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De-googling, so far

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Re: De-googling, so far

#141

Post by noman-land »

pawelmurias wrote: post #133
noman-land wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Google is in the business of collecting and monetizing my data and removing my privacy. I want them to have as little access to my life as possible.

They are in a business of showing you ads. Showing your private data to someone is not in their interest.

They are in the business of uniquely identifying me and organizing vast real-time bidding wars for every moment of my attention. The winners of the bidding war are the ones whose ads I (would) see (if I didn't block this garbage aggressively).

It's also been well studied how so-called anonymized datasets can be de-anonymized in various ways and then all the historical data is de-anonymized.

What you once thought was benign and not noteworthy can easily be used against you as the times and attitudes of a society change. Many examples can be seen both in modern day "cancellations" as well as in the historical record like Nazis using census data to find people with undesirable characteristics and murdering them (with IBM's help).

This is not far fetched conspiracy theory paranoia bate. It is factual events from reality.

If a company has a contract with an entity who pays them money for their services, it is literally in their interest to do it.

Re: De-googling, so far

#142

Post by corytheboyd »

mobilejdral wrote: post #11
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.

Mindlessly consuming the video feed is not the only way to use YouTube. If you are looking for something in particular, it is very hard to beat. Besides, at that point, is it really any different than TV, or other streaming services?

Re: De-googling, so far

#143

Post by tcfhgj »

the_af wrote: post #47
mobilejdral wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Depends on what you're watching. I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched, and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with. Having said that, I watch a ton of YouT…

ReVanced (phone) rsp. SponsorBlock allows to skip ads and sponsorship segments (and more)

Re: De-googling, so far

#144

Post by Andrex »

bogwog wrote: post #69

OP and I are very similar lol. I bought a Pixel 7 Pro on eBay specifically so I could use Graphene (screw buying new; used is good for the planet and it doesn't give money to Google). So far, I have been loving it! Also switched to Organic Maps, but still use Google Maps for finding businesses/hours. Organic Maps is nice, but searching for directions is awful (at least in my South Florida area). Typing in any address…

> For email I use ProtonMail with custom domain too. They're overpriced and overrated, but it's too much work for me to switch at this point, and their app isn't that bad. I would recommend FastMail to anyone looking for a new email provider though.

I went the opposite route, but I feel like Proton is better geared to business use (the plans and included products just seem more attractive to me). And yeah the Swiss angle is mostly PR but eh, maybe that could be useful and it's one more thing. "Defense in depth," kinda.

When I switched I didn't really notice Proton being that much more expensive for my uses either.

Re: De-googling, so far

#145

Post by BetterWhisper »

whatindaheck wrote: post #140

It really takes effort to scrub oneself of big-tech. I don’t know how non-HN-types are supposed to do it. My weak point has been Apple Photos. It “just works” for me and I really appreciate that it does all processing for faces, cats, etc. locally and in a native app. Every other option I find either doesn’t do syncing, offers an Electron app, or forces viewing through a browser. Does anyone know of a solution that f…

Well, do you have the hardware to self-host? People nowadays usually are not okay with 1 week of downloading a torrent like it was in 2005. That is probably how long the embedding will take on your cpu for all the video/picture files?

Re: De-googling, so far

#147

Post by noman-land »

extr wrote: post #123
noman-land wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Google is in the business of collecting and monetizing my data and removing my privacy. I want them to have as little access to my life as possible.

Day to day what does "monetizing my data and removing my privacy" actually mean to you? Are advertisers following you around town? Bothering you at work? Hounding you in the loo? Personally it seems like my data has been stolen from just about every company I've ever given it to EXCEPT for Google.

Just because this stalking happens invisibly in the guts of a Javascript file it doesn't make it any different than following me around every street I walk down and noting down everything I look at.

Here's the metaphor. Google offers free video cameras to any person who wants them. The cameras collect thousands of data points about every single person who enters their field of view. The cameras pick up every movement on the streets, in the shops. Every word uttered. They note all conversations and relationships. They send this data into a central database where every person gets a lifetime profile where they are uniquely identified and where all the aggregate data across all the free cameras in the world is collated and stored together.

Google now has a moment by moment timeline of everyone in the world, updating in real time.

Now, using this cache of information, anyone can bid for my attention in real time as I go about my life. While I'm at the bank (website). While I'm at the bar (website). While I'm at the grocery store (website). While I'm at the library (website). Around every corner is a digital billboard that's watching what my hands are doing, where my eyes are looking, what I'm saying. It knows my name, where I'm from, what I do, and who my family is, and it wants to sell me something.

This world is grotesque to me. It's about much more than data breaches.

I didn't even get into the government overreach capabilities such a dataset would enable, nay, tempt.

Re: De-googling, so far

#148

Post by teddyh »

the_af wrote: post #47
mobilejdral wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Depends on what you're watching. I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched, and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with. Having said that, I watch a ton of YouT…

> I'm still upset about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments" embedded in their videos […] ; I wish paying for Premium automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well.

May I introduce you to SponsorBlock:

https://sponsor.ajay.app/>

Re: De-googling, so far

#149

Post by doublerabbit »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #115

Does anyone host their own email in a jurisdiction with a domain and VPS US Feds can't seize arbitrarily? If so, which webmail software do you use? Do you handle backups and/or high-availability?

I bought Zimbra Network Edition, around £2k with 25 mailboxes.

Professional enough to resell accounts and works nicely on phones.

It supports high availability, mx relays and takes scheduled backups to directory of choosing.

I've been satisfied with support and it's a rock solid product that's finally starting to mature after many company take overs.

Re: De-googling, so far

#150

Post by zamadatix »

tomrod wrote: post #114
zamadatix wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never found defaulting to paying for services I consume in need of steelmaning but I suppose it ultimately comes down to how much you care about that sort of thing than the particular reasoning in the end. The biggest reason I won't pay for content is because it's harder to consume that way. E.g. actual Blu-Rays are often impossible to legally play the way you want on the devices you want, especially in comparis…

> By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside skipping just ads anyways) Got it. So you are fine with adblocking; your take comes down to practicality. Debate aside, I appreciate your thoughtful response.

Yeah definitely a bit of practicality but mostly the factor of having already paid everyone that would be getting paid yet the system not being built to adjust to that properly (YouTube only has one version of the video it'll serve and no knowing that I'm subscribed externally to the person either).

Excluding some other somewhat reasonable scenarios which break the mold in corner cases (like accessing the dozens of subscription news sites that get posted on HN with no way to actually pay for them properly except spending more time managing the subscriptions than actually reading article or two a day) my "I paid everyone for the content so I can consume it the way that works for me" stance and reasoning doesn't really apply when you intentionally skip the first step "I paid everyone for" out of disinterest in doing so.

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