As much as I appreciate DDG getting more press, this article is low quality. No alternatives to Facebook are mentioned, only that you can use Signal, & ProtonMail instead of WhatsApp.
What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
21–30 of 324 posts
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#22DuckDuckGo 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 was skeptical, but I encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t before. I have - I found the results far less useful than Google's, the whole experience far more frustrating and it noticeably slowed down my work.
I find it's a mixed bag -- sometimes DDG is better, sometimes Google is. It kind of reminds me of the old days pre-Google-dominance when you'd try Alta Vista and then Lycos or Excite if you didn't get what you were looking for.
Cynically, I wonder if Google has gotten to the point where they realize that serving the absolute most relevant results means they sell less ads. Of course, I don't think anyone is ordered not to make search quality better, just that incentives/resources get reallocated to things other than ten-blue-link quality.
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#23Title mentions alternatives to Facebook, but then doesn't list one?
For anyone looking for something there is Diaspora.
For a twitter alternative check out Mastodon.
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#24I'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 don't want ads or data collection of any kind so my first thought is to have a basic free account and a cheap premium account that lets you upload and share photo albums and that sort of thing. Thoughts on this strategy or possible privacy respecting alternatives?
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#25DuckDuckGo 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.
Same for me. It’s “good enough” and the results page is cleaner. I used to get poor results for dev topics and image search but both have improved over time. I only use google for shopping searches, because it gives me better results for my country (belgium).
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#26DuckDuckGo, IRC, and usenet would work.
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#27The article talks mostly about e-mail and search, but you know what's still the best social network on the interwebs? E-mail.
When I dumped social media two years ago, I gave my "friends" my e-mail address.
Now, instead of getting an endless stream of reposted political image captions and photos of people's lunches I get messages about the things that are actually worth seeing: news about family, friends, life events, funny stories — all without the dross and anger-inducing cruft of a social media "feed."
E-mail has all of the benefits of social media: photos, group chat, near-instant delivery; with none of the drawbacks: tracking, advertising, stalking, third-party influences.
More importantly, what happened is that I found out who my actual friends are. I think the whole social media "friends" button has cheapened the word. We don't make a distinction between friends, acquaintances, associates, and people we just know. Your real friends will e-mail you.
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#28DuckDuckGo and nothing.
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#29what's a good alternative to gmail?
Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
#30(As someone working on an actual alternative to Facebook,) this article seems to mention FB but only really present Google alternatives. That said, I've switched all my default search engines to DDG, which would be even more great if I didn't have to type -yelp for most of my searches.
> working on an actual alternative to Facebook
Ditto, would love to hear what direction you're taking it in?