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Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

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Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#501

Post by wizzwizz4 »

pyrale wrote: post #449
ekianjo wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the same thing for anything based outside of the US. You think China-based services don't have the CCP spy on their users, like TikTok?

You can't really compare the US, an active empire with documented testimonies of spying on individuals and, e.g. Ireland, Switzerland or most other european countries. At some point, if China is the comparison point you always cite when someone talks about the US, it starts to seem like they are actually comparable.

The US has done a better job at convincing me they won't hurt me. I have no idea why I believe them, though.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#502

Post by wizzwizz4 »

chalst wrote: post #494
mastazi wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. In those cases where DuckDuckGo is not enough, just append !sp to your search, this will tell DDG to redirect your search to StartPage which is essentially a proxied Google search (the results come from Google but you as a user don't get in direct contact with Google itself).

I think Google's invasion of privacy can be regarded as a kind of "symbiotic parasitism" - they are able to leverage the information they harvest from you to improve search quality. A proxy won't give as good results as letting Google spy on you.

They show you results more like those they think you'll want. Woe betide you if you search political things; you'll be trapped in a partisan political filter bubble.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#503

Post by wizzwizz4 »

jeffbee wrote: post #351
Sebb767 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? [...] the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox They're both for-profit US companies saving your data overseas, so yes, for your last point it doesn't matter much. However, there are two advantages: 1) You're giving your data to a company aiming to sell you storage space vs a company which tries to make…

> selfhosting surely is the superior solution. You go on to partly refute this, but not strongly enough. Self-hosting is clearly inferior in major objective measures: availability, durability, and security. Unless you spend all of your time managing your personal storage solution, self-hosting will be far inferior in these respects, and probably also in cost if a true accounting of time is included.

Not so.

Availability: Raspberry Pi plus USB battery pack is more available than the Internet, since when my home power's down my Internet connection goes.

Durability: Have you ever heard of a Raspberry Pi dying?

Security:

  sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
  echo "0 4 * * * reboot" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab
And all the functionality's available through Nextcloud. It's easier to set up than a Facebook account, and easier to maintain than a Google account.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#504

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

ryantgtg wrote: post #327
gonehome wrote: post #17

I dropped all google services and it wasn’t that hard. The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your new email (I switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail). Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this took me an entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-software company account management is. On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets you do…

A few months ago I started an Etsy shop, but I couldn’t create an account using a fastmail address. I got an “unknown error.” And the help desk suggested I use a more mainstream email service. That solution worked, and then I switched it to fastmail. But this goes to show how basic the opsec is for some companies. Similarly with Twitter, each time I create a dev account for a bot, if I use fastmail my account will ge…

> I’m not sure why they think that bad actors can’t also sign up for a Gmail account

Because it requires a phone number? Or does fastmail do too?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#505

Post by playpause »

I switched from Gmail to using my own domain via ProtonMail. I persisted about 6 months with its terrible UX. Tried Mailfence next, same problem, lived with piss-poor UX for a few months before giving up. (I used Mailfence mainly with Apple Mail via IMAP, which was OK, but I frequently had to log in to their web interface to tweak settings etc, and it’s awful.)

Looked at a few others, but my need for a reasonable UX pushed me back to Gmail last year, this time with my own domain on G Suite (I figured paying a fee means I’m marginally better protected from account lockouts and other Google shenanigans, and at least I can take the domain with me when I leave). It’s so nice not to be constantly battling with email these days. But... in the back of my mind I do still want to get my email off Google. For privacy, control, and because I think getting off other Google services will be easier after that.

If I’m going to put the effort into switching again, I feel it might as well be to a somewhat privacy-focused email service (preferably not located in Australia or any jurisdiction that could force the company to break their own privacy guarantees without telling me). It doesn’t need to replicate Gmail’s feature set perfectly — I’m willing to put time into learning a whole different approach to email if necessary, but only if the UX/design is coherent and inspires confidence. Has anyone with similar requirements got any recommendations?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#506

Post by amelius »

chalst wrote: post #491
fakedang wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can agree with Bing but DDG is plain horrible for searches. It's basically just Google page 2+ results on Page 1. Outlook decided it would be a nice idea to change my "Thank you" signature to an emoji in a business casual email. For mobile, I use an Android for all the apps I can't avoid not having, but otherwise I resort to Blackberry like the old coot I am. My Q10 is still reliable af.

I made the switch to DDG as my first search engine of choice a couple of years ago and when I am dissatisfied with my DDG searches, I usually compare them to !g and !b searches and find they are only infrequently much better. I think it takes time to learn how best to query DDG. I originally started to use DDG when Google buried Google Scholar queries and I found using the !gsc query more convenient than working with…

I just wish DDG would make the bang options available as a button, so I wouldn't have to type them on mobile. Adding "!g" to an existing query requires 7 taps, versus just 1 for a button (!)

I guess I'm stuck with Google search.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#507

Post by [deleted] »

XCSme wrote: post #70
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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#508

Post by swiley »

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…

It’s not the data collection that made me want to leave, it’s:

1) your account can randomly disappear so you shouldn’t depend on it. Not just for political reasons but things like password reset using a heuristic that can fail leaving you permanently locked out.

2) the abusive anticompetitive behavior was starting to affect me directly.

3) very recently google has started deleting private data containing content they don’t like

If you leave over just the data collection that’s extremely noble IMO. In most cases that’s something that affects everyone around you more than it affects you.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#510

Post by browsergap »

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…

I think it 's part of controlling the narrative. What if the big corps were actually behind the fetishization of and obsession with privacy and data collection? What if it acts as a distraction or cover for whatever other negative initiatives they might take? If they can control the opposition to focus on "privacy and my data versus big corp" it's a win. I think controlled opposition is an essential part of narrative management and PR strategy for entities that are large or sophisticated enough.
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