It’s sort of a loaded question. Depends on threat model and what you’re trying to accomplish. Apple is frequently the “good enough… I guess” privacy and security choice, believe it or not, but heavily skewed towards security. And at the end of the day, iPhone privacy comes with an asterisk that Apple may keep others from spying at a mildly acceptable level, but Apple themselves will know a LOT about you. iMessage is E2EE (from iPhone to iPhone) but do you trust the trillion dollar company to not have a backdoor? I don’t, they’ve proven they scan content in messages.

You can mitigate privacy AND security concerns with GrapheneOS on Android. I do this and use JMP instead of Google Messages/RCS. This is the move on GrapheneOS, because Google Messages/RCS is not fully implemented, and hotfixes often break due to Google’s changes. You could also try a Linux phone, but usability has mixed reviews. These are the best options.

If that’s not an option, it’s almost better to just stick with iPhone, since other custom ROMs often have security tradeoffs in the name of privacy, and stock Android has HUGE privacy tradeoffs in the name of security.

So, assuming you are sticking with iPhone. iMessage is more secure than SMS, no doubt there. And since SMS security is not there, the privacy of the content of the messages are in question if it is intercepted. Although, these days, intercepting SMS usually require a targeted attack, and targeted attacks are almost always through social engineering. Note that iMessage will also use SMS if texting a non iPhone. But it is more common to go iPhone to iPhone vs using an app with XMPP to another app using XMPP, so in practice iMessage is more secure. Features are slightly better on iMessage. Sometimes I miss being able to edit my texts, not having them be split up into multiple messages, and group chat is slightly simpler (assuming everyone is on iMessage, if not it goes right back to the same functionality)

Are you worried about approximate location data from your mobile provider? If so, JMP is a great choice for that, since you can sign up for some carriers anonymously, and you won’t be using the phone number they provide to you. You can even get a data only Sim card. JMP almost entirely prevents SIM swaps. It’s harder for governments to pull your cellular location data and tie it to you, though they can get it from Apple depending on the situation and if they know to look specifically for you. Some websites scan your device info, which can include your SIM phone number. Even JMP itself, when I went to sign up, offered me numbers to choose from that were the same area code as my SIM card number. Only…I specifically picked an area code for a state I’ve never been to. So if you use that SIM number, many sites that will be able to tie it to your real name from public records or people search sites. Lastly, JMP can give you multiple numbers for half the price of the first, which can be pretty useful for dating new people you don’t trust yet, spam, restaurant wait lists, calling a company anonymously, selling stuff locally, etc.

Money wise it is about the same. JMP costs extra money on top of your separate SIM bill, but since you don’t care about your SIM number, you can constantly get new customer deals that usually last up to a year, and further obscures your cellular location history.

All of this assumes you have a factory unlocked phone. If it is locked to a big name carrier, it becomes harder to sign up anonymously. If you have a carrier locked phone, may as well stick with iMessage.

Tl;Dr: JMP is a fairly significant privacy boost at a slight security decrease and slight feature loss, but there’s a lot more to it.

A trusted streaming box without ads. It will stream far better and not monitor you.

On your last note, I agree with you that empathy is important. I do give a shit what other people think and feel, but not when they are clearly line stepping, judgmental, and disrespectful. When they do that, it just proves it is time to move on.

It’s literally impossible to people please because people have wildly varying and opposite opinions. People will say stuff like “women say they want x but then complain when you do x!” First, that’s goomba fallacy, and second, you need to develop your own principles, and your people, male or female, will find you. Also, women can easily tell if you are trying to people please, and it is a turn off to them. If instead you’re just confident about what you stand for, they’ll agree and follow you even if they didn’t think that way before you told them. This is why there’s a stereotype of women dating assholes. You don’t have to be an asshole, you just have to have principles that you confidently stand by. This doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to other people’s opinions, or you can’t show “weakness” in emotion. You should, in fact, do both those things for your own benefit.

The rest we seem completely on the same page on.

It’s usually pretty subtle. People will quietly lose respect for you and shut you out over time, or just gossip about you behind your back.

That being said, I dont give a shit about people’s perception of my manliness or sexuality. I’m straight, trained in martial arts and boxing, own guns and know how to use them, can fix things around the house decently well, moderately know my way around car repairs. But I’ll be sensitive and open with my feelings if I want to, which is frequent. I cry at weddings, funerals, sad movies, and even when I think about how lucky I am to have my wife. I joke about kissing the homes goodnight, and flirt back with gay dudes that hit on me (without leading them on).

I’m often DISAPPOINTED in people for how they react and judge sometimes, but always happier when those people remove themselves from my life. I don’t fawn after the approval of random assholes, be they male or female, and I never let it affect who I am. That’s what manliness actually is about: self actualization.

I wouldn’t say it is irrelevant when there is a worldwide push towards authoritarianism and countless examples of unreasonable search and seizure.

Plus, everyone has their own threat model. It’s almost a meme in the privacy community, but there’s a reason threat modeling and prioritization is step #1. It may not be a big concern to you (in your opinion), but imagine if it didn’t exist for someone who needs it.

Oh my God, you can’t just ask someone why they’re not white

Sorry to say that I don’t have much of a preference unless you’re in a specific mood. They’re all good games but do different things narratively and I dont know if gameplay or cut scenes make you want tk really dig into it more.

Depends on what features you need. For some people the whole idea is that you can take and make calls on your watch, as well as messaging. Sometimes the health tracking stuff requires a proprietary app instead of Gadget Bridge.

The most private watches are glorified notification machines. I got my wife a Garmin Venu and she uses their app. It’s not perfect but they’re fairly private as far as smart watches go. She needs all the bells and whistles so that’s the best I was able to find that is high end.

Definitely both

There is an extremely thorough (and long) video on this topic. I didn’t think I’d finish it or even watch half when I clicked it, but this guy is very informative and presents the info in a straightforward yet engaging way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgqWZyAJtM

If you still noped out on that runtime, here is my less professional summary:

Ultimately it is about the race to the bottom of enshittification that we are experiencing in all aspects of life, and “art” transforming into “content” is chief among them. Perry’s built in audience is huge, yet one that is practically never pandered to: conservative black women. He’s not even particularly good at this and the way he does it is problematic, but it’s enough that he is attempting at all. He has realized over the years that it doesn’t matter if it’s good at all, his core audience will support him because they believe he supports them and their issues.

His rise to being ridiculously OP and successful is propped up by black excellence truthers even though they may or may not actually like his content. He has spun his truly impressive success into deals with streaming services and deteriorated from mediocre to literal slop that rapidly produces enough episodes to get into syndication immediately, because the deals are signed for 100 episodes. Since he writes, directs, produces, and often acts in all these projects, and because the unknown actors do not get a chance over several years/seasons to renegotiate their contracts even if the show gets popular, he takes the lion’s share of the profits. 2 lion’s shares really.

His influence quickly squashes criticism, and rising stars are usually choked out by the machine of Perry’s media empire, bringing the attention back to him. Obviously this also affects the quality of his work.

He also makes some fascinating points about how Perry…kinda CAN’T get more deep with it. To start looking deeper about the topics he discusses would entail stripping away the patriarchy of the black Christian church, or to point a finger towards the societal problems and cycles of abuse that cause the villains of his stories (usually black men) to act the way they do. And as a true believer in capitalism and hard work=success, he can’t do that. Making his characters deeper may require addressing the ways that he’s a queer man one way or another, whether he’s gay, gender fluid, or both, which he can’t do as the church has a don’t ask don’t tell policy. So he’s stuck in a pretend world of bootstraps, one dimensional villains, where dressing up as a woman for a minstrel performance is just funny and not misogynist, an indictment, or deeper look at him in any way, and one where the moral thing to do is not only forgiving the cycles of abuse, but buying into it as a strength.

If even that is Tl; Dr: it’s the story of every other billionaire, really. He makes his money off of exploiting others. Usually young black people who are hungry for success. Just sucks that he can’t have empathy since he literally started from the bottom like the people he manipulates, unlike every other billionaire.

You can tell if you knit your ass hair into a braid.

That sounds wildly unnecessary and resource intensive tbh. You’re already trusting their software, but you don’t trust…what? Their server security? Their signing process? Their honesty about the open source code being what you’re downloading? I’m really struggling to understand your thought process here.

But then I wouldn’t have been able to make this meme.

I get you, I wasn’t being sarcastic. Going through something difficult has a way of bringing people together, especially if you still love it after the effort.

Hm yeah that blows.

It’s not that they have a deal with Google, it’s that Google’s hardware security is best bar none except maybe iPhone. And Graphene is the best way to degoogle, as counter intuitive as it may seem. They are working with other manufacturers to get these security requirements for new phones so Graphene can be put on them.

Yes. It is hardened a lot though, easily the most secure and private. Ubuntu Touch is maybe more private because Linux but it’s barely functional. iOS in lockdown mode is decent, better than stock Android.