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What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

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

#181

Post by andrepd »

haolez wrote: post #108
conception wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Free market socialism? How would information about value be propagated? That's usually done via prices and money.

Precisely. "Prices and money" is the "free market" part. The "socialism" part means "collective/social ownership of companies and means of production".

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

#182

Post by jammygit »

dnpp123 wrote: post #99
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 deskto…

Is encryption built in yet?

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

#183

Post by monkeynotes »

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 tried DDG, I actually try it out intermittently. I ditched it again, this time because when I searched for an address it doesn't seem to scope the results to where I am located and gives me a similar address somewhere else.

Small little things like that are a pain to work around and something I take for granted in Google search. It's taken a long time for Google to get so good at what it does. I notice that if I am watching a YouTube video and then go to Google to search for something related, the autocomplete basically knows what I am likely to search for. Say what you will about that but it is pretty amazing technology.

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

#184

Post by fasicle »

kodt wrote: post #129

When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help? Yeah you get end to end encryption for other Proton mail users, but I don't know a single one. Google is going to have all of my emails anyway. As for Facebook it is best just to quit. I don't even use Facebook to keep in touch with friends anymore. The value in Facebook is some of the groups. Local neighborhood groups seem to be th…

WhatsApp is massive in Europe, I'm currently in Spain and nobody uses anything else.

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

#185

Post by ignoramous »

rapnie wrote: post #161
warp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has an API for whatsapp, which I believe is a closed beta. In theory you could build an app to do this for you, twilio supports this and let's you use a development key even before you get into the beta. [I expect that's too many hoops for your use case though ;]

Thx! I found the Business API which is really for partners ( and for SMB's there is the Business app). https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api The Twilio API is in beta, and you can sign up. Don't know what pricing will be, but maybe for individual use a dev subscription may be sufficient https://www.twilio.com/whatsapp Here is the API reference: https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/whatsapp/api

Also see: https://www.messagebird.com/en/

Though, getting your own business-API would be cheaper, I've heard WhatsApp is very picky about granting those and instead prefer you work with a third-party partner instead [0].

Then, there's click-to-chat for simpler communication if the client's WA number is known [1].

[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000239/?category=52452...

[1] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000030/?category=52452...

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

#186

Post by sp332 »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #178
sp332 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'd rather Google not have it. I consider Google having it to be a breach of my privacy. But besides that, any time someone clicks an ad, Google gives information about that person to the advertiser.

You can absolutely tell google not to store your information. When you buy a shoe with your credit card at a store you are giving your personal information, isn't clicking on an ad similar?

Yes, I would also be ticked off if the shoe store sold off my personal info, or really used it for any reason other than selling me shoes.

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

#187

Post by jredwards »

monsieurgaufre wrote: post #119
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.

DDG is bad as soon as you're not in the US of A and/or speak any language that is not english.

It's not very good for english speakers in the US, either. The bang syntax is fantastic, but the search results are crap.

Didn't someone demonstrate pretty conclusively that underneath all of the specialization it was just bing?

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

#188

Post by psv1 »

druddha wrote: post #88
psv1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was skeptical, but I encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t before. I have - I found the results far less useful than Google's, the whole experience far more frustrating and it noticeably slowed down my work.

I agree that the DDG results, especially for software development related searches, are often worse than searching Google or StackOverflow directly. So here's my workflow: 1. Search DDG. If I find a decent result, I stop here. 2. Append !so to the end of the search. This searches StackOverflow directly. If this works, I stop here. 3. Append !g to the end of the search. This searches Google directly. This way Google b…

My concern about Google isn't big enough to justify going through this.

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

#189

Post by lotsofpulp »

jkarneges wrote: post #170
enumjorge wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. And FB retaining Instagram/Whatsapp apps+branding effectively squashes future "unbundling" attempts. The way I look at it, if not even Google can beat FB at personal social networking (Google+), then FB has a monopoly and this is not a free market. Sure, anyone is free to start a startup and try to do what FB does, but I mean... I suspect the only reason the government hasn't gotten involved in this matter ye…

My grandparents’ generation and my parents’ generation aren’t about to invest any effort into learning a new app. They’re happy with Whatsapp, it was the first to do what it needed to do easily, and unless a new app offers a compelling new feature, they’re not going to find it worth their time to learn it.

Unfortunately, they might not understand privacy concerns, but even if they did, they don’t have the language fluency or technical capacity to verify the claims of security.

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

#190

Post by SamuelAdams »

rikkus wrote: post #150
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.

Apple Maps has replaced Google Maps for me. I’ve been trying to move away from Google and this has been an easy one. I don’t notice the difference most of the time. When I do, it’s because I’ve pulled up Google Maps by accident and it’s cluttered and spammy.

And recently Duck Duck Go has integrated with Apple maps which is really neat.
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