I have an online business. How f*cked am I ?

@Tiritibambix You could create a "personna" to be your social media manager, and get an android device for this personna, with location and tracking turned off, and limit app permissions. Do not use that device for your personal stuff, and do not post to the business social media from your personal device.

It's not a fool proof perfect privacy way to do it, but should be good enough to keep your real personal data away from social media trackers.

Just get another device and keep everything except your business and other invasive stuff on it. Privacy +1000

Have a separate computer for work. Use site-specific- browsers for Facebook and sketch sites. Block them from your main browser.

No reason you're fucked because you use these shitty platforms for marketing. Just keep them separate.

Doing anything online that requires you to break strict anonymity... breaks your anonymity, hence your privacy. The two should be separate subject matters, but the corporate surveillance model ensures that if anything can be traced back to you, your privacy is as good as gone.

You say you do Facebook... There's your answer.

What is your threat model? If you don't want to give any data to these companies you simply can't interact with them at all. Where do you draw the line? Once you have figured that out you can come up with a plan.

One thing you probably should always do is separating your business devices from your personal devices. Then create the accounts you need for your business and only use them with your work laptop or phone. If you want, you can invent a sockpuppet persona that acts as your social media manager. This should insulate your personal life from most tracking as long as you don't use your work laptop for things unrelated to work. I wouldn't fuss around too much with privacy preserving apps for a business accounts outside of ad-blocking and regularly cleaning up cookies.

Good advice already replied. Definitely have a business-only phone and a personal-only phone. I'd consider two different phone OS's if you can. Keep crossover data as minimal as possible.

Would love to read a follow-up post from you 6-12 months down the line. Best of luck. It's absurd how difficult this is in 2024.

IMHO the question isn't as much you as a user of such platforms is "f*cked" because you sound both mindful and technically savvy. So, on that front, you will be OK.

The harder question I would say is how morally bankrupt you will feel by contributing to worsening the privacy of others for profit. Namely that yes by using Facebook/Insta/TikTok/etc you will gain more customers but those customers are gradually losing their privacy while you make those companies bigger by paying them. That means you depend on those companies more while they get more power.

Because of that I would argue that sure, do everything you can to protect yourself but it can't stop there. I would argue then than the question is rather, where else can you find more clients, and maybe even "better" clients who are more aligned with your own views on privacy, and maybe even more. It's definitely a challenge, especially seeing the trend of surveillance capitalism, but as you acknowledge yourself by using Lemmy, there are actual alternatives.

Have you considered using a sandbox app such as Insular which is available on F-droid or Shelter.

Shelter creates a work profile, isolating apps installed in this profile from the mainland. Shelter has the advantage of supporting per-site data isolation with Android 13, which achieves the same goal as sandboxing.

You can isolate entirely your contacts from being seen by other apps if set up correctly. Furthermore, Shelter allows for a VPN only for the work profile, which is a useful feature for enhancing privacy.

I have used an app called island in the past, but sadly it's been discontinued,it was great as it allowed a VPN both outside and inside the sandbox.

Accept Monero and you will get free advertisement because the Monero community very much cares about businesses that accept Monero and will drive traffic to you. Also, the Monero community is extremely aligned with privacy.

I've had to cave and use some services (for work reasons) that I'd swore I would never use. No matter how much we value privacy and look for alternative software/services when possible - we still have to eat and pay bills.

If you are in the same boat and you must use services like that, then my advice would be to keep it strictly business. Keep your personal details and personal social connections to a minimum unless where it would be otherwise beneficial for work purposes.

I have an online business. How f*cked am I ?

Very f*cked. Advertising forces you to sell your data to those companies in order to get decent results, if you try to go around it you'll be losing customers, that's what it is.

You are ok with Facebook but not Ticktok?