this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023

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How much of your life have you degoogled? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by frogman to c/technology

261 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We're reaching the end of an era wherein billions of dollars of investor money was shovelled into tech startups to build large user-bases, and now those companies (now monoliths) are beginning to constrict their user-bases and squeeze for every single penny they can possibly extract. Fair or not.

Now more than ever, it's important for us to step back and reconsider whether we want to be billboards for these companies anymore.

For anyone unfamiliar, some good resources to have when starting your degoogling journey are below:

Privacy Guides - A list of privacy-respecting services you can use.

Plexus - A crowdsourced information bank of service compatibility with degoogled devices.

This random PDF - A study from 2018 detailing data that Google tracks about its' users.

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[–] clearedtoland@lemmy.fmhy.ml 49 points 1 year ago (4 children)

So um…how do I show the lemmyverse that this is a really important post without the shiny meaningless gold coin?

[–] sweBers@lemmy.fmhy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

Interact, share. Be positive.

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

idk. Try writing a poem?

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 8 points 1 year ago

I can write poetry, so I asked a new friend:

In the realm of tech's changing tide,
Where billions flowed like an endless ride,
Investor money, a torrent's stream,
Built startups bright with a lofty dream.

But now, the era draws to a close,
As monoliths emerge, the story goes.
They tighten their grip, a vice-like hold,
Squeezing pennies from users, bold and cold.

Fair or not, the question arises,
Do we still want to wear their disguises?
Are we mere billboards, a canvas for their name,
Or can we reclaim our autonomy, break free from the game?

In this pivotal moment, we must pause,
Reconsider, question, and find our cause.
To degoogling, a path unfolds,
Where privacy and freedom firmly hold.

Privacy Guides, a beacon of light,
Leading us to services that respect our right.
No longer pawns in their data-collecting scheme,
We seek alternatives that make our souls gleam.

Plexus, a treasure trove of shared knowledge,
Mapping compatibility beyond the edge.
A community united, hand in hand,
Building a future where we take a stand.

And in that random PDF, a study's gaze,
Unveiling the truth in Google's data maze.
Awareness dawns, eyes open wide,
As we uncover the layers they've tried to hide.

So let us step back, reassess our role,
As users, as consumers, with a collective goal.
To break free from the clutches that bind,
Embrace a future where our privacy we find.

For the era of user exploitation wanes,
And in its place, a new dawn remains.
Where we reclaim our voices, make choices anew,
And shape a world where fairness rings true.

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[–] allonsyeet@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 year ago

Upvote i guess ❤️🍓

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

🪙🪙

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Just your two cents lol

[–] thayer@lemmy.ca 47 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

It's been a long time in the making, but I've finally degoogled and largely removed all proprietary software from my personal life. I know this topic is pretty well covered here and elsewhere so just to add to the list of others, here's where I'm at these days:

OS: Fedora (Silverblue) Linux (w/ AMD Radeon GPU)
Email: Thunderbird w/ hosted email over IMAP
Calendar/Contacts: Radicale instance w/ DAVx⁵ on Android
Storage: Syncthing
Web: Firefox
Search: Startpage and DuckDuckGo mostly, but still use Google and Bing on occasion
IM: Signal
Desktop productivity: LibreOffice when I need it (Collabora Office on Android)
Notes: Vim, VS Code (Markor on Android); most of my "docs" are just plain text files written in markdown
Passwords: KeepassXC/DX
Code editor: Vim, VS Code
GrapheneOS on mobile, with almost entirely FOSS apps
Kindle e-book reader with management via Calibre
Media managed by Kodi with a raspberry pi
Proxmox hypervisor for Windows/Linux VMs and containers

Gaming under Linux has improved unbelievably these past few years, now that Steam is contributing with their Steam Deck platform. I used to have to dual-boot Windows to keep up with the latest titles, but I wiped it about a year ago and things have been great.

I still rely on Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop for some tasks, but less so now than ever before. Unfortunately, my work will always be a Windows-only environment.

[–] PR_freak@vlemmy.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

How has a self hosted imap been treating you?

I heard some pretty brutal stories, like big email providers just refusing emails from self hosted servers

[–] dtc@lemmy.pt 7 points 1 year ago

I self-host my own mail server. I don't send many emails, but they seem to be arriving correctly whenever I do at the moment, but it wasn't always like this. I've properly setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC, which helps a lot, but my IP address was blacklisted on some servers from a previous owner I guess. I have a VPS from OVH. I had to manually fill out some forms to get Microsoft Outlook to accept emails from my server. Despite that, it has been working flawlessly. I have my own domain since 2017, and I'd say the age of the domain is also important.

[–] aeternum@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Not OP, but I used to self host email. I gave up because both google and microsoft, the two big players in email, refused to deliver my mail to anywhere but spam/junk. I had DKIM, SPF and DMARC set up, with reverse DNS set up correctly. So I gave up. Now I use a privacy friendly email provider (paid)

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[–] rmicielski@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have to just be sure that you at least know about demicrosofted VS Code, VS Codium

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[–] lpslucasps@lemmy.pt 35 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I used to rely almost exclusively on Google for almost anything online. Fortunately, I'm much less dependent on Google and their services now. I'm even self-hosting some of my own services nowadays!

Search engine: Ecosia and DuckDuckGo
E-mail: Protonmail
File storage: Nextcloud (selfhosted)
Online Office Suite: Nextcloud Office (selfhosted)
Maps: OpenStreetMaps
2FA App: Aegis
Translator: DeepL
Notes and Tasks: Obsidian.md
Calendar: An actual wall calendar :)

Every single one of these apps/services used to be provided by google, so I think it's safe to say I've come a long way!

Of course, things could be better. I still use Google Contacts for synchronizing my, hum, contacts. I also use YouTube quite a bit, but as a paying customer my experience with it is just fine. I also use gboard on my phone — for bilingual speakers there's just no good alternative, imho. And, finally, I download/update most of my phone apps through Google Play.

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[–] pztrn@bin.pztrn.online 17 points 1 year ago

100% degoogled. Everything is selfhosted, except for Telegram. Even at job :)

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The biggest thing I de-Googled was gmail. I had my own domain already so it wasn't tough to move (to my web hosting provider's included email service).

I switched to Firefox+uBO from Chrome.

They de-Googled RSS for me (now on Newsblur).

Things I still use:

Drive for backups (but have a local backup in case their AI bans me)
YouTube Premium (I hate ads)
Contacts (Cardbook addon for Thunderbird works well with this)
Calendar (Thunderbird supports natively)
Keep (Shared shopping list)
Pixel phone (I don't really care for Apple, either)

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[–] themizarkshow@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I moved off a while ago at this point... I still have to use some of it because of work being on G-Suites but otherwise my personal stuff has moved.

Email: Hey & ProtonMail
Storage: Dropbox
Notes: SimpleNotes & Obsidian.md
Chat: Telegram & Matrix/Element
2FA: ProtonPass (as of yesterday, Authy before that)
Passwords: 1Password
Other: Apple stuff mostly

[–] evilviper 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is the proton pass 2FA? I saw they have that it haven't gotten around to switching from Authy yet.

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[–] cavemeat 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I have slowly but surely moved everything important off google. My main email is a proton mail now, and I changed my pixel for a oneplus :).

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[–] bug@lemmy.one 14 points 1 year ago

Proton's services, Cryptomator, Invideous, GrapheneOS, a handful of apps from f-droid.

Also, quick plug - !privacyguides@lemmy.one is the official Privacy Guides community on Lemmy!

[–] Rainhall@feddit.online 13 points 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo got a shoutout from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds this week. Much smoother than Hawaii Five-Oh's "Bing it."

[–] thaedrus 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I have started to degoogle bits and pieces. I self-host the majority of the services I need and really enjoyed the journey so far since I learned so much. I am approaching the stage in my life where I have less time to spend on personal hobbies so I fear this path may not be sustainable. In my opinions here are the pros and cons.

Pros:

Full control of my data
Pick the ideal tool from the open source community
Learning experience
Engagement with community

Cons:

Technical knowledge needed to setup and maintain self-hosted tools
Self-hosted environments have security risks (best to put everything behind VPN)
Disparate tools don't connect together (requires additional automation configuration)
Additional costs for services including and not limited to: domain name, email, backup storage, self-host server hardware, VPN, and donations to devs
Higher personal downtime due to lacking features, server and service maintenance
Time sink to learn, research, general devops of tools, maintenance of server

Key services to name a few:

File storage - Nextcloud
File sync - Syncthing
Office - Nextcloud + Collabora
Email - Mailfence
Photos - Photoprism

So far there are more negatives than positives, but the positives still outweigh negatives. I do have to say degoogling is getting easier than before.

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[–] TeaEarlGrayHot@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

I've been running my own Nextcloud instance since 2020, which, combined with ProtonMail, has replaced basically everything I was using Google/Microsoft for

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[–] tokadorium@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Only apps by Google I use are gboard, gmail and translator. If someone knows well designed alternatives please share.

[–] tranceFusion@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Fastmail is fantastic from a user experience perspective, though depending on your privacy demands it may not pass the test.

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[–] StandardIssueCalzone@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nobody has mentioned a translator alternative so I would recommend DeepL, though what they collect for data I don't entirely know so go with caution

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[–] MasterCelebrator@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

For Mail i reccommend proton. They also offer cloud, calendar, VPN and recently a password Manager. You can also use their simplelogin Service which Provides alias Mails. These can be used so that you dont have to give your real mail Adress to online Services and so on.

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[–] lividhen@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Just switched from Google photos to photoprism. It's pretty awesome! It only took 8 hours to index and label my 17500~ photos (not including the week and a half Google Takeout took). That was the big one for me. Not I am slowly working through all my other google/centralized services and seeing if there are self hosted or decentralized alternatives.

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[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I degoogled by switching to an iPhone 😅 DuckDuckGo is my default search engine.

[–] McBinary@midwest.social 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is a sacrifice I'm not willing to make. Yikes!

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'd argue that Apple is the lesser evil when it comes to privacy 😁

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[–] sculd 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Basically degoogled except YouTube because content creators are on that platform. Also occasionally needs to use Google search because DDG sometimes doesn't work.

[–] wgs@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 year ago

You might want to check invidous, it's a youtube frontend you can use to browse youtube anonymously.

[–] code_is_speech@lemmy.fmhy.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

LineageOS for microg: degoogled android. DuckDuckGo: search. Firefox: web browser. Ublock origin: ad blocker. Proton: email. OsmAnd+: maps.

Only google product I still use is youtube, but I have made some efforts here:

On desktop pc I use firefox with sponserblock and ublock origin to hide ads and automatically skip sponsered content. I also have an addon called unhook, which hides recommendations, 'people also watched' etc.

I also use and recommend Odysee as a youtube alternative.

On my TV I use SmartTubeNext, on my phone I use revanced.

I host my own music server with navidrome (and my own video media server with Jellyfin). But when I dont have access to that, I also use ViMusic as a youtube music replacement for (degoogled) android.

Can absolutely recommend any and all of the tools I listed.

[–] pandaontoast 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The only thing I still hold onto my account for is YouTube. I pay for mailbox.org which covers email, calendar and cloud stuff. Their website could be better but the service is quality and their privacy policy is tight. When I was on android I used a bunch of custom roms with microg. My favourite ended up being calyxos but they all had a little jank here or there. I dearly miss NewPipe for android as a replacement for the official youtube app.

Edit: I also pay for Kagi for search. The price is a bit steep but I have found it justifiable in terms of the value I get from it. Whoogle and Searx are good options too

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[–] PiselloSauro@feddit.it 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Basically outside of Youtube I don’t use any Google service. Started by migrating to Kagi search, and while it requires a subscription, its a price I am willing to pay for a search engine that actually work good.

Everything else I use a mix of FOSS and subscription services.

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[–] christophski@feddit.uk 7 points 1 year ago

Not nearly enough. I use DDG as my search now and I have always used Firefox.

I use an android phone, I use Gmail and Google calendar extensively. I use Google photos. I use Google drive for documents.

I have just ordered a mini-pc to replace my raspberry pi, I hope it is powerful enough to host nextcloud so I can use that for documents instead of Google docs. And I will look for a Google photos alternative.

I want to turn off location history in my Google account but I like having the history so I am looking for an alternative. I found a self hosted location history project years ago but I can't find it now.

[–] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee 7 points 1 year ago

I do not have a Google account, so no Gmail address, I do not use Play Store, and I do not use YouTube website.

[–] Segin@vlemmy.net 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Outside of work I’ve degoogled with the exception of google calendar (shared family google calendar so that would need to bring everyone along with me!) and unfortunately the google Wi-Fi/nests.

I would like to swap out the google Wi-Fi but it just seems like such a lot of money to waste and they are working at the moment for the mesh Wi-Fi. I’ve just made sure to disable and opt out to as many of the google analytic tracking as possible.

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[–] coolin 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to be on GrapheneOS, but the drama with the developer plus mainly not being able to put my university ID on the wallet, forced me back on stock Android.

Besides Android, I use Google Play Store, YouTube, and Maps. For YouTube I've technically degoogled, using Invidious and NewPipe, but that's obviously still using Google services.

I really wish that digital payment didn't rely on two proprietary services (Google Wallet and Apple Wallet). It would be so much easier for phone companies to ship privacy friendly versions of Android if there was a FOSS alternative directly integrated into AOSP. I also wish apps didn't have to use Google service framework just to function, it seems stupid af. I don't think this will ever improve, so I'll probably end up on a true Linux phone whenever those catch up (2030 YEAR OF THE LINUX PHONE???)

We also need open collaboration on mapping. There is the OpenStreetMaps and Overture maps from Linux foundation, but those aren't really there yet unfortunately.

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[–] InterSynth@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've degoogled my life as much as I can, but it's almost impossible to completely ditch Google Maps, YouTube, and Android. So I'm not even sure I've done anything significant, because I assume they get pretty much everything from my phone.

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[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

As far as my PCs, I use a subscription service for email (fastmail.com). I'm still using the Chrome browser, but at some point I may have to go to Firefox for the sake of my uBlock Origin extension which I rely on heavily. Functionality of that extension on Chrome may be reduced at some point by the forced migration to Google's new extension platform (Manifest V3).

I have to have a Google account for my Android phone. I don't think I'll ever be able to get away from that. I mean you have two choices with phones, Android or iOS. I'm not going anywhere near Apple so Android is it. I've audited all my privacy settings in my Google account to minimize personal data, whether they actually honor those settings or not, who knows.

[–] averageshade@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Graphene os is a privacy based android operating system. They run containerized google instances, and severely restrict their view.

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[–] cnnrduncan 5 points 1 year ago

Currently the only Google services I use are accessed through open-source third-party implementations - in particular, Aurora Store, NewPipe, and SmartTubeNext! That said, nowadays I only use YouTube regularly and sometimes access their play store's servers on the rare occasion that I actually need to install/update a proprietary application.

[–] emmie 5 points 1 year ago

Lemmy definietly got me into degoogle and foss. Or rather latest reddit situation interested me in these concepts :p

I always liked the idea of decentralized web a lot but it wasn't until the reddit fall that it stopped being abstraction and instead there is a real platform it seems with a future

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