the amount of problems i don't have to deal with because i simply don't use GenAI
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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Until you boss decides to use it.
ChatGPT, hello. This is the first time we have chat. What can I give my wife for our 18th wedding anniversary.
Hello kids, start every conversation with ai like this and you’ll be fine
Mhhhh another FairMail user, a person of culture. I only used it because it was the only OSS client with encryption and signature support
This will last right up until all the right-wingers get pissed they're being identified as teenagers based on their 5th grade writing level.
I recommend duck.ai as an alternative way of accessing ChatGTP. Is not a perfect solution but it’s better than accessing it straight from the OpenAI website
I recommend just searching for what you want and reading the results yourself.
I do too. But if someone really does want to use these tools then there are better and worse ways of doing it
True, that's a good point
Yes but sometimes using AI like this is so much easier. I find it really useful in troubleshooting tech problems because you can tell it your specific setup and iterate on solutions until something works. So much easier than reading through 1,000 StackExchange threads which approximate your problem
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@ageedizzle I plan on using https://chat.mistral.ai/ since it's a completely different model that is open source and based in france so regulated by GDPR. If you still use ChatGPT but from somewhere else, it kinda defeats the purpose to switch away from it, in my opinion.
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For sure. And in that spirit -
Another option for people: pay $10 to get an OpenRouter account and use providers that 1) don't train on your data 2) have ZDR (zero data retention)
You can use them directly there (a bit clunky) or via API with something like OpenWebUI.
https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui
Alternatively, if you have the hardware, self host. Qwen 3-4B 2507 Instruct matches / exceeds ChatGPT 4.1 nano and mini on almost all benchmarks... and the abliterated version is even better IMHO
https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507
https://huggingface.co/DavidAU/Qwen3-4B-Hivemind-Instruct-NEO-MAX-Imatrix-GGUF
It should run acceptably on even 10 yr old hardware / no GPU.
guy using chat gpt to ask about anime waifus and the bot confused if he's 12 or 45.
Just don't use AI and you'll be fine
Start asking it questions about what to do with your grandkids, and what sort of music the youth are into, and how you're supposed to spend all your disposable retirement money.
i hate living in the crypto , ai and big social media era
It's only getting worse too. The entire US economy is being propped up by AI and crypto. It's like the sub-prime mortgage craze of the early 2000s. Lots of money going into a system that will never recoup the investment. Either they have to find a way to extract value, or the bottom's gonna fall out. Just wait for the too big to fail AI and tech bailouts.
So by worse you mean better? I can't wait for the AI bubble to pop personally.
Did you skip the last sentence?
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The whole idea of software services where the output is not a function of the input, but rather a function of the input plus all the data the service has been able to harvest about you has always been awful. It was awful when google started doing it years ago and it's awful when LLM frontends do it now. You should be able to know that what you are seeing is what others would see, and have some assurance that you aren't being manipulated on a personal level.
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.
I just run everything possible locally which helps a lot. Nearly everything my friends do in "the cloud" I do on my own computer. Even stuff like spreadsheets they want to do in the cloud. It flummoxes me, how willing they are to share everything with big tech.
If you have a mid range or better GPU, you can even run a local LLM. I have used one for language translation. I cannot speak German but I was talking to a German speaker who did not speak English about a hobby. We could talk to each other despite not sharing a language. That's practically sci-fi to me! I used a sandboxed LLM disallowed from any network access, to do that.
Even so, I am skeptical about most of what I see people use LLMs for. I am afraid of what they will allow bad actors to do. I am afraid of even worse corruption of the information space. I doubt the horse will re-enter the barn tho.
It's shocking how much this 'personalized' stuff is normalized.
I think if you really care about privacy, you should assume they do this, no matter what they say. By the way, great job on including the image transcript. :)
@treatcover Well, you can run Mistral locally but my laptop is not powerful enough haha
Also, yeah, a small copy paste goes a long way!
So corporations will decide whether you should be forced to surrender commercially valuable personal data to them, that makes them more money. Great system guys! If we can't trust mega corporations with political connections, who can we trust?
Good, maybe people will stop using it and switch to an open-weight Chinese model
If you use the app it's still sending all of your data to the company that makes the model, I guess it depends if you prefer Chinese spyware or US spyware.
Step 1 - don't use apps on a phone and instead use an appropriate open source sandbox on an actual x86 machine.
The mobile-focused development cycle and its consequences have been a disaster for user agency.
The mobile-focused development cycle and its consequences have been a disaster for user agency.
Could you repeat that louder for the folks at the back?
(Also, it's a statement that's generally true in ways completely unreleated to AI.)
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At least they use your data to make a model that's open weight
And using either of them doesn't guarantee your data won't get out anyways for products provided by corporations like the recent tiktok outcome showed where a billion dollar company would rather sell out than close down to protect users.
Finally I see a use for AI. In a carnival midway. "I will guess your age for $250".
If you absolutely must use ChatGPT, you can do it with Duck.ai as a proxy to protect your personal info.
I have duckduckgo as my default engine. But how to set up this proxy to ChatGPT?
No setup required, just go to duck.ai
No shit
If at all possible, anyone that cares about their privacy should be self hosting.
So if I talk about hemorrhoids enough, it will think I'm old and let me into the pr0n sites! Cool!!!
You would be surprised what health problems people under 18 can have.
Try any model with LMStudio and with the DuckDuckgo search plugin to it. It works better than you might think.
At some point in the 2000s I chatted with the SmarterChild chatbot on MSN Messenger for a while. I was around 11 or 12 years old at the time.
I remember it once answering "sorry, web search is only available to adult users", to which I responded "how do you know I'm just a child?". I don't remember what came before or after that… it might have asked me my DOB at some point before that, but am until today not sure how it knew that. Point is, none of this is new… 😁
how do you know I'm just a child?"
"You just told me, kiddo!"
Makes sense to me. Use the LLM itself to counter children from using it in ways they aren't allowed to.
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