko sarja] -> Välitä vastaanottajalle

Jos henkilö ei koe valvontaa haitallisena, tai häntä kiinnostaa yksityisyys ja tietoturva, lähetän hänelle seuraavat viestit:

Valvonta mahdollistaa yksilöön kohdistetun fyysisen ja henkisen haitan käyttämällä asiasta tietämättömiä sivullisia pelinappuloina:

Oblivious human drone swarm attack

Pre-emptive manipulation of society by nudge swarms around vigilant targets, as orchestrated by surveillance capitalist companies

Surveillance capitalist companies study people to better manipulate their behaviour by advertisements. That skill can be used to attack a vigilant target using oblivious mediators as a drone swarm delivering a payload.

https://lemmy.world/post/52470551 (needs JavaScript)

Another way to the same post:
https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11576201

Another way to the same post:
https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2429126/pre-emptive-manipulation-of-society-by-nudge-swarms-around-vigilant-targets-as-orchestr

Yritäpä mennä jonnekin ilman että sinut näkee USA:ssa tai Kiinassa valmistettu valvonta-auto. Eurooppalainen Euroopassa ei pysty pakenemaan vieraan vallan agentilta.

Kun henkilö on päättänyt poistua valvontajättien palveluista, lähetän hänelle seuraavat viestit:

Yhden sovelluksen vaihtaminen ei pelasta, jos koko älylaite on vieraan vallan hallinnassa.

Tietokoneeseen tai tablettiin käyttöjärjestelmällä Microsoft Windows, Google ChromeOS, tai jopa Apple macOS, Fedora Linux on hyvä vaihtoehto (muitakin on paljon, avointa lähdekoodia kaikki).

• Jos pidät Applen tyylistä tai joudut käyttämään kosketusnäyttöä, valitse Fedoran (tai Debianin) oletusversio, jossa on Gnome-työpöytäympäristö.
• Jos pidät enemmän Windowsin tyylistä, valitse versio, jossa on KDE Plasma.
  Myös Linux Mint muistuttaa Windowsia, ja sen asennus on hieman helpompaa, koska mediatiedostojen toistamiseen tarvittavat omistusoikeudelliset koodekit saa raksimalla ruudun, kun taas Fedorassa se on tehtävä päätteessä.
• Pelaajille on omat Linuxinsa, joiden suorituskyky voittaa Windowsin.

Linux-laitteita myy moni yritys, kuten Tuxedo (Saksasta, tehty Taiwanissa tai Kiinassa).

Jos asennat rinnakkain Linuxin ja Windowsin:

• Linuxia asentaessa pitää salata osio vahvalla salasanalla (pitkä sarja toisiinsa liittymättömiä sanoja tai siansaksaa, kirjoitetaan käynnistäessä), ettei Windows pääsisi tietoihisi (eikä varas).
• Varaudu käynnistysvalikon korjaamiseen aina kun Windows poistaa sen antaakseen ymmärtää että Linuxisi on kadonnut. On turvallisempaa irrottaa Linux-asema Windowsin käytön ajaksi, tai asentaa Windows virtuaalikoneeseen Linuxin sisään.

Android-puhelimeen tai -tablettiin saa useita vaihtoehtoisia käyttöjärjestelmiä.

• AOSP-pohjaiset ovat lähes täysin Android-yhteensopivia, ja niistä paras on GrapheneOS, joka ei ole täysin suomennettu.
• Linuxit (Jolla-puhelin Suomesta ja sen Sailfish OS-käyttöjärjestelmä, Nura (entinen PostmarketOS) ja Ubuntu Touch) ajavat Android-sovelluksia, mutta en ole kokeillut niitä käytössä.
• Volla-puhelimessa (Saksasta, ei Jolla) on rinnakkain AOSP ja Linux, joista valitaan käynnistäessä.

Voit yhdistää puhelimen, tabletin ja tietokoneen toisiinsa sovelluksella KDE Connect (avoin lähdekoodi).

GrapheneOS (open-source) - maximum security and privacy for phones and tablets

• More Android apps than on other deGoogled OSs
• Very secure (hack-resistant) if correctly set up and used
• Easy to install to the few phones it accepts (some Google (USA), some Motorola (USA) 2027)
• Beginner-hostile, complicated manual setup. Default settings are for the hunted.
• Good website and active forum
• NextCloud works - prefer GrapheneOS sponsors, consider Murena to support /e/OS (another deGoogled Android-compatible OS, beginner-friendly, technically inferior, installable to more devices)
• Battery lasts much longer in sparse use without Android's constant surveillance wasting energy

Minulla on /e/OS (avoin lähdekoodi) Sony-puhelimessa (Japanista):

• Helppo aloittelijalle
• Lähes täysin suomennettu
• Osaa muuttaa puheen tekstiksi lähettämättä sitä minnekään
• Nyt akku kestää viikon vähäisessä käytössä, koska Androidin jatkuva vakoilu tuhlasi energiaa paljon.

Murena kehittää /e/OS:ää ja myy puhelimia sen kanssa, kuten Fairphone (Hollannista) ja Shiftphone (Saksasta).

https://www.quora.com/How-does-Murenas-custom-e-OS-compare-to-Googles-Android/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen

Näin lähetät nämä viestit Lemmystä WhatsAppiin ja Signaliin

• Lähetettäväksi tarkoitetut viestit on tässä erotettu vaakaviivoin. Viestien lähettäminen yksitellen saa WhatsAppin/Signalin näyttämään linkkien esikatselukuvat nätisti – odota esikatselun latautumista ennen kunkin viestin lähettämistä.
• Kun kopioit ja liität tekstiä Lemmystä WhatsAppiin tai Signaliin, saatat joutua korjaamaan muotoilua painamalla [Shift+Enter] lisätäksesi puuttuvan rivinvaihdon, tai lihavoimaan otsikot uudelleen valitsemalla tekstiä ja napsauttamalla [B]-nappia.

"Tehtävän toistaminen harjaannuttaa tietokoneesta luotettavamman."

Surveillance capitalist companies study people to better manipulate their behaviour by advertisements. That skill can be used to attack a vigilant target by using oblivious mediators as a drone swarm delivering a payload.

The documentary "The Social Dilemma" (2020) pointed out ways to manipulate large numbers of users of smart devices, and how that leads to drastic changes in society. It claims that personalised nudges are being delivered to billions of people daily, with the apparent goal (or emerged effect) that the sum of all nudges leads to the subjugation of the whole society, while successfully avoiding detection by national security agencies and getting banned from countries.
Examples of that type of mass manipulation: Trump and Brexit were aided by personalised political propaganda on Facebook. Activists can't improve the world while they're busy fighting fascism. Brexit is a big distraction from matters important to Europe's security right now.
Wikipedia: Facebook--Cambridge Analytica data scandal

In contrast, I seek ways to get through to specific vigilant targets that are avoiding big-tech devices, expecting to get surveilled and manipulated by them.
Which ways exist to manipulate the targets' acquaintances to hamper the targets' life goals? Especially political action opposing the technofascism that the proliferation of surveillance capitalism is leading to.

The resulting list of possible acquaintance swarm manipulations is meant as a warning for two kinds of people:

• People thinking "My private information is worthless, I have nothing to hide."
  Wrong:
  • You enable the surveillance of people around you (hearing distance, wireless communication distance, camera field of view), and some of those people are trying to protect you and your country's interests, making them targets of your country's enemies. Your exterior cameras (electric car, door bell) can send continous surveillance video back home, which can assist an attacker looking for a vigilant target. Try going somewhere without cars made in China or USA seeing you.
  • If you browse any media with a feed of recommendations, you enable the manipulation of what you know, think, and do.
  • Controlling the timing of notifications you receive on your smart device alters the timing of your other actions, which can be used to cause or prevent serendipitous meetings in real life, changing your future to the will of the manipulator, affecting the futures of people you interact with, like a chain of dominoes falling towards or away from vigilant targets your acquaintances interact with.

• People thinking "I was at risk, but I have stopped using any big tech devices or billionaire-owned media".
  Wrong:
  You can be manipulated through the manipulated behaviour of your acquaintances. Small nudges can work in concert against you and your potential allies you don't know yet, but whom the manipulator does know via surveillance, and is trying to prevent from gaining power.

The first group can be used against the second, unnoticed by national security agencies, to the detriment of both groups.

Which specific nudge swarm manipulations can currently be done to people and systems around targets to critically affect even the most vigilant targets?

Oblivious human swarm attacks:

• Potential activists can be prevented from teaming up if they can be kept from finding each other. Their acquaintance networks can be kept insulated from each other by hiding certain recommendations on social media, and with other seemingly useful recommendations to the acquaintances, each activist can be strategically misdirected into separate small bubbles of activists below critical mass for effective action.
  Messages can be tweaked to increase or decrease how well the communications will be received on either side, changing how strongly those people are connected. Even a friendship can be believably broken by exaggerating both parties' opinions on contentious matters, making both seem more extreme in their positions. People don't compare chat histories to find out if they are the same for everyone.

• If a big-tech device of an acquaintance of an activist hears them mentioning (or having) symptoms of mild illness, any clues towards known cures can be hidden from their whole acquaintance network to prevent the activist from receiving the helpful information via hearsay, thereby prolonging the illness that is harming their activism.

• If people around the people an activist interacts with in person are turned into antivaxxers, it increases the likelihood of the activist dying.
  Altering the timings of notifications and route plans in navigators cause close passes of people, forming a chain from a sick person to the target.

.

A question affecting the finesse of the manipulation is how much surveillance companies share data among each other. Do these companies sell each other enough user data to enable aligned, apparently coordinated manipulation of political enemies, or does each company have to work with their own data?

Some companies in the position to surveil and manipulate (and some of their products/services):

• Microsoft (Windows, Office, Bing, LinkedIn, Teams, Outlook, Hotmail, Copilot)
• OpenAI [27% Microsoft] (ChatGPT)
• Alphabet (Google, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Maps, Gmail, Gemini)
• Apple (iOS, Maps)
• Meta (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Threads)
• Amazon (Alexa, Prime, Kindle, Twitch)
• SpaceXAI (X/Twitter, Grok)
• Match Group (Match, Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, etc.)
• ByteDance (TikTok)
• surveillance camera makers (includes delivery robots, some cars, etc.)

Signs of data sharing:
Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry—Here’s How
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-fuel-surveillance-industry-heres-how

U.S. judge rules Google must share search data with rivals, boosting Microsoft’s Bing
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/google-ordered-to-help-rivals-like-microsoft-improve-bing-by-sharing-search-data-and-letting-android-phone-makers-preload-apps-like-edge-and-copilot

Apple, Google, Meta are sharing more data with the US government than ever, Proton finds
https://thenextweb.com/news/big-tech-sharing-more-data-with-us-government

Zuckerberg’s Meta considered sharing user data with China, whistleblower alleges
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/09/meta-china-censorship-facebook-mark-zuckerberg/

.

Further reading:
(seemed relevant when I skimmed them)

Power in the modern ‘surveillance society’: From theory to methodology
https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-211536

Surveil to Manipulate in the Name of National Security: State Interference with Citizen Mental Sphere Via the Use of Information and Information Technologies
https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3888396

Facebook Shadow Profiles
https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04495641.html

The Dark Horses of Surveillance Capitalism: How a Menagerie of New Actors Are Bypassing Privacy Rules and Super-Charging Surveillance Capitalism
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/publications/dark-horses-surveillance-capitalism-how-menagerie-new-actors-are

The rise of authoritarian informationalism: escalating surveillance, manipulation, and control
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2025.2579105
"
... shift from blunt repression towards more preventive, fine-grained strategies of control.
... enabling regimes to anticipate and pre-empt dissent, digital technologies reduce the need for overt coercion, allowing authoritarian rulers to maintain power while minimizing visible repression.
... more covert forms of control become harder to identify and counter.
"

Misdirection in Psychology: Unveiling the Art of Cognitive Deception
https://neurolaunch.com/misdirection-in-psychology/
"
Misdirection in psychology is the deliberate manipulation of attention to keep people from noticing something happening right in front of them, and it works because your brain simply can’t process everything your eyes take in. Magicians, marketers, and manipulators all exploit the same glitch: attention is a spotlight, not a floodlight, and whatever falls outside its beam might as well not exist.
"

False Narrative Psychology: Unraveling the Power of Deceptive Stories
https://neurolaunch.com/false-narrative-psychology/
"
False narrative psychology studies why our brains build, believe, and defend stories that aren’t true, whether about ourselves, other people, or entire events. The short answer: our minds aren’t built for accuracy. They’re built for coherence, and a coherent lie often feels more satisfying than a messy truth.
"

.

Watch:

The Social Dilemma (2020)
"The film argues that companies track and analyze users' online activity in order to build artificial intelligence systems that predict and influence behavior."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma
https://tube.fediverse.at/videos/watch/812cee73-c4e7-4c23-9d1f-be577b4c290a (Official Trailer on PeerTube)
https://archive.org/details/the-social-dilemma-2020_202108 (The whole film)

Citizenfour (2014)
"Edward Snowden interviewed by journalists a week before public revelations about intelligence agencies' mass surveillance programs all around the globe."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenfour
Watch on PeerTube:
https://tututu.tube/videos/watch/2b1612d1-2543-4673-8afc-a40fcf252ec1
Please leave the PeerTube tab open after watching, as it shares the video to other watchers, reducing server load.

I believe a good way to prevent covert strategic manipulation is the massive adoption of open-source products:
Linux and AOSP-derivative operating systems, Nextcloud, Signal messenger, Fediverse social media, etc. The Fediverse is unfortunately manipulable by bot accounts voting, commenting, and posting.

Surveillance capitalist companies study people to better manipulate their behaviour by advertisements. That skill can be used to attack a vigilant target by using oblivious mediators as a drone swarm delivering a payload.

The documentary "The Social Dilemma" (2020) pointed out ways to manipulate large numbers of users of smart devices, and how that leads to drastic changes in society. It claims that personalised nudges are being delivered to billions of people daily, with the apparent goal (or emerged effect) that the sum of all nudges leads to the subjugation of the whole society, while successfully avoiding detection by national security agencies and getting banned from countries.
Examples of that type of mass manipulation: Trump and Brexit were aided by personalised political propaganda on Facebook. Activists can't improve the world while they're busy fighting fascism. Brexit is a big distraction from matters important to Europe's security right now.
Wikipedia: Facebook--Cambridge Analytica data scandal

In contrast, I seek ways to get through to specific vigilant targets that are avoiding big-tech devices, expecting to get surveilled and manipulated by them.
Which ways exist to manipulate the targets' acquaintances to hamper the targets' life goals? Especially political action opposing the technofascism that the proliferation of surveillance capitalism is leading to.

The resulting list of possible acquaintance swarm manipulations is meant as a warning for two kinds of people:

• People thinking "My private information is worthless, I have nothing to hide."
  Wrong:
  • You enable the surveillance of people around you (hearing distance, wireless communication distance, camera field of view), and some of those people are trying to protect you and your country's interests, making them targets of your country's enemies. Your exterior cameras (electric car, door bell) can send continous surveillance video back home, which can assist an attacker looking for a vigilant target. Try going somewhere without cars made in China or USA seeing you.
  • If you browse any media with a feed of recommendations, you enable the manipulation of what you know, think, and do.
  • Controlling the timing of notifications you receive on your smart device alters the timing of your other actions, which can be used to cause or prevent serendipitous meetings in real life, changing your future to the will of the manipulator, affecting the futures of people you interact with, like a chain of dominoes falling towards or away from vigilant targets your acquaintances interact with.

• People thinking "I was at risk, but I have stopped using any big tech devices or billionaire-owned media".
  Wrong:
  You can be manipulated through the manipulated behaviour of your acquaintances. Small nudges can work in concert against you and your potential allies you don't know yet, but whom the manipulator does know via surveillance, and is trying to prevent from gaining power.

The first group can be used against the second, unnoticed by national security agencies, to the detriment of both groups.

Which specific nudge swarm manipulations can currently be done to people and systems around targets to critically affect even the most vigilant targets?

Oblivious human swarm attacks:

• Potential activists can be prevented from teaming up if they can be kept from finding each other. Their acquaintance networks can be kept insulated from each other by hiding certain recommendations on social media, and with other seemingly useful recommendations to the acquaintances, each activist can be strategically misdirected into separate small bubbles of activists below critical mass for effective action.
  Messages can be tweaked to increase or decrease how well the communications will be received on either side, changing how strongly those people are connected. Even a friendship can be believably broken by exaggerating both parties' opinions on contentious matters, making both seem more extreme in their positions. People don't compare chat histories to find out if they are the same for everyone.

• If a big-tech device of an acquaintance of an activist hears them mentioning (or having) symptoms of mild illness, any clues towards known cures can be hidden from their whole acquaintance network to prevent the activist from receiving the helpful information via hearsay, thereby prolonging the illness that is harming their activism.

• If people around the people an activist interacts with in person are turned into antivaxxers, it increases the likelihood of the activist dying.
  Altering the timings of notifications and route plans in navigators cause close passes of people, forming a chain from a sick person to the target.

.

A question affecting the finesse of the manipulation is how much surveillance companies share data among each other. Do these companies sell each other enough user data to enable aligned, apparently coordinated manipulation of political enemies, or does each company have to work with their own data?

Some companies in the position to surveil and manipulate (and some of their products/services):

• Microsoft (Windows, Office, Bing, LinkedIn, Teams, Outlook, Hotmail, Copilot)
• OpenAI [27% Microsoft] (ChatGPT)
• Alphabet (Google, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Maps, Gmail, Gemini)
• Apple (iOS, Maps)
• Meta (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Threads)
• Amazon (Alexa, Prime, Kindle, Twitch)
• SpaceXAI (X/Twitter, Grok)
• Match Group (Match, Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, etc.)
• ByteDance (TikTok)
• surveillance camera makers (includes delivery robots, some cars, etc.)

Signs of data sharing:
Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry—Here’s How
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-fuel-surveillance-industry-heres-how

U.S. judge rules Google must share search data with rivals, boosting Microsoft’s Bing
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/google-ordered-to-help-rivals-like-microsoft-improve-bing-by-sharing-search-data-and-letting-android-phone-makers-preload-apps-like-edge-and-copilot

Apple, Google, Meta are sharing more data with the US government than ever, Proton finds
https://thenextweb.com/news/big-tech-sharing-more-data-with-us-government

Zuckerberg’s Meta considered sharing user data with China, whistleblower alleges
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/09/meta-china-censorship-facebook-mark-zuckerberg/

.

Further reading:
(seemed relevant when I skimmed them)

Power in the modern ‘surveillance society’: From theory to methodology
https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-211536

Surveil to Manipulate in the Name of National Security: State Interference with Citizen Mental Sphere Via the Use of Information and Information Technologies
https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3888396

Facebook Shadow Profiles
https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04495641.html

The Dark Horses of Surveillance Capitalism: How a Menagerie of New Actors Are Bypassing Privacy Rules and Super-Charging Surveillance Capitalism
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/publications/dark-horses-surveillance-capitalism-how-menagerie-new-actors-are

The rise of authoritarian informationalism: escalating surveillance, manipulation, and control
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2025.2579105
"
... shift from blunt repression towards more preventive, fine-grained strategies of control.
... enabling regimes to anticipate and pre-empt dissent, digital technologies reduce the need for overt coercion, allowing authoritarian rulers to maintain power while minimizing visible repression.
... more covert forms of control become harder to identify and counter.
"

Misdirection in Psychology: Unveiling the Art of Cognitive Deception
https://neurolaunch.com/misdirection-in-psychology/
"
Misdirection in psychology is the deliberate manipulation of attention to keep people from noticing something happening right in front of them, and it works because your brain simply can’t process everything your eyes take in. Magicians, marketers, and manipulators all exploit the same glitch: attention is a spotlight, not a floodlight, and whatever falls outside its beam might as well not exist.
"

False Narrative Psychology: Unraveling the Power of Deceptive Stories
https://neurolaunch.com/false-narrative-psychology/
"
False narrative psychology studies why our brains build, believe, and defend stories that aren’t true, whether about ourselves, other people, or entire events. The short answer: our minds aren’t built for accuracy. They’re built for coherence, and a coherent lie often feels more satisfying than a messy truth.
"

.

Watch:

The Social Dilemma (2020)
"The film argues that companies track and analyze users' online activity in order to build artificial intelligence systems that predict and influence behavior."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma
https://tube.fediverse.at/videos/watch/812cee73-c4e7-4c23-9d1f-be577b4c290a (Official Trailer on PeerTube)
https://archive.org/details/the-social-dilemma-2020_202108 (The whole film)

Citizenfour (2014)
"Edward Snowden interviewed by journalists a week before public revelations about intelligence agencies' mass surveillance programs all around the globe."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenfour
Watch on PeerTube:
https://tututu.tube/videos/watch/2b1612d1-2543-4673-8afc-a40fcf252ec1
Please leave the PeerTube tab open after watching, as it shares the video to other watchers, reducing server load.

I believe a good way to prevent covert strategic manipulation is the massive adoption of open-source products:
Linux and AOSP-derivative operating systems, Nextcloud, Signal messenger, Fediverse social media, etc. The Fediverse is unfortunately manipulable by bot accounts voting, commenting, and posting.

An introduction for normal people looking for an easy way to avoid U.S.American and Chinese software and hardware on their phones. "Easy" seems to be important to Murena, which /e/OS delivers - I dare to recommend it for beginners.

I've been using /e/OS for 1.5 years as a lazy enthusiast and hobbyist with previous experience with various Linuxes, Android, and CyanogenMod (predecessor of LineageOS). I have set up GrapheneOS once. I will probably try CalyxOS when I get around to it.

The answer is hidden from Quora's question page - I quess they hid it because the links triggered their bots to assume it's spam. A few upvotes could bring it up and maybe into people's feeds.

If the direct link is broken , try this indirect link:
https://buyeuropean.quora.com/My-answer-about-the-beginner-friendly-French-deGoogled-Android-compatible-phone-operating-system-e-OS-was-collapsed-the

Tech-savvy power user's experience exposes Quora being led like a sinking ship. Hundreds of millions of users are at risk of having to find a replacement. Fediverse to the rescue?

Quora has been going down for a while already:
https://slate.com/technology/2024/02/quora-what-happened-ai-decline.html

I remember two downturns:

• 2012 stagnation of development about that time when the other co-founder was fired or something
• 2018 beginning of the gradual removal of valuable features, I assume to "save money on maintenance now, suffer consequences later"

There is Trust Café,
https://www.trustcafe.io/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Caf%C3%A9

...as of November 7, 2019, [the founder Jimmy] Wales stated that he had just learnt about ActivityPub and was looking into it.

"Sounds interesting. Reading! Not likely to do anything like this soon as we are underfunded and just getting going. But it sounds interesting! [...] Ok. I am always interested in decentralization as a principle. I don't know of anything I could actually use in this case though. [...] Also, to be clear, I'm not being dismissive. I'm reading up on ActivityPub to see if there's a way to support it natively. If real tools are being built that I can interoperate with, that's a clear win all around."

To improve Android-application function on the go, AOSP-derivatives (LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS, etc.) are also tolerated, at least on the phone. This because so many people say mobile Linux (PostmarketOS, Sailfish OS, etc.) is not so nice yet in daily phone use.

This question didn't come from me originally, but I'll add my context anyway:
I come from Ubuntu (eww, Canonical) and Android (eww, Google, nope!).

I currently have Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop on the laptop, and because of the bugs, I've been considering moving to something else with KDE (serious desktop UI), maybe OpenSUSE because its roots are so European.

I tried Fedora with Gnome on a tablet I had 2025, which seemed fine on a touchscreen, unlike Fedora with KDE.

My phone runs /e/OS with the default Nextcloud hosted by Murena (the company behind /e/OS), which is fine, and I appreciate that /e/OS can be bought pre-installed, and that it supports bootloader re-locking (against pickpockets) on many devices (Fairphone and Shiftphone of the European ones).

Special thanks to Firefox for a unified experience through a Mozilla-account. More of this kind of unification would be welcome.