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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#271

Post by ocdtrekkie »

joshuamorton wrote: post #268
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct in that Google doesn't discriminate between paying and non-paying customers: It happily abuses the privacy of it's paying customers too. Many of Google's uses of data are not specific to whether or not someone is using G Suite or consumer Gmail as far as I am aware.

What Gmail data is being abused?

I can say one of the ones that horrified me the most shortly after I transitioned off of Gmail was Smart Reply. To my knowledge, nobody was able to confirm at the time that even paid G Suite accounts were immune to being used as training data. (If you have insight on this, let me know!)

I definitely don't want my email used to train Google's AI models, which might unpredictably cough up sensitive data since machine learning is pretty much a black box.

A big issue is that at any time, Google may introduce a new "feature" and decide to use your data to power it. I also think of how purchase data gets extracted from your receipts to store in your Google account profile and the like (https://myaccount.google.com/purchases although the text on this page has changed... did they stop?) and I feel a privacy-first service would need to at minimum have switches to control what kind of data processing is performed on their email, and default new features to be off.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#272

Post by novok »

yachtman wrote: post #181

Firefox is now objectively better than Chrome in every way. I would recommend switching moral reasons aside. Chrome's memory management is abysmal. I now get the same shudder when I see someone with chrome on their machine that I used to get when I saw someone running Internet Explorer (which may even be better than chrome now too).

I use firefox and chrome today, and even after all the perf improvements firefox is still a slower browser. On my 2 core 2014 macbook, only chrome and safari run with enough performance. On my other 4+ core devices it runs fast enough to use as my main browser. On those 4+ core devices, chrome is still more responsive than Firefox :(

Main reason why I use firefox is container tabs.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#273

Post by whatzis »

rgoulter wrote: post #254
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…

One more use case: The result for copying the link of a search result item for e.g. "git book pdf" from DuckDuckGo: https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-... from Google: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... from bing: https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-...

I use Google don't track me for that

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#274

Post by asdff »

gcthomas wrote: post #122
asdff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Am I missing something with that flag? when I do that it just redirects to the google scholar results. I'm therefore nto sure the gain of going to duckduckgo.com and having to type !scholar before every query instead of just scholar.google.com

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#275

Post by pkamb »

yachtman wrote: post #181

Firefox is now objectively better than Chrome in every way. I would recommend switching moral reasons aside. Chrome's memory management is abysmal. I now get the same shudder when I see someone with chrome on their machine that I used to get when I saw someone running Internet Explorer (which may even be better than chrome now too).

I would absolutely switch to Safari or Firefox except for the fact that I find Chrome's tab system to be so good.

Chrome tabs load and appear instantly. As you add more tabs they shrink down to a tiny but still usable favicon size. As you close tabs they resize well and with nice little UX behavior like the next close button always appearing directly under your mouse. They close and re-open instantly.

When you press enter in the address bar Chrome always loads your Search, unlike Safari, which often requires second press, or weirdly loses focus. Even doing simple web search feels so slow and broken in Safari tabs. When you have a moderate number of tabs Safari switches to this horizontal scrolling mode where half of your tabs are no longer visible. Basically unusable.

Chrome tabs are so good compared to the standard macOS tabs found in places like Safari and Finder. I wish I could have them everywhere.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#276

Post by joshuamorton »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #271
joshuamorton wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Gmail data is being abused?

I can say one of the ones that horrified me the most shortly after I transitioned off of Gmail was Smart Reply. To my knowledge, nobody was able to confirm at the time that even paid G Suite accounts were immune to being used as training data. (If you have insight on this, let me know!) I definitely don't want my email used to train Google's AI models, which might unpredictably cough up sensitive data since machine l…

I do know the answer. It's probably in the privacy policy for gsuite somewhere, but that's a long document. I'm unsure if I can share it though.

What sensitive information are you concerned about coughing up? While I haven't actually looked closely at how smart reply works, it isn't just a simple lstm on text, it tracks contextual info like recipient names, so "hey " on the first line will autocomple to "Hey Todd and Amanda" if you're sending am email to two people named Todd and Amanda.

So there's some tokenization and preprocessing happening, which would avoid most of the potential privacy issues I can think up with something like that (which are all of the form of automoplete linking your name to a private fact).

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#277

Post by vinay427 »

newscracker wrote: post #252
vinay427 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: As someone pointed out in a reply, iOS would in fact support this file functionality, so it would presumably be up to Signal to add it. > at least in iOS, you’d realize that you’ve permanently lost all your previous chats because Signal explicitly prohibits chat backup by iTunes and does not provide a way to backup chats and restore it either. This seems like an iOS limitation that Signal doesn't want to compro…

No, that’s not true at all. There’s been a Files app in iOS since iOS 11 (which was released in late 2017 and allows you to store the data on device or on the cloud, including creating folders), and before that there was iCloud Drive. Either of these could be used to save the file. The share sheet on iOS also exposes other apps that the user has. So for example, if someone has the Dropbox app, it can be used as a des…

Thank you for the correction, I will edit my comment. Sorry about that, I haven't owned an iOS device in a few years and clearly didn't search online intelligently enough to find it.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#278

Post by shockinglytrue »

levosmetalo wrote: post #270
shockinglytrue wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a diehard Firefox fan, but I will be honest: its JS and rendering performance is garbage compared to Chrome. I play games and use complex web apps (GCloud, Office 365) exclusively in Chromium

> I'm a diehard Firefox fan, but I will be honest No, you are not. You are a Google marketing tool. And this is not ad-hominem from my side, since you made a claim about yourself the main part of your argument. Google is known for intentionally crippling Firefox performance on their services. That doesn't make Firefox itself slower.

You're cute :)

Unfortunately the Firefox codebase itself is the only marketing tool at work here. I still use Firefox for everything else, not least due to the fact it isn't trying to swindle every last private detail out of me, but for work stuff and gaming (O365/GCloud) I don't really care about any of that.

Hiding behind lies and random personal attacks will not make Firefox better, but comparisons to its main competitor in key areas might help

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#279

Post by pixxel »

shockinglytrue wrote: post #278
levosmetalo wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a diehard Firefox fan, but I will be honest No, you are not. You are a Google marketing tool. And this is not ad-hominem from my side, since you made a claim about yourself the main part of your argument. Google is known for intentionally crippling Firefox performance on their services. That doesn't make Firefox itself slower.

You're cute :) Unfortunately the Firefox codebase itself is the only marketing tool at work here. I still use Firefox for everything else, not least due to the fact it isn't trying to swindle every last private detail out of me, but for work stuff and gaming (O365/GCloud) I don't really care about any of that. Hiding behind lies and random personal attacks will not make Firefox better, but comparisons to its main com…

I’m not seeing a lie. Google intentionally cripples/degrades software in Firefox. Hell, Google degrades YouTube viewed in iOS Safari because they want me to install the app.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#280

Post by client4 »

niemenmaa wrote: post #102
client4 wrote: post #64

I'm actually in the slow process of this as well. Moving to DDG is the easiest starting point; in the beginning it's tempting to type g! with every search until you start trusting the results. Next I changed from my Pixel 2 to a SailfishX on a Sony phone. I'm planning on moving to Owncloud for contacts/storage/docs next. It's surprising how I've paid for Google to deeply invade my life.

I bought an used Xperia and installed Sailfish on it. LOVE IT! The gestures feel so natural way to use phone, ambients make it look badass and the program management is really creative. Android app support is what allowed me to transition because of banking apps etc. It's not 100% polished (especially the Android app usage) but at its worst works well enough and at it's best, the experience IMO tops any other phone O…

Agreed, if I could have Sailfish on a Huawei P40 I'd be ecstatic. As it stands using Here maps, built in browser, and basic phone tools get me 90% of the way. I'm cheating a little in my transition -- I've moved my must use apps over to my iPad pro. 2FA, Instagram (a drug habit I hope to kick later in the summer), Keybase, mobile check deposit, etc.

I need to find a replacement for Google Keep (love how easy it is to move text/urls/photos between devices, jot down ideas / record thoughts) and Hangouts Dialer still.

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