It’s been a minute so I could be misremembering, but you’re not far off. Another word for public relations (the shaping of public opinion) is propaganda.

Edward Bearnays wrote a book titled Propaganda, where he talks about the need to rebrand the work of Propagandist after it became associated with negative influence during WW2. From what I recall he used the term public relations, but seemed to prefer the term propaganda.

He’s also the person infamous for convincing Americans that we should eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Another interesting story is about how he advertised to make music rooms in homes trendy, so he could help sell more pianos.

He talks about some of the early manipulation tactics advertisers use. Such as trying to sell you an experience instead of a product. Think of how modern car commercials show a lifestyle more than they show you the car.

It’s an enlightening book that shows that before the war, calling an advertiser a propagandist wouldn’t be out of place. Those propagandist manipulated us into calling the PR now.

Oh, and if I recall correctly propaganda comes from Latin and means “to propagate.”

I do this with my home network using FastMail. You can create App specific passwords for each service you add email notification support for. This means you don’t risk compromising your full accounts passwords. You can also put constraints on each app password, such as limiting it only to sending emails but not reading email or looking at your contacts and files. This is nice in case any of my passwords are leaked.

Same, the builtin sync between devices using WebDAV was the critical feature for me choosing Joplin over Obsidian.

I used to have a Shield. I donated it to GoodWill when Nvidia updated their UI to start showing ads on the Home Screen. I switched to Apple TV and not only does it not force me to watch ads, it’s actually just been a better overall. I haven’t had a single issue streaming anything from Plex to my Apple TV, where sometimes the Shield would struggle with high fidelity audio tracks.

When you’re in school you’re often stuck with the software they require. No harm in that. Once you’re finished with school you can reevaluate. If you want to be more privacy focused you could make sure you’re only using Gmail for in a Firefox container tab for instance or look into sandboxing it other ways.

For the same reasons don’t worry about keeping Windows on your computer for classes. It’ll get easier when you’re out of college, any job will give you work equipment with the software and tools they make you use and you can keep all personal information out of those. You’ll be able to use what you want on your personal items.

Privacy is important, but not important as passing your classes.

You’re doing great!

I’ve used both. I switched from Fastmail to Proton then back to Fastmail. If you’re just starting on your privacy journey I’d still recommend Proton.

When I switched to Proton they only did email and that’s what I wanted. Instead of focusing on email Proton expanded into other areas like VPNs, Proton Drive, and password managers. I already had good privacy focused solutions for all of those problems, so for me personally I didn’t like where they were spending their development time.

As a Linux desktop user and an iOS mobile user I was often one of the last to have new features available for Protons applications which got to be really annoying.

To use desktop email I had to install Proton bridge which required a GUI to run. It was always having issues. Super frustrating.

I really disliked that Proton didn’t give me a way to use SMTP without going through their bridge. I have three home servers configured with Fastmail app passwords limited to only SMTP to send me notifications for updates and other alerts. This would have been really flaky to make work with Proton.

With Fastmail everything uses open standards, IMAP, SMTP, CalDav, CardDav, and WebDav. It all integrates really well with my laptop and phone without any special tools. I end up using those services much more now. The downside to these open standards is you don’t get end to end encryption that Proton offers.

I also feel as if Fastmail is giving me more for my money. I remember having pain points with Proton and wildcard emails with custom domains and trying to use their hidden email service. All of that is much easier with Fastmail. I also had a few sites not allow Protons masked emails but Fastmail worked fine.

I’d say, if privacy is your main thing and you don’t already have some of the services offered by Proton go with them. If what you’re looking for is as much privacy as email will let you have without using non standard software, and you just really want reliable solid email, Fastmail is the right choice.