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Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

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Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#101

Post by chrisco255 »

marcinzm wrote: post #56
illustriousbear wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but there are plenty of perfectly acceptable alternatives to those services.

Which are, to me, of lower quality. Thus lower quality of life. Not zero quality of life. Just lower.

It's really not. Google.com is still there. You can use the alternatives 99% of the time and get what you're looking for. Google itself is not a perfect algorithm. It's exploitable, censorable, etc. It doesn't always find what you're looking for. You shouldn't ever limit yourself to a single search engine, honestly.

I think YouTube is a far stickier service than Google Search, just because it's acted as an informal video archive of the past 15 years of internet video history. But I fully recognize the risks with this monopoly structure in place and have started to embrace alternatives like https://odysee.com/ and https://rumble.com/. It's time to disentangle from monopolies. Take your digital sovereignty back.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#102

Post by lawl »

ycombigator wrote: post #92

Stop using apps whenever you can. Use your browser.

Which one? The one also made by Google, the one paid for by Google, ones of those based on the one made by Google, or the one made by the other smartphone OS owner with a walled garden?

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#103

Post by chrisco255 »

COGlory wrote: post #99
nexthash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I heavily rely on Google and Amazon. All my emails, purchases, photos, and browsing goes through them. Opting out would mean uprooting gigabytes of data to other services, which takes time to research, backup, and transfer. And even then you can't fully get rid of them, because switching to Apple from Android costs money, and I am not willing to root Android. This is merely my personal situation, but sayi…

I did it: - LineageOS + MicroG and F-Droid for mobile. - NextCloud (and DAV) running on an old laptop for calendar, contacts, and file storage. The mobile app uploads all my photos automatically. It backs up to Backblaze -ProtonMail with a custom domain for email. Amazon is pretty avoidable. Shipping has gotten faster and cheaper everywhere else at this point. At least for the rural place I am. I'm not particularly t…

What phone did you load LineageOS on? Do you know of any guides for it?

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#105

Post by koalp »

Sunspark wrote: post #36

I wonder if France will have something to say to Google about this in the EU.. France uses Matrix. Google's powerful, but they're not a legislative body.

They use their own matrix client : tchap. They also use their own app store (not sure what it's based on) Therefore, French ministry that use matrix may not be affected

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#107

Post by illustriousbear »

burnte wrote: post #93
mastazi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit Reddit, Amazon, Twitter, Google, Instagram and Facebook. My life has never been better. Minor inconvenience does not outweigh major improvements in my mental wellness. (Edit: I mention mental wellness because those products, and the ads they carry, are designed to be addictive.)

So let me ask you a question, how were they negatively impacting your mental wellbeing? I ask this genuinely, because I have a tendency to feel these tools only negatively impact people who use them in stress-creating ways. That, however, feels like victim blaming. There's a difference between a using a circular saw dangerously and a circular saw that is MADE with electrical failures that shock you. Let me give the e…

This is the classic advertising doesn't work on me mentality.

Whether you realise it or not, the algorithms behind these services are having a subtle impact on you and show you things for various shady reasons. For me, that was enough just to ditch those services.

It's good to see that you're limiting your exposure to them though.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#108

Post by bordercases »

marcinzm wrote: post #28
throwawayboise wrote: post #24

Opt out. No Google. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Amazon. You don't need them, you might even enjoy life more without them. You can't change how they operate. But you can change how you operate.

> You don't need them, you might even enjoy life more without them. So I should probably lower the quality of my life to make a statement that will have no impact on them at all? >You can't change how they operate. Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws and so on.

You gotta be a man with principles. And why do you think your petitioning the government would make as much of an impact in this case, when opting out of using their services deprives them of revenue and data almost immediately?

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#109

Post by krastanov »

lawl wrote: post #102
ycombigator wrote: post #92

Stop using apps whenever you can. Use your browser.

Which one? The one also made by Google, the one paid for by Google, ones of those based on the one made by Google, or the one made by the other smartphone OS owner with a walled garden?

I will bite: Firefox, the one that cares about privacy and open standards, even if it has a lot of income coming from a search bar deal with Google.
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