If a packet is traversing an ISP’s network the ISP should have to know where it is coming from and where it is going, right? So even if you “encrypt the first hello” packet, the ISP would still know where it was routed, right?

I’ll freely admit I have only a very basic (and likely outdated) understanding of IP networking, but I don’t see how this protects my browsing habits from my ISP. Even if they can’t understand my “hello” to lemmy.ml, they still know I’m talking to lemmy.ml’s IP address about something.

What am I missing?

I have a Dell G15 5520 as my daily driver. It’s a 12th gen intel core i5-12500H with nvidia RTX 3050. I never even let it boot Windows. Booted straight off an Ubuntu USB and wiped the drive. Aside from some quibbles with Ubuntu itself (I hate that by default Firefox is a snap from the snap store), everything basically worked out of the box. The only real hurdle to jump is enabling the proprietary nvidia driver.

Dell has at times offered their laptops with Linux preinstalled. I’m not certain they have a current offering, but just about all of their models are well supported.

It depends on the number and type of ads… but honestly, the threshold at which the ad revenue would actually fund the instance would probably be too painful for me to bear.

I should be honest though and state that I fully believe that the advertising industry is a cancer in our society. Despite what it has taught us about our own psychology, I think we as a people would be better off if it didn’t exist.

It all comes back to the definition of “privacy” and whether it is reasonable to expect that information, once posted to a publicly accessible forum, can be considered “private”.

Is it even reasonable to expect information that isn’t transmitted via some method which features end-to-end encryption to remain private?

Maybe I’m just old-school, but I’ve lived my life by the philosophy: “if it is private, don’t post it” Frankly, this should be the first thing we teach kids about the internet, IMHO.