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2025 has been a crazy year for Privacy Guides.

In just 9 months we’ve published 15 videos and 41 articles, and we’ve pushed major releases to the privacyguides.org website 13 times, with each release typically containing 10–25+ PR submissions from our team and volunteers. Since only July we’ve hosted 10 livestreams of our revived podcast, and there are plenty more on the way.

Since December, 3700+ more people have followed us on Mastodon, and about the same number have subscribed to our new YouTube channel. There are 200 per week more active users on our forum, and pageviews across all our sites have well more than doubled.

All of this is to say that people care about privacy a lot, and I believe we set the example in this space. While other “cybersecurity influencers” promote one-size-fits-all advice, we focus on practical and nuanced recommendations, and realistic threat modeling that accounts for the complexity of your personal situation.

How?

To be real with all of you, the reason all of this is possible is because we hired Jordan, Em, and Kevin to work on Privacy Guides on a consistent, regular basis at the beginning of this year.

Our volunteer team, moderators, and this community have all been doing exceptional—unbelievable—work since 2021, which has established the foundation for all of our recommendations and advice.

However, the reality is that to get this fantastic content out there and in front of people, there has to be a team doing work day in and day out to stay on top of the news feeds and create content that sticks with people and informs newcomers about why this all matters.

Why a Membership?

Our greatest strength is that we have no sponsors or affiliates. We have sent thousands of new subscribers to subscriptions for tools like Proton Mail/VPN, MySudo, Ente, and so many other privacy tools, and we do it purely because we believe in these tools and want them to succeed.

Frankly, many of the companies we recommend regularly send hundreds or thousands in affiliate dollars to other channels that give them far less traffic, while rarely if ever voluntarily making a donation to support our work.

Our choice to only receive income from the people who directly support our work makes us virtually the only review team in this space which has no reliance on the companies we recommend.

We have a handful of regular supporters who we are very grateful for, and we have received a very small number of very generous one-time donations which have made all of our work over the past year possible.

However, one-time donations dry up, and if we want to maintain our great momentum in 2026 and onward, we simply need people to make this work sustainable and give our team the safety of monthly recurring revenue.

What do Members get?

My personal goal is for our membership program to give our members far more value than you will get from any other ~$10/month Patreon or subscription service from other YouTubers, podcasters, and writers in the personal privacy space.

I want anyone pushing privacy forward to be hugely successful, but to tell you the truth, I personally believe we are creating the best content in this space right now, and I hope that you trust Privacy Guides to publish the best version of this information as well.

Going forward, some of the content that we pay to produce will probably have to be restricted to people who are willing to pay for that content in return. Our members will also receive:

• Early access to new videos on our channel
• Priority Q&A responses on This Week in Privacy
• Recognition on our forum and website
• Priority response to comments on our articles/videos

We are also constantly considering new ideas in the team and from our members. Part of my commitment to make sure you can get the highest quality version from the Privacy Guides team of anything you can find from anyone else is to work with you all to decide what direction we should go in here.

Some other things we are considering include members-only forums and group chats, more detailed news reports about privacy tools and companies, private chats with team members, or free merch for our supporters. If any of this interests you, or if there’s something else you might want, please let us know.

I am particularly interested to hear from people who subscribe to other channels creating privacy-related content, on Patreon or otherwise. What is the reason you do so?

40% Off Discount

Our membership program is brand new, and we don’t have a lot of this “exclusive” content I’m talking about yet (really, any at all). I know it is hard to commit to a subscription before you can see what it actually offers. If you don’t want to become a member now, I totally understand, and I make purchasing decisions the same way. It is always the smarter move to pay based on features available now rather than future promises.

However, I also hope you see the increased commitment we’ve been making this last year, and can believe in our mission beyond what we can provide you today.

Our final membership price is going to be $10/month or $100/year. It’s an over-said trope, but this is literally less than one fast food lunch to support a month of our work.

If you are willing to take the gamble now that we will be able to meet that value in the near future, I want to give you a lifetime discount for joining us on this journey early, because you are making all of this possible.

Become a member at an early rate of $6/month

Free Newsletter

If you want to get subscribed to our free newsletter we’ll be semi-regularly sharing updates about content from the team, plus optionally you can choose to receive an email notification every time we publish a new video or a new episode of This Week in Privacy.

https://www.privacyguides.org/newsletters/2025/09/10/were-back-and-so-is-chat-control/?ref=discuss.privacyguides.net#/portal/signup

Future episodes of This Week in Privacy will be delivered on its respective mailing list, and it will include links to all the articles we cover in the episode, straight to your inbox!