I was in my early 20s and it definitely was a moment when I realized things weren’t what they seemed. I also fell for the narrative for a bit. Then a couple years later when it was revealed that the WMDs in Iraq were made up it started to all make sense. This country operates the highest, most advanced form of propaganda and corruption. It’s how it stays in power.

I also believe this is what Israel is going through now. Leveraging primal blood lust to justify what being committed. No wonder the US is supportive.

Already some good suggestions here but adding Grist if you want more of a smart spreadsheet solution…

Backpedaling in 3…2… oh there it is

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/vultr_content_controversy/

I’m in my forties so I was around when cell phones first became a thing and you had to T9 type your messages and was in my late twenties when smartphones became a things. The cost is the right answer. It was much cheaper in the states to txt earlier than other places. So the US stuck with SMS longer as that’s what people were used to and it eventually became free while in other parts of the world it did not but data and WiFi became more affordable, so people jumped to IM.

This is location specific. In the mainstream US FB use is down among youth and because of that it is has gone down among older adults. FB marketplace is still pretty popular and so is Instagram. So even in the US Meta is doing okay.

Internationally, specifically Latin America, Europe and SE Asia, Facebook, WhatsApp, Marketplace are effectively the most popular way to communicate on anything.

WhatsApp is basically the phone, Marketplace is in some places the only way to find real estate and just about anything else. And Facebook is used by every business.

Meta internationally is raking in Ad money in the billions and billions. People have been convinced that their privacy is worth less than the convenience and utility. Because for them there is no better alternative. In addition in some of these cultures the idea of privacy is a foreign concept.

There is also Komga , Librum and Stump.

This article covers the solution https://access.redhat.com/solutions/7044059

You seem to be seeking some kind of AI proxy, I think you’re trying to anonymize your prompts. VPNs and Wikipedia are not ideal examples of this. But I will try to answer the intent of your question.

All AI as a service provider will log your queries. The only way to sort of anonymize would be to use someone else’s key/credentials. But that would just push off the logging to someone else. It’s like sharing out your Netflix password…

The only truly anonymous way is to run your own, by self hosting an open LLM, which is doable, yet much more complicated, and would not be as good as the current big company services.

Not a whole lot can be done with a first and last name and a phone number. If someone is motivated they don’t need any of this to do harm.

As an example at my job people know my first and last name and I give it to people voluntarily without knowing anything about the other person. While I don’t give out my personal phone number, I know lots of people that do. Sometimes on their business card or even email.

You may be over thinking this and just use it as a lesson to be a bit more guarded and aware of social pressure in the future.