There are actually more than 3 providers and you should put a freeze on everything you can. You only need unfrozen credit for applying for new lines of credit (loans, credit cards, etc), and unfreezing is a quick process (15 minutes or so).

Here’s a pretty comprehensive guide for protecting yourself: https://old.reddit.com/r/IdentityTheft/comments/uvv3ij/psa_freezing_your_three_main_credit_reports_is/

It’s better to take these steps before you get your identity stolen rather than after. These steps can prevent your leaked information from being used against you.

“Tap” is being used as a noun here. It took me a bit to get it.

I’ve seen this mentality quite a lot online, and amongst a few of my friends, and I strongly disagree. One of the best things about the Internet is that anyone is free to create their own space and treat it however they want. The Fediverse is a natural extension of that idea, allowing anyone to make their own website and federate it into the larger community. But the community should be allowed to reject people. I wouldn’t tolerate someone who walked into my house and started arguing with me.

The community will naturally form spaces that are open to discussion, but I don’t think that should be forced. If the larger community agrees that there should be no outside discussion and you disagree with that, find a different community or make your own. Not all spaces are meant for everyone and that should be fine.

I recognize that larger communities build traction, but that can be disrupted (see Reddit / Lemmy & Twitter / Mastodon). I don’t think people will radicalize just because they push out people who they don’t want in their online spaces, especially since the Internet is so widely connected through federation, screenshots, link sharing, and even telling stories.

I don’t want to say that you’re not allowed to have your opinions and feel displeasure with the way Lemmy is moving, but I do want you to know that you can create your own community, either through your own hosted server or through a server that shares your worldview. The Fediverse is larger than lemmy.world and it’s up to you to find a place that you feel comfortable and accepted.

Discord was always listening to all conversations, they’re just utilizing the data they’ve been collecting in a more obvious way now.

To add context, here is a broad count of Karl’s video topics over the past year (going back to May 29th):

Celebrate: 8 (5.83 million views)

Bash: 13 (18.5 million views)

Billy (all negative): 12 (8.5 million views)

He’s definitely leaned more into the Billy drama / exposing cheaters & fakers over the past year. People seem a lot more interested in the “expose” videos, so unfortunately it makes sense for him to make more of those.