There is this common narrative I see all the time, implying that we as individuals are empowered to choose and manifest our own destiny, and this comes up often in privacy discussions.
Don't like Facebook's privacy nightmares? Just don't use Facebook!
Don't like personalized ads? I remember a popular post on reddit saying "if your ad interrupts my YouTube video, I will hate your product".
Don't like Google chrome hegemony? Just use Firefox!
And while I agree that we should strive to do that, the battle doesn't end here. Facebook has shadow accounts for people who never signed up. Google chrome keeps it's hegemony despite people on the Internet advocating Firefox day and night. And ads continue to be extremely profitable despite you "hating the product" because it interrupted your YouTube video.
Even worse: even if you "hate the product", you now already know it. You now know they product exists, and possibly whatever they wanted you to know about it. The reality is that these companies own your eyes. They control what shows up on your screen. And even if you hate it, they control what you end up learning.
the reality is that our individual resistance is very far from enough
I am not saying it is completely futile. It is a step in the right direction. But the only effective solution is organized action. We, alone, cannot achieve much. Unless we organize our resistance against privacy violations, we will continue to live through this privacy nightmare.
Just chiming in, that the biggest selling point of Mullvad (and IVPN also, I think) is the possibility to pay with cash-by-mail or with crypto. Also, Proton has an onion site, too (at least I used it for ProtonMail, not sure if it's for Drive too).
Proton has an onion site for Proton Mail, (not sure if it's for Proton VPN as well) but it's a huge pain in the butt to sign up for an account. They often require email or sometimes SMS verification. Also, they redirect you back to the clear web page for the sign up process. It's less than ideal. I use Proton Mail and I pay for it, so I also get Proton VPN but it only use it for torrenting. For all other things I use IVPN and I'm pretty happy with them. Customer support is great btw.
With the verification thing on Proton, there is a button which allows you to bypass it.
Edit: at least there was when I created mine
If there's verification that you can just bypass by clicking a button it's not a very effective method of verification xD
I agree. I was also confused back then. Because of this, I tried creating an account yesterday and found out, that verification is in fact needed. But I simply used one of the disposable email services and it was done. No need for a phone number.
Sometimes, when signing up over Tor, they don't allow email verification and require a phone number.
Wow, that's really shitty. Maybe tutanota over Tor?
That works. If you are unlucky and get a bad Tor exit node that has often been reported for abuse, your account might get suspended for 48 hours, but after that it's fine.