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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

For iOS, turn on do not disturb. Also turn off Siri and "Apple intelligence". Set Messages to Focus. Turn off Send Read Receipts. Also turn on Filter Unknown Senders.

Install and enable Hiya or similar for calls.

Adjust your notification settings for apps like Lyft, Uber, and Uber Eats. They like to spam notifications as ads.

For adblocking, 1Blocker and AdGuard work great.

For YouTube on mobile web, use Vinegar.

I am 99% protected from ads with this setup

For the remaining, use old.reddit.com.

For websites with annoying subscription popovers, use reader mode. This doesn't work everywhere but does in a lot of places.

After all this filtering, I have absolutely no interest in anything that gets through.

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> Install and enable Hiya or similar for calls.

App page says:

> Hiya AI Phone transcribes and summarizes your calls automatically, ...

A few things: 1. it's not free (trial available, though) 2. their privacy policy is extensive and admits (obviously) they have EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU. Your PII and your phone calls. 3. During the trial you are not a customer AND you're giving up your data.

Assuming you become a customer, the real question I have: how much can I trust them? Because they would require an extraordinary amount of trust for me to become a customer.

Link to the ToS https://www.hiya.com/legal/terms-of-service

Overall you aren't incorrect. However to point out, you don't have to pay for the service if you're ok with what comes with the free tier.

For me, I rarely use my phone for the purpose of phone calls. 99% of what Hiya gets from me are spam calls plus my current location. (Wooo I'm in SF, such a big data loss). Occasionally my mom calls me, though we're usually on WhatsApp. (Yes FB blah blah).

Make your own choices. When/if Apple implements actually high level call blocking I'll switch to it (goulash monster willing). For now I'm personally ok with Hiya. If you want to build another service that addresses your privacy concerns then I'll check it out and consider switching.

For me the utility of not getting annoyed all the time is greater than the lack of important data any 3rd party might be collecting.

Actually to address even that, go into the Hiya settings and just turn off things like geolocation sharing.

You forgot: rub your head clockwise, and your belly counter clockwise, while repeating "I am master of my notifications". ... /sarky

I get all this, but I'm starting to see things the way that that my friends who have no smartphones or other distractivices do.

are you me? Also, for mobile web, I always request desktop version. "No, I don't want to EVER install your app, you weirdos."

Note, “Apple Intelligence” keeps turning itself back on after each update

AI features are the most bizarrely aggressively pushed things that has ever happened.

Only thing like it I can think of is the frame interpolation "true motion" things TV manufacturers keep defaulting to on.

Then moving to EU would do the trick. We still don't have it

Moving to the EU also fixes a lot of privacy and regulatory issues.

I still can't believe the EU ended up with the first official and fully legally protected alternative app store, it would have sounded crazy a decade ago.

I'm in the UK. After an update yesterday it was asking me to enable it on my M1 Mac

Apple Intelligence has been available in the EU since at least macOS 15.2.

Then we would have to deal with more pop ups. EU laws has led to as much enshittification of the web as any adtech company.

“Enshittification” is a specific and well-defined term for platform decay in pursuit of profits, it doesn’t mean “anything I dislike”.

This EU hate on account of the banners is misguided: We should be upset at the companies engaging in unfettered data collection and tracking, not the body that made it mandatory for them to reveal their practices. It’s as if your government enacted a law saying restaurants had to inform you whenever they piss in your food, you begin to see warnings everywhere, and then complain about the law instead of the rampant pissing.

You know that's literally impossible for most people, right?

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