The hardest online privacy is not operating in a way that just links all your “private” activity because you logged in around enough places to link them together and at least one place somewhere can be linked to your real identity

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That is an issue that I imagine only being solved with a larger user base that banks don’t feel like they can ignore anymore

As the other guy mentioned, the website. All these apps are usually web wrappers anyways or some sort of cross platform software dev framework that does web/mobile so the website is usually pretty much the same as the apps

Just saw there’s a sort of large Lemmy degoogle community

https://lemmy.world/c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

Personally I think it’s a good start to just replace Google applications. Organic Maps over Google Maps. Proton Mail/Drive/VPN/Calendar over Google stuff. Firefox and forks over Chrome. Duckduckgo over Google search. After that you can maybe find an old old Google Pixel phone and then start flashing ROMs off XDA forums as practice before you try a newer more expensive phone

Just searched degoogle in Lemmy

https://lemmy.world/c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

There are levels to it. The advanced level is using a custom Android ROM for your phone that has no Google play services/apps on it and that’ll depend on what’s available for your phone from community ROM makers. You can see if any of these support your phone or plan any future phone of yours around these

https://itsfoss.com/android-distributions-roms/

An easier first step is just starting with non-Google apps. You can start with replacing Google apps like replace Maps with Organic Maps or something similar. Replace Gmail with something like Proton Mail. Same with calendar and cloud storage. Proton has alternatives. They even have an okay Google docs feature. Use a different search engine like duckduckgo rather than Google.

F-droid as an app store. Instead of Google authenticator use Aegis. Instead of Chrome use Firefox or a fork of it.

It’s difficult so a process over time of lessening dependency on Google applications

I swear all of this was predicted to happen by open source advocates of the 80s and they’d be called alarmists/whatever and then 30 years later you had Snowden leaks and all the surveillance bills and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all advertisement companies mining data through the software and devices they sell

The best people can do is just keep using and advocating for Linux adoption. Try out degoogled Android or a more traditional Linux phone device. Need more users and funding to get the software kinks worked out. They’re not as good as the high end Android and Apple stuff, but it’s a process

Ya it was pretty good. It was also pretty great for all the niche community groups. It had great photography, music, open source software, I remember Bernie Sanders was big early on on Google+ well before he ran for president. Google+ was the shit compared to Facebook/Instagram/Twitter. Google just fumbled by giving up on it too soon and not recognizing how good they had it with the photography and hobby interests groups. Their best shot at competing with Instagram and Twitter

I guess this bodes well for Proton becoming increasingly a Google One products replacement with more users potentially paying

I would guess Telegram if the users hit the toggle wherever it’s not default. After what you’ve listed and Telegram, I’d guess Matrix/Element

My favorite thing about these is that even though minipc’s with them are around $2000 now, someday they’ll be cheap and the Switch 2 is coming out and will probably be a ~10 year platform. Someday it’ll be a solid choice as a cheap entry into PC gaming

The crypto industry produces so little jobs. Just conceptually server farms that run single applications or pretty much marketing firms that make advertising coin dumps. Companies that employ single digit people locally

That’s just ad hominem to say people are fanboying the CEO. I never heard the name of the CEO until people started complaining about him. Then I read the statements he put out and that people are hysterical over and reading into as if he’s some Trump fanboy. The guys not even an American. He doesn’t live in the US. He just runs a service as an alternative to the big tech companies. Was he even in the US for anything but his university years and he’s 40?

Americans read more into him than his record and statements say. Not everyone’s politics revolve around Americans. I’m waiting for American leftist to turn on Shawn Fain too for supporting Trump auto tariffs and be anti auto workers union because too many in the union are Trump supporters and even someone in opposition like Shawn Fain is supporting a Trump policy. That’s even more direct and influential than a guy in Europe that runs a niche privacy centric internet service company

Problematic, barely. It’s a handful of statements months ago compared to his life of work. Magnifying glass to your whole life and people would likely find something problematic. If this guy is representative of what a problematic person is, the world would be pretty solid. Waste of energy to be so anti this guy and Proton when it’s a service more conducive to privacy rights than anything I or probably any of us have done. Problematic has become such an empty insult with how easily it’s thrown around with such passion. Waste of passion

Damn. People here sure love purity testing. The guy could pay for their cancer treatment and still slap him every chance because they got it wrong publicly in the past but once you get it wrong publicly once, you’re out of the club. Go be a conservative we don’t want you. When someone at Tuta has a bad year and ends up in the wrong publicly, find another email service to try and convince people to go too. Probably worse in functionality than Tuta as you go down to smaller and worse funded efforts in this niche field of Internet activism

But people here do it here too to Mozilla because they don’t like their social outreach programs and their attempts to get advertising revenue so screw Mozilla too. So because nothing but perfection is acceptable, push away people that may be adjacent/left leaning right and switch to less developed products. Switch from Firefox and attack Mozilla who do the bulk of Firefox development and use Waterfox who do a custom deployment/build. Pure display of perfection being the enemy of good here.

You want people to embrace privacy but keep whiplashing people around when the org/anyone in leadership says something wrong. Screw Signal, they’re not perfect. Screw Matrix/Element, some developer said something one day so it’s all bad. I’m surprised anyone here uses any privacy software or a major open source software like Linux or Krita or Blender at the risk that someone in the background may be wrong in someway which I am 100% certain they exist in important positions. Same with Lemmy

Go back to the 60s and you all would be shitting on Fred Hampton for accepting the impure and the color coalition for everyone that had ever said something wrong. Al Franken definitely would not make it with y’all. Y’all can’t build up leftist communities because y’all are bitter assholes that can’t move on and spend so much time purity testing. Y’all are probably mediocre too so can’t make a difference in privacy and data ownership activism anyways so should be lining up to support not just Tuta, someone hasn’t screwed up publicly yet, and Proton

Reminds me of Aung San Suu Kyi. She was under the gun of the military ruling class that permitted limited democratic government and because she didn’t make speech as if she lived in the US, a bunch of Americans turned on her and celebrated when the military dictatorship came back to rule and put her in prison the moment it seemed like the civilian government would actually assert more power

I agree with that. I always like the KDE Project. They work on Qt and a bunch of applications including the desktop and the expected desktop applications like a file explorer. Plus good stuff like Kdenlive, Krita, etc.

I’ve felt that web browser development should have been a part of a consortium of projects like a dropbox replacement, email service, search engine, VPN, office products, etc so they could bundle cloud services and actually look worth it comparison to like a O365 and Google One sub

Not every application alone is going to attract funding like the Linux kernel or Blender and web browser development is expensive but not a sell-able product alone. It can market other products

I’m hoping they can figure out how to operate leaner and without Google money. People get mad about them but they’re the best alternative we have and they do more good than any bad policy. At worst keep supporting Firefox while using a mild fork like Waterfox since the core of development is with Mozilla

They probably shouldn’t base out of the US and everything Proton does as a business should have been Mozilla if they actually had better long term vision

You ever try Alpaca?

https://flathub.org/apps/com.jeffser.Alpaca

Open source alternative to LM Studio for simple chat with local LLMs

I’m indifferent to it. The jarring years were 2006 up to about 2015. It would shift between better and worse until it reached the point where the front page was all clickbait/ragebait/advertisements and you had to rely on your own subscriptions page. Every social media site should default to subscribed/followed stuff for logged in users but got to selll paid to promote content

In 2005 Windows was like 95% of the desktop/laptop market. Today it’s 70-75%. Since then mobile phones usurped a lot of functionality that used to require a desktop/laptop. Windows dependency is going to keep trending down both in just desktop/laptop or including mobile devices

Something like this I imagine I’d be happy with. A sedan/crossover and this. Wouldn’t take it out the county. Just trips to hardware/gardening stores and moving furniture. More than enough range and speed to go to work too. Any long drive I’d probably get an Accord hybrid or something. 2 vehicle family

It’s value is tied to being a part of Google and pushing google products. Take away from google and it’s Mozilla looking for ways to be well funded