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De-Googleify Internet

degooglisons-internet.org

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Re: De-Googleify Internet

#121

Post by woah »

ma2rten wrote: post #43
mwfunk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long felt that RMS/FSF's very specific and nonintuitive usage of "free" was intended to be misleading. If someone says "free" (which has many, many different meanings, all positive) when they really mean "copyleft" (which has one very complicated meaning), they're not trying to clarify anything, rather they're trying to muddy the waters so that people who don't understand copyleft or the FSF's political philosop…

By RMS? Why would he make his message intentionally less clear?

Arrogance

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#122

Post by divbit »

divbit wrote: post #96
ssully wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blood sample? The only fields they ask for that might be too much for someone is a phone number and prior email, and neither is required to make an account. I take my privacy very seriously and understand a lot of the apprehension about Google's tracking, but I think you are being a little ridiculous.

You "can" sign up for gmail without a phone number (iirc it's fairly difficult, and you need to do something like use a fresh install of an android device or something to trigger the right sequence of dialogues). However if you try to use that account outside of the device, they will soon (within a couple of logins) ask you for a phone number for "security purposes," - the dialogue says something like "there is somet…

(For those who are saying it is possible, they might already know who you are based on browser cache, ip etc. Try it in incognito on a vpn. I get this: http://imgur.com/a/Y5Cxq

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#123

Post by makapuf »

tscs37 wrote: post #63
mi100hael wrote: post #12

I like the idea of this project, but I have several nits/concerns: - De-Google-ify is a poor way of marketing these ideas. Your average web user loves Google because they are trendy and make everything so convenient. - The site enumerates the pitfalls of cloud-hosted solutions and then proceeds to link to their own cloud-hosted solutions with no explanation of why they're any safer, better, etc. And not limited to th…

I might add that their services seem to default to French locale for some reason (I guess they're french) with no obvious way to change that. The average internet user is probably going to understand French as well as they understand the philosophical implications of eating a slice of toasted bread with butter on it.

Having seeing them talk at a local event, that's the point. Not to replace Google with their service. To replace Google with many, anyone's service interchanging data. Having another Google is not the point. Having many isp that also host decentralized services are, tailored to their locale and habits. Like, er the Internet.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#124

Post by tunap »

praneshp wrote: post #95
eikenberry wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching a child to use Google will show you that there is indeed quite a learning curve. It is not intuitive how you evaluate your results and refine your search to get good results.

That's possibly just inexperience on the child's part

I was explaining to an adult yesterday that using -x will remove x from his google results. He was stoked! Then he concluded further that he could use +x too!

I hated to have to disappoint him.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#125

Post by mtgx »

Google is starting to become dangerous not just in terms of how much data it's now collecting while killing privacy principles they used to abide by in their "don't be evil" days, but also because they now have a powerful lobbying machine, and that machine is slowly starting to turn against the "people".

When they fought against SOPA, they were an ally of the people, and they were on the right side of history. Now, they were one of the supporters of the TPP, and largely a rival of the people in this fight and on the wrong side of history, and they lost.

Google needs to start being on the side of the people, and the right side of history, once again, before it permanently tarnishes its reputation.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#126

Post by user5994461 »

codedokode wrote: post #111
syphilis2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is true. But I also have found that sometimes the user experience is diminished when not "logged in" to encourage people to create accounts. Pinterest has a box that slowly covers up more of the screen as you scroll drown. Facebook has a login prompt box that stays at the bottom of the screen and occasionally expands as a reminder. Quora prevents internal redirects to new pages. With enough know-how th…

Does it even work? I interpret such behaviour as "you are not welcome here" and close the page.

Of course it works. That's like the only way to get loads of new users.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#127

Post by mi100hael »

jonathankoren wrote: post #116
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My usual goto about "free" software and "free" service: "Free speech is not the same as free beer."

"Oh I get it now. So how much is a copy of GNU Toolchain?" "Oh it's free." "..." "It's free as in beer."

"Support home brewing! The beer is free as in speech, not Gmail"

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#128

Post by makapuf »

dublinben wrote: post #109
LoSboccacc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which completely defies the points they're making against google. all the cloud business runs on trust, and giving all data to newcomers doesn't sound a good plan. I can reliably find my emails from ten years ago in Google and there is no end in sight. this other service runs on donations and expects me to believe they'll have comparable lifetime?

Every single recommendation on their list can be self-hosted. They are providing you the tools to take control of your online experience exactly so you don't have to rely on a single service provider.

And they'll happily teach you to do so. I know first hand,they started telling people to how to install open-source/free. They currently complain they're starting to be a central point. Believe me they're rms-level free, not google-level free.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#129

Post by jordigh »

In the unlikely case anyone is wondering, "publicity" is an incorrect calque from French where it means "advertising". So they are not saying that Google gets a lot of publicity, but that it pushes advertising.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#130

Post by eriknstr »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
StevePerkins wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wat? It's been years since I created my "real" Google account, so I just created "fakeasdlkvjasklfvjasdkljfgasdf@gmail.com" out of curiosity. It literally took 20 seconds, with a fake name and birthday. There are form fields for your phone number and alternate email address, but you can leave them blank.

bugmenot.com still works. Although an even better solution would be a browser plugin or add-on that, with one click, creates and logs in via a fake account populated with fake, throwaway info, changing every time you visit the site. Don't just avoid tracking, poison it. I'd help fund that kickstarter.

Even if you did that I think there are a lot of ways to identify you, using everything from your browsing patterns -- what sites, when and for how long -- to even just the account creation process itself; you'll still need to complete the captcha and with the "click all images that match" captchas that Google is currently using on reCAPTCHA (which btw was quite a bait-and-switch; they originally got a lot of people to use reCAPTCHA because the original purpose was to help book scanning, "read books, stop spam", remember?) as far as I've come to understand continuously sends your cursor position to Google servers, and with the movement data and the order and the timing that you press the images I would not be surprised if there was a pattern that uniquely identified you there.

Likewise websites that stream your input key by key instead of submitting the text when you press the submit button should in theory be able to easily identify you by the timing of your keypresses. I've only heard of a couple of instances of sending keys as-you-type but I think that if someone made the kind of project you spoke of above, then we would start seeing more tactics like the kinds I mention in order to counter that.

Even if you then proceed to disable JavaScript globally and only browse the web in 1.0 style with user-initiated GET and POST, the way that you write has some uniqueness to it that might be possible to identify.

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