I have spent the past four-plus years traveling the country talking to companies, groups, and individuals about the realities of the surveillance economy we live in today and, most importantly, what we can do to start the process of removing ourselves from this enclosure and reclaiming control of our digital lives. Interestingly enough, everyone I’ve met in my travels and discussions, regardless of political or religious beliefs, understands that our devices are listening to us all day, every day. Everyone, in fact, wants to share with me their personal story about how “just the other day” they were talking about something with someone and moments later saw an advertisement about that very thing they were talking about on their phone, on their computer, or, in some rare instances, via something that came in the mail a few days later. The good news is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it is entirely possible to remove yourself from the most harmful and abusive aspects of the surveillance economy. If you haven't already, I’m sure you can instantly think of a few examples of this happening. Know that you are not alone! When asked the follow-up question, “So are you okay with the reality that these devices are listening to you all the time?” Not a single person has responded in the affirmative. Let me repeat this to drive home the point: Of the thousands of people I have asked this question to all over the country, not one has responded that he or she is comfortable with this paradigm. Not. One. While you think about that, please consider the fact that the five largest abusers and benefactors of this surveillance economy — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft — collectively generate over $1,000,000,000,000 in revenue annually. That’s one trillion dollars ... annually. A few billion dollars are also used by each company annually to directly support and enforce ideological causes and political candidates that constitutional Christian conservatives (such as myself) directly oppose. This is not an exaggeration. The amount of money any one of these four companies spends on lobbyists, NGOs, DEI initiatives, political parties and candidates, leftist nonprofits, algorithms, policies designed to censor and mute our voices, employees focused on enforcing said policies, etc. is orders of magnitude larger than any other company you’ve heard the usual conservative talking heads preach about boycotting, from Netflix or Disney to Bud Light or Target. You’ve heard thousands of hours of influencers and media types preaching and hyping you up about the “need” to mobilize and boycott those big corporations, and yet there are nearly crickets when the topic of boycotting Big Tech is discussed. Interesting, right? "Go woke, go broke!" ... unless it's Big Tech. I ask myself daily why that is. And I have a few ideas. My primary goal out of the gate is to spark the desire to ask yourself a few critical questions. If I’m so quick to jump on the #BoycottBudLight, #BoycottDisney, and #BoycottTarget bandwagon, would I be reluctant to boycott Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon? If so, why? Why have I never heard prominent media personalities and stations having a serious conversation about this topic? How in the world is #BoycottBigTech not a thing considering how much influence these companies, applications, and devices have over our daily lives? Like most of today's issues, motivation and education are key ingredients to making better decisions. For example, once you’ve started reading the ingredients in the food you eat and understand what chemicals are in it and what they do to your body, you have a choice: Continue to eat the poison and get sicker and sicker every day or start the process of educating yourself on how to make safer and healthier decisions about what you put in your body. Using the same logic, once you understand just how invasive and abusive the surveillance economy has become and how this directly affects your existing reality and that of the people you love around you, you have a choice: Continue to use the applications and devices that are designed to keep you a slave to the system and supporting the companies that feed off your data or start the process of educating yourself on how to make safer and healthier decisions about the data you feed into the system. Just as one does not buy some seeds and a raised bed and suddenly become a master gardener capable of feeding one’s whole family, one cannot simply buy a single device or piece of software and suddenly be “safe” from the surveillance economy. In both scenarios, this journey requires a lifestyle change and a shift in how you think about the tools you use to accomplish the things you want to get done every day. You’ll need to learn new things and understand how the tools you use around you work — just like the journey of learning how the food you consume is made and where it comes from. The good news is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it is entirely possible to remove yourself from the most harmful and abusive aspects of the surveillance economy. In fact, millions of Americans, and even more around the world, have already started this journey. As demand for these types of privacy- and security-focused services and tools grows, so does the growing legion of geeks who can afford to actively work on building and expanding these tools to make them more accessible and more straightforward to use. Over the past two years, I have helped over 1,000 individuals and businesses start their journey to remove Big Tech from their daily lives. If you too are concerned about your digital privacy and security, you can join our community of customers and advocates by finding us online at MARK37.com or our profiles on X, Truth Social, and Telegram.

While the Los Angeles Mafia never rose to the same notoriety as its counterparts in New York and Chicago, the crime family infiltrated Hollywood, had a hand in the growth of Las Vegas, and terrorized the West Coast for decades. The post The Bloody History Of The Los Angeles Mafia, From Its Violent Origins To Its Rapid Downfall appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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