What can you use instead of Google and Facebook? • Hacker News Board

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#91

Post by fredley » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

rapnie wrote: post #82

annadane wrote: post #36

It's not fair to the public that FB bought up Insta/Whatsapp. That is a true lack of choice. If it were just FB, fine, ignore it, don't use it, use Whatsapp. But no, they get to buy up competition whilst telling us how much our privacy and integrity is taken seriously

I would love to move to Signal and send anyone reaching out to me on Whatsapp an auto-reply with a Signal invite. Couldn't find how to achieve that. Anyone knowing if this is possible?

It'd be possible, I think. You'd need to run WhatsApp web, which is an Electron app. Get into the dev tools and set it up directly from the JS console.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#92

Post by type-2 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #27

The article talks mostly about e-mail and search, but you know what's still the best social network on the interwebs? E-mail. When I dumped social media two years ago, I gave my "friends" my e-mail address. Now, instead of getting an endless stream of reposted political image captions and photos of people's lunches I get messages about the things that are actually worth seeing: news about family, friends, life events…

What email provider do you use? Do you host your own?

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#93

Post by fenwick67 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #4

Why are Google and Facebook in the same jail? What breach of privacy is Google guilty of?

> What breach of privacy is Google guilty of

Some people would consider tracking users across the entire web and selling ads based on their behavior to be disrespectful of privacy. Google hasn't had any big fuck-ups like Facebook with CA, but ultimately they both are advertising companies that owe their success to selling personalized ads.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#94

Post by conception » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

enumjorge wrote: post #65

annadane wrote: post #36

It's not fair to the public that FB bought up Insta/Whatsapp. That is a true lack of choice. If it were just FB, fine, ignore it, don't use it, use Whatsapp. But no, they get to buy up competition whilst telling us how much our privacy and integrity is taken seriously

It’s interesting because capitalism is all about choice and competition. But what if a player is so successful that it can pay to absorb any competitor that poses a serious threat? I don’t know how capitalism self heals from that.

Capitalism isn't all about choice and competition.

Free Markets are.

Capitalism is about the means of production being held in private hands - but those private hands still do their best to own all of the means of production and to lock out potential competitors.

The two get conflated (free markets and capitalism) but they are different beasts. In fact, you can have a free market socialism (tried semi-successfully by Yugoslavia). But ensuring free markets via regulation is how to keep Capitalism from becoming a Gibson novel.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#95

Post by anderspitman » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

arkitaip wrote: post #33

anderspitman wrote: post #8

Google is relatively straight forward to replace. Inexpensive 80% solutions exist for most of their services. Maps is a notable exception. As for Facebook you're fighting against the greatest network effects in the history of mankind.

I had zero issues quitting Facebook but replacing Gmail and Android? That's going to be really tough considering Gmail is my online identify hub and Android facilitates so many utility services (banking, electronic identification, money transfers, etc).

If you want to contact an acquaintance because you'll be in their city, what do you use to communicate with them? Keep in mind people often change their phone numbers or at least lose their contact lists.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#96

Post by citizenkeen » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

drewmol wrote: post #13

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

DuckDuckGo is really changing my world. It’s like I’m seeing a whole other internet I was missing before with Google search results. I get much more relevant answers and less SEO targeted garbage that says all the right words usually while saying nothing at all. I was skeptical, but I encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t before.

Using DDG with Bangs ( add '!G' to a search string to query google, '!W' for Wikipedia, etc.) has really eased my transition.

When somebody brings up DDG's bangs, someone else will often chime in "yeah, but you can make your own in browsers so who cares?" That was often my response.

But the fact that there are community-maintained bangs is really nice. Bangs for all kinds of websites I probably wouldn't have made, but there they are. And since I'm often jumping on new computers, I don't need to bring/import my preferences. Just change the browser's search to DDG, then all my known bangs (and unknown!) are there.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#97

Post by icebadger » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #43

0xff00ffee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run your own! https://runyourown.social/ Federated social media could be the solution.

Solution to what problem?

> tracking, advertising, stalking, third-party influences

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#98

Post by jerf » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

DuckDuckGo is really changing my world. It’s like I’m seeing a whole other internet I was missing before with Google search results. I get much more relevant answers and less SEO targeted garbage that says all the right words usually while saying nothing at all. I was skeptical, but I encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t before.

I find myself increasingly wishing they'd have some sort of subscription or something. Even if it did nothing to start, I'd like to be a customer, instead of an eyeball. Otherwise as nice as it is now, it's still inevitably headed down the same trajectory as Google, just not as far along yet.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#99

Post by dnpp123 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

annadane wrote: post #36

It's not fair to the public that FB bought up Insta/Whatsapp. That is a true lack of choice. If it were just FB, fine, ignore it, don't use it, use Whatsapp. But no, they get to buy up competition whilst telling us how much our privacy and integrity is taken seriously

For messaging, I highly encourage people to use matrix.org.

For tech savvy people it's really easy to self-host https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy and the good part is that you can set up bridges to telegram, whatsapp, facebook, irc, discord, slack... So you can use those apps privately while waiting for people to switch to better alternatives (which may never happens sadly).

Bonus: the desktop app is a rather lightweight web app usable in browser, so goodbye RAM eating monsters like slack and discord.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#100

Post by rajasimon » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

I don't have Facebook account and I'm happy with it. Now I"m using only Whatsapp because of all our family in there. I will get rid of whatsapp in few months.

And I'm okay with duckduckgo.