Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life • Hacker News Board

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#181

Post by zahllos » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

loh wrote: post #160

neckardt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is fastmail the best email service provider these days? I switched my own domain to them a while ago, but then abandoned it when I heard about the new laws in Australia.

What new laws in Australia are you referring to? I did a quick search and I saw a lot about anti-spam laws (which is great), but how does that affect switching your own domain to fastmail?

The grandparent comment is likely referring to the TOLA Act, which allows Australian police and intelligence agencies to issue for example technical assistance requests to decrypt or otherwise get access to whatever data they want.

As I understand it the oversight is relatively minimal and any company operating on Australian soil can be subject to such a request. Here's their government web page on it: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

It passed around the end of 2018 and a lot of Australian companies (e.g. Atlassian) were not fans of it.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#182

Post by eyeball » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #77

XCSme wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest problem is Google becoming a monopoly, when you rely daily on tens of their services. Than, if for some reason, they decide to close your account or use your data to "be evil", there's not much you can do.

Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail. True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. T…

I would be screwed if google deactivated my mail account. So many accounts linked.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#183

Post by simplehuman » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #86

boocoo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, Google could identify you since on Chrome you might have your name, address, and phone number saved for auto-fill, and sell your information to companies. They could sell your information to a certain company if their AI identifies you, for example, as a left-wing elderly male. I think the recent documentary that got deleted off Youtube explains it. Google also censors results a lot compared to Yahoo and Duc…

None of those things affect my life. They may be moral or principle concerns for you, but they're not for me.

Why should i care for your opinion? It does not affect my life.

See, its easy to type nonsense like this.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#184

Post by pydry » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

strangescript wrote: post #129

nickelpro wrote: post #61

Genuinely, why should I care? What harm is likely to happen to my life by sticking with Google, a service provider I find convenient? EDIT: I don't want to be accused of fan-boying or astro-turfing. I just see "Avoid Big Company X because they collect your data" a lot and I just can't give a damn about companies collecting my data. Be my guest, if it means I get free stuff. My data is boring tech nerd data, use it to…

People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way. Everyone is tracking you online, but for some reason we only care about it when its companies that make good products that we like to use. Would you rather they not target you with ads and sell google searches for a nickel each? Meanwhile, I had an ad in my gmail yesterday for Google F…

>People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way.

The threat model I work off is "fascist government seizes power in the United States and sequesters all data for all citizens from the top 15 large corporations". Then they get to work weeding out undesirables. This would happen, I'd estimate, in the space of about a month although if history is anything to go by, the signs will have been flashing for a while.

You could just switch at that point, I suppose, and hope that something in the last 15 years of emails, chats, your entire contact network and your location history doesn't incriminate you along with the fact that you just switched.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#185

Post by curiousmindz » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

aitchnyu wrote: post #67

I never considered a Gmail alternative since Gmail has primary/social/promotion/updates tabs and proper threading of replies and almost perfect spam protection. What services do the above things as good?

Yahoo! Mail has one really cool feature: It supports actual browser-like tabs. So, it is possible to open multiple email conversations in parallel, as well as run some searches, and look at various folders.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#186

Post by simplehuman » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

gerash wrote: post #167

I think the mistake Google is making is not charging high prices a la. Apple for their products. It'd result in a big drop in user base initially but over time people will respect it more and stop writing up articles on how to stop using a free ad supported product in favor of a set of random toy projects

If anything it will help people realize they are being toyed around by Google and there are better products out there

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#187

Post by simplehuman » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #8

The author of this should start with the root name server for his domain

Rome wasn't built in a day. Take small steps at a time, nothing wrong with it.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#188

Post by simplehuman » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

tzfld wrote: post #135

All these self-hosted platforms would definitely not help an average person in de-googling himself. And these are like 99% of the users.

So there is no room in this world for niche products?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#189

Post by amelius » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

I wonder why more big corporations don't ban Google.

Through search alone, Google knows exactly what other big corporations are up to (perhaps even better than the corporations know themselves). That is something that should scare companies. I know GMail has been banned for this reason in a lot of places, but search is just as important.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#190

Post by coronadisaster » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

loph wrote: post #163

I use duckduckgo for search, I have the DuckDuckGo privacy extensions installed in Chrome, along with EFF Privacy Badger. I'm not that worried about Google. I did de-facebook myself. IMHO Facebook is far more invasive, far more harmful than Google.

> I'm not that worried about Google.

doesn't look like it since you are using Chrome...