Using a second identity is fine as long as opsec is good.
It might even be a bad idea to not have an online presence in mainstream social media. People could steal your online identity if you don't. Also, it's suspicious to potential employers, other people or even the government if you don't.
Just have an empty account and nothing on it like everybody else.
And do the same for Bitcoin: never mix coins bought in your name with coins you carefully protected with Coinjoin/Tor.
Yeah, that last point is such awesome cognitive dissonance, and so normal these days.
You know you are in a totalitarian system when people are so resigned to it they almost sound like they agree with it.
Thankfully, in some parts of the world, due to the violence of their captors over the centuries, there is varying degrees of cultural self defense against the clearly up for auction "government" which most citizens of such places refer to as Mafia, especially if they supposedly deposed all the mafia, I mean, who else does that?
Yeah, Putin's approval rating is high.
In a country where 40 years ago "shit is always breaking down" was not such an understatement.
My metric for a good candidate for expatriating from these soon to be Smart Cities is this:
Is there enough people alive now who remember what happened last time?
Governments are at their best when they are new. After a few years they are the same dirty crack whores.
Having an empty profile for fear of repercussions accounts for cowardice. I wouldn’t want to work at a place that requires me to have a ridiculous social media account.
Also every account on these platforms (even if they are fake, empty, etc.) just makes their network stronger, their owners have more leverage to negotiate more funding and thus become even larger.
Delete your social media accounts! The beginning is near 🤩
Having an empty profile for fear of repercussions accounts for cowardice
Well, then you could take this the other way round: Using social media to advocate for Bitcoin in the mainstream is honorable. Everyone deserves a chance to make up their mind about Bitcoin. If we don't advocate for Bitcoin, nobody will.
Imagine you were a poor soul out there that has never heard about Bitcoin (e.g. you're 8 years old or from a country that only recently came online). Don't you deserve a chance to hear about Bitcoin? Wouldn't you be glad to get the chance to read a sentence from your current real self about it?
fair. personally, for me that would be an extreme way to spread the gospel, but for sure from that perspective, if you have the skills and equipment, go for it.
Let's accept the 2023 reality (for normies) that not using facebook is also considered extreme
It takes very little effort to associate anonymous profiles with identities. You can pretty much only accomplish this if you buy a laptop specifically for the purpose of having a FB identity and using connecting to the interent from a dedicated location not associated with you over tor. You need crazy opsec to really pull this off. The second any piece of info gets crossed, even things like ASIN's and MAC addresses, you are identified fully and entirely and that anonymous profile you made is no longer anonymous.
Empty accounts don't work. If "stealing identity" is the issue then you need to create a an active social presence and engage with the platform. A blank profile isn't going to stop anyone from stealing anything. That is weird advice.
Facebook will still associate data with that profile if you leave it blank. You probably have gigabytes of data associated with that blank profile on the backend.
If you don't have a profile then no problem Facebook creates "ghost" profiles out of the data it does have on unique identities. Remember an identity can be something like "this data is associated with this unique set of behavior" and does not always have to identify you with personal information alone.
What are you talking about. VPN or Tor and an Email that only gets used through Tor is sufficient op sec. This is popular in the Bitcoin world, I read/heard from lots of people doing it.
Just have an empty account and nothing on it like everybody else.
If you think it's suspicious if you don't have an account... Isn't it also suspicious if you have an empty account?
Also, I think having an account on a platform doesn't prevent someone stealing your identity. They can just create another account which looks like yours and contact people which don't know you.
So I think it's better to not have an account at all. Else, you legitimize these platforms.
No, it's not because a lot of people just upload a profile pic, connect to a few coworkers and that's it ("within a set"). Identity theft is hard when your profile is connected to the right people and was created earlier
For starters, you are giving them your picture (so that Clearview can grab it and use it for facial recognition, to recognize you as you go to places) and your name, as well as some of your social graph.
Above all, you are giving them your attention and your time.
I deleted my FB account 3 years ago, and so far nothing bad has happened to me.
It's funny that I was among the first people to create an FB account when they opened it to the general public, and some people would judge that I would use it. And now people are going to judge that I don't use it? Whatever. If anything, that makes us pioneers and trend-setters, not "suspicious".
Is there enough people alive now who remember what happened last time?