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Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

degoogle.jmoore.dev

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Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#591

Post by pyrale »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #501
pyrale wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Better than whom ? Do you seriously think that Switzerland is after you ?

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#592

Post by fibers »

pineaux wrote: post #500
switch11 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kudos absolutely great to see you do this I moved off Google after they started doing some strange things with our adwords accounts Anyways Agree with you on this -> The only google service that is really relevant and hard to replace is YouTube. Google's earnings from ads went down last quarter. First quarter that has ever happened They are definitely at risk of becoming Yahoo 2.0. The only thing is the immense amoun…

Why use epic and edge when you can haves Firefox? My experience with Mozilla has always been great. It might be marginally slower than chrome, but I don't notice and they have great features and it's open source

because the impending layoffs that mozilla is incurring in light of covid means it's very bad for development and bug tracking. i've been using firefox for several years and that part is kinda worrying.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#593

Post by pydry »

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #533
granzymes wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they go after the people who have tried to hide themselves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I think this is a very odd thing to structure a life around, but then again I've never understood any kind of doomsday prepping.

I totally agree with you because things just don't work like that. When Nazis came my grand father was a teenager. A lot of local chads believed in them and joined SS and did all the dirty work. Then when soviets came these chads were afraid that they will be prosecuted for murdering Jews so they did the only logical thing - joined soviet milicija. What basically made them untouchable. My grand father's brother ran a…

>What people should understand that this "fascist government" will be sitting in DC. They will not be sending somebody from DC to Minnesota because "someguy at gmail dot com" wrote something against them. How inefficient that would be.

It'll be easy as pie. The data is there in an easily consumable format. The tools exist to categorize and find undesirables. Tools exist which can be used to rank you in terms of desirability.

DC won't sent somebody to Minnesota because of what you wrote in a gmail alone. However, what you wrote in gmails would likely contribute to a "social scoring system" which would be used against you.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#594

Post by tfsh »

freediver wrote: post #574

I genuinly wonder - what does go through the heads of those 100,000 very smart people that work at Google, many of them reading this forum, when they read a thread like this? Do they think 'oh it is HN again', do they discard this as irrelevant noise, do they know something that all the people posting here don't, do they still strongly believe in their mission, or do they get a gut-wrenching feeling that one day it m…

Usually irrelevant noise, I'm a realist - the company I work for is big, there will be people who oppose what it does, how it operates, even it's very existance. Granted there are genuine reasons why you'd want to cut bigtech out your life, it isn't an ambition I share.

To answer another part of your question - I strongly believe in my mission, I consider what I do at Google helps people, that said I'm not deluded, I'm partly helping to sell ads, but that doesn't detract from my primary objectives or the beneficial impact of my work.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#595

Post by jackson1442 »

chapium wrote: post #587
dt3ft wrote: post #575

I read a story where someone lost access to their google account and had to go through living hell to get the access back. Reaching a human for support was outright impossible. Privacy was not that big a deal for me, but if I had lost access to my email for any reason, I would have had zero rights to demand what is mine - because nothing is really mine, as I have never paid for the service, so I was never a customer…

Recovering a gmail account is pretty impossible, at least that story had a happy ending.

I mean honestly, I don't mind that as long as it isn't a problem concerning recovering your account after an account takeover. If a potential hijacker can't get into my account through social engineering, great.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#596

Post by reaperducer »

kodt wrote: post #563
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ea…

When your house burns down?

Your house is less likely to burn down than Google is to cancel a service you use.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#597

Post by miguelrochefort »

aftbit wrote: post #227

Google Voice is the hardest service for me to replace. I don't see any alternatives on this list. I appreciate that they let me seamlessly send and receive calls and texts from my Android phone or my desktop. I have a hard requirement that my phone should be optional for all parts of my communication workflow.

That's an easy one. Just use a VoIP service like https://VoIP.ms.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#598

Post by iExploder »

faanghacker wrote: post #581
freediver wrote: post #574

I genuinly wonder - what does go through the heads of those 100,000 very smart people that work at Google, many of them reading this forum, when they read a thread like this? Do they think 'oh it is HN again', do they discard this as irrelevant noise, do they know something that all the people posting here don't, do they still strongly believe in their mission, or do they get a gut-wrenching feeling that one day it m…

I'm just stashing cash until I reach FIRE. Don't care about the mission.

does it ever bother you to be building the next skynet? no hate, but I wonder if people @ google really think about what kind of world and future they are building with their actions...

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#599

Post by judge2020 »

Maximus9000 wrote: post #572
jonny_wonny wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That had nothing to do with tracking. Cambridge Analytica was able to gain access to large amounts of data that people had created while using Facebook as it is intended to be used. Even if no one was being tracked, the exploitation could have occurred.

> Cambridge Analytica was able to gain access to large amounts of data that people had created while using Facebook as it is intended to be used. That's debatable. CA either bent the rules or broke the rules to get a lot of that info. In many cases, CA was able to get not just the target's info, but all of their friends info too. Facebook was either incompetent or complicit in allowing this to happen. > Even if no on…

> What do you mean? How could CA work without any data?

Tracking, in this context, means tracking behavior across other websites. CA got data that was created simply by having a Facebook account and friending other people (they used oauth/login with Facebook). Facebook would have to not have existed, or not provide as much data to third party applications, to prevent their collection.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#600

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #506
chalst wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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