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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?

#131

Post by have_faith »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #75
have_faith wrote: post #24

I'm actually building an alternative to Facebook for people fed up with Facebook and just want to stay in touch with people and not much more. I would go as far as calling it a glorified address book with some extra features for having up-to-date contact details for everyone that has granted you the privilege of having them and a very cut down version of the feed. Which brings me to the question of monetisation. I do…

Hey, we're exploring the problem of monetization too! That's one of the things we're discussing right now in VC3 ( https://vc3.club)- if you're interested, we'd love to have you join the conversation!

Signed up!

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

#132

Post by subpixel »

lloydde wrote: post #80

I’m excited by the https://planetary.social/ announcement this week. “We’re building an open and humane alternative to Facebook” https://mobile.twitter.com/rabble/status/1220075601337315328

> Revenue for creators

> Keep some posts back for paid subscribers.

This is not what I want in a Facebook alternative.

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

#133

Post by bluGill »

anderspitman wrote: post #74
fapjacks wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openstreetmaps is pretty good. The transition has gotten much better than it used to be.

Last time I tried any of the OSM apps for search for random thing + navigate there flow, the results were a joke compared to the Google experience. Has it improved by an order of magnitude over the past couple years? I think this might be one of the cases where Google just has way more data for their algorithms.

Depends. It is better for getting to my house - I personally went in and fixed the bad data. I checked the my changes are public domain box so eventually google might pick that up - maybe.

Doesn't help my trying to get to arbitrary places, but when arbitrary people are trying to get to me it helps a lot.

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

#134

Post by choward »

have_faith wrote: post #24

I'm actually building an alternative to Facebook for people fed up with Facebook and just want to stay in touch with people and not much more. I would go as far as calling it a glorified address book with some extra features for having up-to-date contact details for everyone that has granted you the privilege of having them and a very cut down version of the feed. Which brings me to the question of monetisation. I do…

So you want me to switch from one platform I have no control over to another? The whole reason Facebook is evil is they can be since they have full control of the software and your data.

What would your goal be? To grow like Facebook, go public, and maximize profit? I have no reason that your product/company wouldn't just turn into another Facebook.

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

#135

Post by stevenicr »

anderspitman wrote: post #113
dnpp123 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I tried, I really did. Got my close group of ~8 friends on the public Matrix server. People would miss messages because they only use Matrix for that one thing, and would forget to login/check/etc. That and a few choice little bugs pushed them back to FB messenger. That said, I'm hopeful for the future of the protocol.

Interesting point, I am going to assume there is an option or bridge or plugin or something that can send an email notification that you or your group / chat room has new messages(?) - and this may be an important, perhaps default selected, option for new users trying out a matrix flavor(?)

I remember when fbk would send messages to everyone, some of my clients had a hundred emails a day from fbk in their inbox, and they were checking in several times a day, now it's become a habit regardless I think for most.

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

#136

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

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.

DuckDuckGo can't even answer simple queries like "how old is Donald Trump", "president of France", "how tall is the Eiffel Tower", "distance from earth to Moon", and "distance from earth to sun"; it forces you to search its results for the answer. For all of queries, Google and Bing give you the answer front and center without making you click links or read the result snippets. Bing even has an interactive solar system viewer when you search for that last query.

These days search engines are supposed to be able to surface and present information from sources without user intervention. DuckDuckGo cannot do this (yet).

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

#137

Post by djsumdog »

reaperducer wrote: post #47
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'm at about 90% Duck these days, and 10% Google. But I'm not sure it's because Duck got better, or because Google got worse. Google's results just seem less and less useful for the kinds of searches I do. A recent example: There was a news event near where I live earlier this week. It made national headlines briefly. Yesterday I wanted to know if there was anything new about it. So I hit the duck with my search quer…

I just recently realized that myself. I'd add "!g" to my searches about 1/3 of the time. That's been going way down lately. I'm probably more at 10%~15% on Google, but the majority has switched to DDG.

That being said, I still wish there were more alternatives. I have a lot of RSS feeds and there are big lists of tech blog RSS feeds. At some point I just want to index all of those so I can search for recent tends in the blogs of independent tech people rather than the big articles.

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

#138

Post by bluGill »

arkitaip wrote: post #63
anderspitman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Register a domain if you don't already have one and get Fastmail for 5 USD/mo (includes a calendar as well). If Gmail.com is your online identity hub, then you're not in control of your online identity.

Right but what about Android? What's the point of setting up email at my own domain - which I already have - when Google can track everything through Android?

Between firefix, duck duck go, and gmail used only to register the phone: google doesn't have much on me anymore. They still have too much thanks to all the trackers (firefox is getting better at blocking) but much less.

Now if I could get people to put useful videos someplace other than youtube.

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

#139

Post by prophesi »

gravitas wrote: post #123
prophesi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For email clients, Thunderbird on desktop, FairEmail on Android. All open-source. It should be pretty straightforward for them to deduce what your Gmail SMTP settings are, and you'll be able to add your emails from other providers as well. If you mean actual email providers, that'll be a bit harder to find. Most of the good ones don't have a free tier. FastMail is solid. ProtonMail has a free tier, but you have to pa…

One thing that many don't talk about - what about Contacts, presuming we're using the Google Contacts integration? Email for me is kind of useless without being able to manage Contacts right alongside it, which Google integrates extremely well on Android.

Yeah, that's very true. I'm not sure what good alternatives there are for Contacts/Calendar/etc. You'd need to find a good service that can sync your CalDAV/CardDavs, as the best part about Google's Contacts is that you simply need to login to your account to get them all back on a new device.

I personally run my own NextCloud instance for that, which is obviously not a viable option for those without the time or technical skills to maintain that.

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

#140

Post by djsumdog »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #87
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'm consistently surprised that this comment comes up here so often. I've tried DDG at length, many times, and I always go back to Google because I find it SO much better for programming-related questions. Maybe the denizens of HN are accustomed to using SO's built-in search? But that's still only a piece of the larger puzzle. I get a lot of mileage from blog posts as well.

Just set your default to DDG and, when you can't find something, search again with "!g". DDG also lets you jump to specific sites ("!w for the pedia, !yt for the Youboobs, !imdb, !rt, etc).
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