1. THE SYSTEM ISNâT BROKEN. ITâS WORKING AS DESIGNED.
I used to think all the surveillance, manipulation, and shadowbanning was some kind of glitch. That if we just raised awareness or passed the right law, we could âfixâ it.
Wrong.
These platforms arenât interested in freedom. Theyâre data funnels. Engagement farms. Addiction engines built to sell your attention to the highest bidder. And they work exactly as intended. Every click you make, every second you spend scrolling, every friend you tag it all feeds the machine.
Wishing the system was better is like hoping the casino will start letting you win.
You donât fix it. You exit it. You build outside it.
2. DELETING SOMETHING DOESNâT MAKE IT GONE.
I used to believe in the delete button.
Post something dumb, hit delete, problem solved. Share personal info, delete it later, clean slate. But deletion is a lie. A button that comforts you while your data stays cached, copied, or archived by someone else.
Big Tech doesnât forget. Neither do data brokers, or scraped archives, or the random screenshots floating in group chats and backup servers youâll never see.
Once itâs out there, assume itâs permanent. This doesnât mean panic. It means discipline. Donât share what you might regret. Donât trust platforms with your secrets. Donât hand over your future selfâs privacy for a few likes today.
Control starts with restraint.
3. ANONYMITY IS A SKILL, NOT A SWITCH.
There is no app that makes you anonymous. No setting, no VPN, no one-size-fits-all magic bullet.
Privacy is layered. Contextual. Hard won.
Itâs about knowing the threats, understanding your patterns, and being willing to walk away from convenience when it costs too much. I learned this the hard wayârelying on tools I didnât understand, thinking TOR or Signal made me invisible while my habits gave me away.
Being anonymous means being unpredictable. It means discipline in what you reveal, where you go, and who you trust. It means compartmentalizing your life into silos, rotating your tactics, and staying humble enough to know youâll never be 100% safe.
You wonât get it perfect. But you can get better. Faster. Sharper.
If I had known these things sooner, I wouldâve saved years of cleanup. Avoided the mistakes that still leave a trail. But hindsight doesnât help unless you use it.
So use it.
Donât wait to get burned.
Start clawing back your privacy now.
