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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#121

Post by ForHackernews »

bbutterworth wrote: post #118

If everyone did this, google wouldn't exist, a lot of the open source google software wouldn't exist. Isn't the main point of de-googling, is that everyone does it. Because you can be influenced indirectly even if you do de-google, and that the benefits of de-googling should emerge with popularity. I'm sure some people are de-googling because of personal privacy, but most people aren't targets so this doesn't matter.…

> but most people aren't targets so this doesn't matter

What do you mean? Everyone on the planet is a target. They want data on everyone so they can target ads to everyone.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#122

Post by gcthomas »

asdff wrote: post #47
catchmilk wrote: post #37

I really tried giving DDG a chance but I always found myself having to go back to Google to find the right information. This would especially pertain to technical matters. The 'average-joe-browsing' (e.g. amazon, movies, songs etc.) worked fine, but when it came down to research papers or solving software problems, I was too often left disappointed. A couple of weeks back I switched to Qwant[1]. Privacy focused, tech…

DDG is nowhere close to google scholar, much less pubmed. If you don't want to use google scholar, web of science is good too.

I find it easier to access GOogle Scholar via DDG with !scholar than I do with Google Search.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#123

Post by bbutterworth »

ForHackernews wrote: post #121
bbutterworth wrote: post #118

If everyone did this, google wouldn't exist, a lot of the open source google software wouldn't exist. Isn't the main point of de-googling, is that everyone does it. Because you can be influenced indirectly even if you do de-google, and that the benefits of de-googling should emerge with popularity. I'm sure some people are de-googling because of personal privacy, but most people aren't targets so this doesn't matter.…

> but most people aren't targets so this doesn't matter What do you mean? Everyone on the planet is a target. They want data on everyone so they can target ads to everyone.

Oops, by 'target', I meant on the receiving end of exploitation (governments/ politics/ free speech). You might consider targeted adverts exploitation, but I didn't include that in the use of 'target', because I think people prefer targeted adverts and can just turn them off anyway.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#124

Post by Yetanfou »

kortilla wrote: post #111
overfitted wrote: post #88

Interesting! Your first concern and reason for De-Googling was privacy, so I'd say moving to iPhone, iCloud, WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) and the like doesn't help you much. I also think you forgot video-conferencing/video chat. I'd go for Zoom, but there's a bunch of alternatives. Most have their drawbacks. Lastly, move to Europe where we have GDPR. I actually can not read some news articles that are hosted in the U…

What privacy issues do you think the iPhone has?

More or less the same as a stock Android device has, the difference is that it keeps on sending data to Apple instead of Google. If you trust Apple at their word about being good stewards of your data you might think this is OK. If you see Apple as the corporate entity it is and you have a healthy distrust of any and all such entities when it comes to them keeping their word when money comes into play you probably want to limit exposure as much as possible.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#125

Post by kmarc »

niemenmaa wrote: post #104

My De-Googling process: *Search(1) -> DuckDuckGo *Gmail(2) -> Fastmail *Android -> SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) *Maps -> OpenStreetMaps *Youtube(3) -> Youtube-dl, "subscriptions" with rss-feeds *Drive -> Self-hosted Nextloud & Syncthing *Calendar -> At first Fastmail, but nowadays back to paper calendar *Chrome -> Brave & Firefox (1) When having problems finding I sometimes check Google Search with bangs. (2)…

Can you elaborate on the Nextcloud&Syncthing part?

It would be awesome to have LAN local syncing (as Syntching does), while being able to share doc to the outside world (NextCloud's functionality).

Did you figure this out?

Anther topic: yeah, youtube is not something you can replace, but you can still use other frontends, thus the rabbithole recommendation engine doesn't affect you, nor the advertisements. On Android, NewPipe is a great client.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#126

Post by amelius »

brabel wrote: post #59
harha wrote: post #8

I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me) - not as SEOed (still not great though) - the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads - on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omni…

As much as I would like to agree, as a user who has DDG as the default search engine, this is not my experience... DDG consistently gives me useless results when I search for less popular languages results (searching Dart, or the search-friendly dartlang, gives me crap every time, while Google finds stuff easily... sure, Dart is by Google, that may be a factor, but if I remember correctly, results for Groovy and very…

Does anyone know of a Firefox plugin that automatically adds a "!g" upon a gesture on mobile?

I'm asking because adding the "!g" takes about 6-7 screen touches so it's quite inefficient, and it basically keeps me from using DDG.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#127

Post by zo1 »

kavalg wrote: post #25
harha wrote: post #8

I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me) - not as SEOed (still not great though) - the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads - on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omni…

Don't you guys use an ad blocker? I barely see any ads since I started using uBlock. Occasionally I browse without an ad blocker and the experience is horrible and intimidating. Actually ads and propaganda were the reasons I quit TV around 10 years ago and I have never regretted it. So much time and mental energy is freed up to do constructive and fulfilling things (e.g. reading books, sports, socializing, musing etc…

The search results are quite often ads, in my opinion. They're heavily geared towards ecommerce and other "side" areas separate to actual information.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#128

Post by kilroy123 »

manigandham wrote: post #17

I have Fastmail and other private email services but I've been unable to really move over because of all the integrations that Gmail has. Automatic email scanning for trip details, calendar integrations, searches from the web also surfacing details from emails, google voice, tons of other apps and extensions. It would be a nice if there was a way to get all this functionality beyond Gmail.

The trip integration was a big one for me as I travel so much.

I use https://awardwallet.com/ and they added similar features but even better. Problem solved for me.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#129

Post by pojntfx »

catchmilk wrote: post #37

I really tried giving DDG a chance but I always found myself having to go back to Google to find the right information. This would especially pertain to technical matters. The 'average-joe-browsing' (e.g. amazon, movies, songs etc.) worked fine, but when it came down to research papers or solving software problems, I was too often left disappointed. A couple of weeks back I switched to Qwant[1]. Privacy focused, tech…

Just prepend `!g` if you use DuckDuckGo and want to have a Google result. It's super simple ;)

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#130

Post by pwned1 »

asdff wrote: post #51
kavalg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you guys use an ad blocker? I barely see any ads since I started using uBlock. Occasionally I browse without an ad blocker and the experience is horrible and intimidating. Actually ads and propaganda were the reasons I quit TV around 10 years ago and I have never regretted it. So much time and mental energy is freed up to do constructive and fulfilling things (e.g. reading books, sports, socializing, musing etc…

Been avoiding internet ads and tracking for 15 years now. I feel like the unibomber. Facebook and google probably still have a good fingerprint on me, though, due to iOS not letting you use good ad blockers. Something uncanny happened recently in terms of the ads I do see that gave me quite a bit of paranoia. My SO recently bought a distinct pair of leggings. How am I seeing ads for that same exact pair of leggings,…

I switched from android to iOS and that’s the biggest thing u miss, ad blockers and addons in Firefox.

Just this week I installed NextDNS and it brought back my ad blocking glee. It’s fantastic.

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