Right now a lot of us are trying to divest and diversify from having our entire lives on Google both because of the way Google spends its money and the long-standing privacy concerns seeming a bit more scary now.
What services have you switched to and what has your experience been? What do you like, what don’t you like, would you recommend them?
The #1 Google service/app that I used in the past was Google Maps. I’ve replaced it with Magic Earth for the last few years and it’s been great. It uses Open Street Map for its navigation data, handles addresses very well, has live crowd-sourced traffic and hazard data, and can record rolling footage if you want it to act like a dashcam.
It works on Android and iOS, and supports Apple watch and Android car play if you use those.
For email I use Protonmail, for Google drove I use Proton Drive and my own self hosted NAS. For browsing I use several different Firefox forks like Zen, Floorp, LibreWolf, etc. UnGoogled Chromium for the rare times that a website “needs” Chrome to run.
My phone runs GrapheneOS which works great.
I’ll have to check out Magic Earth. My biggest fear switching from Google Maps was not having up to date road closures or accident reports.
The traffic data, at least in my area of the US, is pretty good.
Road closures are a rough point for sure. Generally, Magic Earth does have them marked, but not always. And the map data is only updated once a month. So even if a new closure does show up on Magic Earth, it takes several weeks to a month.
This isn’t a terrible issue for me in my area, because I know the major roads and highways decently well, but when in other states or cities, it can be a problem.
That being said, it’s still about 80% accurate on the whole. And on rare occasion, it has actually had a closure marked correctly that Google Maps didn’t.
I use F-Droid and Aurora Store on my phone and replaced the Google apps, that came preloaded on the phone, with FOSS apps. NewPipe on my phone and FreeTube on my PC to replace YouTube. I don’t use Gmail. My Google account is on a Proton account. After I am sure I have all my desired apps switched over to email sign in, I will delete the Google account. I am also switching my Proton mail for Tuta mail. Proton is on the wrong side. I also dumped Microsoft over a year ago. I have been on Linux since then. I have avoided FaceBook for over a decade and never maintained a Twitter account.
I recommend, as a bonus, to use Universal Android Debloater, it has an easy to understand GUI and it uses AndroidDebugBridge to connect to the phone via USB. It shows all the installed apps, recommends with various tiers the apps that are worth uninstalling - every app has a helpful description - and blitzes the fuckers. System or factory bloat isn’t safe from it.
I fucked off Google Photos and now run Immich from a Raspberry Pi with raid 1 SSDs.
Google Search -> Ecosia, Qwant Browser -> Vivaldi Mail, Calender -> Proton* Drive -> Proton* DNS -> Quad9 Notes -> Joplin VPN -> Proton LLM/AI -> Mistral Translate -> DeepL Maps -> Here We Go Dall-E etc -> Stability Matrix Kindle -> Pocketbook
*Planning to move everything to a NAS with Nextcloud and synch in with Jottacloud as a backup.
I see from the “View source” option that your comment has everything in a neat, line-by-line fashion, though the final markup is decidedly not.
So, a pro-tip I’ve noticed from my own commenting experience: even if you have a line break, Lemmy (for some stupid reason) won’t apply one when rendering; so if you want it to show, you have to use two line breaks, though then there will be an extra half-line or so that you probably never wanted.
For example, don’t do
Line Item 1 Line Item 2but rather do
Line Item 1 Line Item 2Yes, I agree it’s rather stupid.
It’s the way Markdown works, for reasons, which is what Lemmy uses for its comment syntax.
If you want a regular line
break, you can put two spaces
at the end of a line.Yeah I know, and I don’t like that limitation. Lol. xD
Yeah, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense here. Codeberg uses a Markdown flavor which honors single line breaks and it kind of surprised me how well that is working. Like, if you’re used to Markdown, you can put those two spaces and they’re just ignored. If you’re not used to Markdown, it works like you’d expect.
I guess, the downside is that either each client needs to configure their Markdown renderer to behave like that, or I guess, the server software has to pre-process the Markdown to add in the double-spaces.
That’s more of a problem for Lemmy than it is for Codeberg, because there is a number of different clients available.Jerboa vs. the website do different things since they render Markdown differently. Markdown itself is so spartan that it doesn’t have many things users want or need, so a bunch of incompatible forks get made & everyone just pretends it is all the same when in reality, it often lies on a single tool’s implementation.
Take AsciiDoc with its verse directive or reStructuredText with its line-block directive. Both get you poetry-style newlines on demand & are a part of the spec instead of left to the implementer.
Didn’t know that Codeberg did that. I’ll have to add that to my list of reasons why I love Codeberg. Lol.
Holy shit I’ve been using markdown message boards for years and
you just blew my mind
My selfhosted Nextcloud does:
- Cloud storage (including photo storage)
- Contact/Calendar/Task Sync (DAV Droid)
- Notes
- Podcast subscription and progress sync (gpodder)
While I use OSMAnd for offline navigation MAPS is still my go-to for navigation/discovering places.
My phone is currently running stock Android
What podcast apps do you use with gPodder?
Honestly I just use AntennaPod on Android. I’ve used Gpodder Desktop before but I don’t really listen to podcasts on desktop… So I don’t really need the sync but it’s nice to have especially if you’re moving phones/OS
Regarding AntennaPod it’s honestly the perfect podcast app it does everything (chapters/chapter images …) I want from a podcast app and it’s open source
ProtonMail was the GMail alternative for awhile, until Proton CEO did a stupid move. Otherwise, ProtonMail had actually been a great service and it was nice having a data cap of 500MB. It told me that was all I ever needed for the few years I had with it.
Firefox Forks over Chrome.
Tuta also has a free tie up to 1GB. Been slowly switching over for a few years. It isn’t perfect and you can only use the first party app for “security” but tuta supports a ton of privacy efforts within the EU also
What happened with Proton?
Proton CEO endorsed Trump. Proton’s stance has always been against Big Tech and how Big Tech is bad and that’s all well and good. But, it’s contradicting when you praise or endorse an administration that’s more than likely going to let Big Tech roll over everyone.
Was out of the loop on that so I just did the most cursory search. What do you think of this take on it?
Could this be an attempt to clean the proton name? I think it’s difficult to say anything when it comes from a source I know nothing about.
Poor article with it attempting to be a character fluff piece that completely ignores that after working at the FTC, Slater become the vice-president for legal and regulatory policy for the Internet Association lobby group. Which was founded by “small business” like Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
And involved in trying to infringe upon privacy rights. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/lawmakers-must-not-let-internet-association-weaken-california-consumer-privacy-act
I never saw anyone try to claim that he was MAGA. Even if he doesn’t necessarily support Trump, the tweet is still beyond tone-deaf as it’s still painting Trump in a positive light while Trump is trampling on our rights and the constitution.
Edit -
It should also be mentioned that Trump is also actively making things worse for privacy everywhere else, so why even bother cherry-picking that one nomination? It’s obvious that the way Trump works is that if you don’t follow his word he will just fire you. Even if this nomination may have a past that might show they would do some good things for privacy, if you’re not a pawn under Trump’s control then you will just be replaced. So the whole point is moot.Additionally, look at the tweet in question “Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” There is zero excuse for praising the Republican party and somehow not supporting Trump. They are directly connected and the two concepts cannot be divorced. Supporting the Republican party in any way literally means supporting Trump. Full stop.
He also conveniently ignored that after working at the FTC, Slater become the vice-president for legal and regulatory policy for the Internet Association lobby group. Which was founded by “small business” like Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
And involved in trying to infringe upon privacy rights. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/lawmakers-must-not-let-internet-association-weaken-california-consumer-privacy-act
So yeah, proton founder cherry picked information that tried to make it seem like it was acceptable to praise the pick when reality is the past is too murky to endorse in any manner. And that medium article that gets floated around ignores Internet Association too, so wouldn’t be shocking if it was from proton attempting to do PR damage fixating on identity politics with intentional omission of Internet Association involvement.
Proton CEO endorsed Trump
This is a blatant lie. That never happened.
Not a blatant lie, but somewhat of an exaggeration. He praised Trump, then praised the Republican party while denigrating the Democrats in the same sentence.
I tried to minimize my dependency on Google by signing up for various email services like Petal Mail by Huawei, Proton Mail, and Yandex Mail. I also tried to find smartphones that don’t have Google by default, such as Murena smartphones and Huawei smartphones. But it seems like it’s too late to look for those gems without Google because I have so many apps that I bought on Google, amounting to around five digits in Malaysian Ringgit, which is not cheap. So I think I’ll stay with Google for now, sadly.
These are what I use:
Browsers: Fennec, LibreWolf
Email Clients: K-9, Fair Email, Proton Mail, Thunderbird
Pictures: Fossify Camera, Fossify Gallery
File Sharing: Proton Drive
YouTube: Tubular
SMS Messaging: Textra (It’s not FOSS, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a FOSS app in existence that shows the actual name of the person who’s sent the message in group chats. They just show an icon, which isn’t enough for me to keep track)
App store: Droid-ify (F-Droid), Aurora Store
Password Manager: Bitwarden
eBook Reader: Librera FD
Books: Bookwyrm
Translation: LibreTranslator
Calendar: Proton Calendar
What I can’t find good alternatives for:
YouTube itself - enough said
Phone screen translation - I still use Google Assistant, and I’m not aware of anything else that grabs and translates all text on my phone screen
Maps - Rant time. This one is so annoying because there are FOSS navigation apps based on OpenStreetMap that are excellent in every way except one that makes them unusable for me: Using POV navigation instead of observing the convention of up = north. I did find one that lets you maintain a normal map view during navigation, but it doesn’t keep your position centered automatically, which makes it impossible to use while driving. I have no idea who all you deranged people are who actually like the POV navigation, but there are definitely a lot of you because I can’t find a replacement for Google Maps. I even tried Mapquest because at least it’s not Google, but when I tried using it to navigate the first time, it somehow autocorrected “St” to “Ave” and I ended up lost lol. This maps situation really grinds my gears. I do still try to contribute as much as I can to OSM though because it’s an important project, and hopefully someday an uninsane developer will make a proper alternative to Google Maps.
Interesting, I’ve had the exact opposite problem with Osmand last summer: Could not get it to use POV mode (not smart enough to navigate otherwise when cycling), it was always stuck on North Is Up (there’s a button to change that on the upper left corner which they now changed to click and hold so I have my hopes up that it’ll work now).
I’m pretty sure Osmand centers the map in North Is Up mode but I’m not 100% certain.
I wonder if Osmand is the one I tried that was so close to being usable for me, but didn’t keep my location centered when North was up. I spent a day trying everything I could find, so I can’t recall exactly. I’ll give it a go though and see if it works.
I don’t think you’ll have much trouble finding one that works the way you want it because everything I tried used POV as the default for some perplexing reason. (Like if I was facing East for example, then East was up.)
FreeTube is a good replacement for YouTube on PC and NewPipe is good on Android phones.
Yeah Tubular is basically NewPipe with Sponsorblock. I’ll give Freetube a try.
What I mean though is … it’s still YouTube, y’know?
Oh, and I go back and forth between Sear XNG and Startpage for search engine. I know Startpage is Bad, but there’s no search engine in existence that really makes me happy.
Would you mind hitting us with a direct link to tubular? This is one of the biggest hindrances to getting completely off google
I use Ad Nauseum. Why degoogle when you can actively cost them money?
It seems interesting
What’s Ad Nauseum? What does it do and why do you like it?
As per their website:
As online advertising becomes ever more ubiquitous and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating ad clicks universally and blindly on behalf of its users. Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks’ databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile
Firefox.
Immich for photos
Radicale for calendar and contacts
My own mail domain and server, for mail
Lineages on android
The only thing I cannot do without, is google maps.
Here’s my list:
- Proton Mail: super painless to migrate over and a very similar user experience. Feels good knowing that Google can’t read my emails and that they can’t be subpoenaed by our insane government. Highly recommend. There’s a free plan that offers 1GB of storage but I went straight to a paid account so I can’t speak to that.
- Proton Pass: LOVE this. It was easy to import my passwords from LastPass and Google. The best feature is the “hide my email alias” which on my plan I can make unlimited ones. It’s basically making an anonymous throwaway email that automatically forwards to your inbox. If you start getting junk mail you can see who sold your address, but also with one click you can delete it if it gets compromised. It’s basically the equivalent of making a bunch of different Google accounts but way easier.
- Proton Drive: It came with my subscription but I haven’t gotten that deep into it yet. It has a Docs alternative but not Sheets which I use a lot, so I’m hoping they develop something like that. Otherwise like a lot like drive. It’s technically a photo backup too but the interface is trash (see next item). My goal is to get enough transferred that I can cancel my Google One subscription and maybe just use that for Sheets as needed.
- Ente Photos: Cloud-based photo backup. I’m slowly getting my photos transferred over but it seems to be pretty user friendly. It has some but not all of the features of Google Photos, like organizing by faces.
- Brave Search: They have a browser too but I’m just using the search in Firefox at the moment. I like that it’s not based on Google’s index but it sometimes means the results are not quite as good. Honestly for the payoff of not being algorithmed to death I’m fine with that.
I have moved away from Google Contacts and Google Calendar and am now using Synology Calendar/Contacts. I’ve left Google Drive for Synology Drive and I’ve left Google Photos for Synology Photos. Everything is self hosted and self maintained.
https://cartes.app/ is a new kid on the block to replaces Gmaps, looks very cool bit is also very alpha atm. But I’ll keep checking it, it has some very cool features already (French only atm which I don’t speak at all but it’s still super usable.)
Mail: Posteo Maps: osmand for walking, hiking, cycling, skiing and magic earth for car navigation (because of real live traffic) Drive: nextcloud Phone: second Hand Google pixel with graphene OS installed (degiogled Android)
There are like 10 communities called something like privacy and a couple with degoogle in their name specifically. If you need more alternatives check them out. ;)
Other than Fediverse apps/websites, and F-droid for FOSS, I have switched to ProtonVPN and their encrypted emails.
Yes, I switched to Proton as well and so far it’s been really painless. Proton pass in particular is amazing.
It was a little hard to pay the real value for something I’ve gotten used to being so heavily subsidized, but I just am reminding myself that it’s because they’re not making money off of my data.
I just wish Proton Mail had a “send as” feature for mailboxes where you don’t own the domain.
