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De-googling, so far

blog.nradk.com

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Re: De-googling, so far

#11

Post by mobilejdral »

least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.

Re: De-googling, so far

#12

Post by annexrichmond »

autoexec wrote: post #10
least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

The good news is that none of the content you care about is Google's. As soon as someone else provides a space for content creators to move to you can get rid of Youtube and never miss a single thing about it. Google has successfully pissed off enough youtubers that they're just waiting for the first chance to jump ship, just like we are as watchers. In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google. Use Ne…

Yeah but operating a service like YouTube is such a money pit (given on recent HN threads I've read). It seems like they've been mostly able to work because of their huge ad network, targeting, etc.

Re: De-googling, so far

#13

Post by autoexec »

derlvative wrote: post #4

I liked duckduckgo a couple years ago before it started insisting on showing results in the language associated to my IP address. Since then I've liked brave a lot better.

Duckduckgo used to advertise that they were all about getting out of the filter bubble but they insist on throwing a bunch of irrelevant totally unrelated garbage in their search results based on my IP address. The service has really gone downhill and I can't even blame it on bing

Re: De-googling, so far

#14

Post by annexrichmond »

least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos but it's become so disruptive

I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph. And when you add 30 second ads every 5 mins it makes it even less compelling

Re: De-googling, so far

#15

Post by lawn »

annexrichmond wrote: post #14
least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos but it's become so disruptive I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't…

Don't everyone on HN use ublock origin? I haven't seen an ad in years.

Re: De-googling, so far

#16

Post by Animats »

Why is this hard? Since I quit offering a Chrome plug-in, my last connection to a Google account is gone. I should cancel my Google account, if and when I find the password.

I post videos on Hardlimit, which uses PeerTube. I don't care about "discovery"; they're to illustrate blog postings elsewhere. So all I need is hosting and playout, which Peertube does just fine. (Peertube handles playout by mooching bandwidth off of other people using Peertube. So it can scale if many people are watching the same video. Permanent storage, though, is not distributed. It's not Bittorrent.)

I've been using LibreOffice and its predecessors for decades now. My last purchase of a Microsoft product was Word 97. Desktop browser is Firefox. Mail client is Thunderbird. Backups are IDrive. Add blocking is the EFF's Privacy Badger, which breaks many ad systems while enforcing privacy.

My phone uses F-Droid. It is not connected to a Google account. Browser is Fennec. App store is F-Droid. Search is DuckDuckGo.

What's the problem?

Re: De-googling, so far

#17

Post by usmcnapier »

lawn wrote: post #15
annexrichmond wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos but it's become so disruptive I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't…

Don't everyone on HN use ublock origin? I haven't seen an ad in years.

Same here.

Re: De-googling, so far

#18

Post by schaefer »

For me the degoogling sticking point is that I have a custom domain (registered through Google domains) that i use for both for my email addresses and my small personal home page.

It would be nice to find a host that offers both hosting and email through a custom domain too.

Re: De-googling, so far

#19

Post by neilv »

> OpenStreetMap-based apps like Organic Maps are great and I frequently use them, but I find myself using the Google Maps website a lot, for tasks like searching for restaurants to getting an estimate of how long my commute is going to take.

Agreed, as someone who walks almost everywhere, Organic Maps is great on GrapheneOS.

The only things I use Google Maps for are more rare: (1) see what hours a store is open, which IIUC is being worked on by OSM; (2) planning a trip via public transit; (3) StreetView, which is really an awesome feature.

Re: De-googling, so far

#20

Post by afavour »

Animats wrote: post #16

Why is this hard? Since I quit offering a Chrome plug-in, my last connection to a Google account is gone. I should cancel my Google account, if and when I find the password. I post videos on Hardlimit, which uses PeerTube. I don't care about "discovery"; they're to illustrate blog postings elsewhere. So all I need is hosting and playout, which Peertube does just fine. (Peertube handles playout by mooching bandwidth o…

> What’s the problem?

…did you read the article?

The author lists the Google alternatives they’ve been using, along with both the successes and the problems with those alternatives.

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