DeGoogle Yourself
A community for those that would like to get away from Google.
Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!
Rules
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Be respectful even in disagreement
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No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.
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No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.
Related communities
!privacyguides@lemmy.one !privacy@lemmy.ml !privatelife@lemmy.ml !linuxphones@lemmy.ml !fossdroid@social.fossware.space !fdroid@lemmy.ml
Primarily. Secondarily, to avoid putting all my eggs in one basket. As in, not using one singular network of services, and instead spreading it out. Diversify yo services.
One of the reasons I do it is because Google is a bad partner. They will cancel your accounts and delete the contents for no reason, offer no way to get it back and they just don't care. They will happily do that to companies that pay them thousands a month, they really just don't care. Even if you don't buy into the company being evil and privacy invading its also just unreliable to use as any moment they could blow all your data away without reason.
Privacy is a concern but not the primary concern. Google is too big to be in your life. If you use Google it's in everything. If Google ever kicks you out your life is going to be very difficult while you rebuild your entire digital profile. Google's too much of a risk.
Not to mention Google is demonstrated they will kill services at the drop of a hat. So relying on them is asking for trouble.
Google heavily uses algorithms to identify accounts to delete or block or ban. And this goes back to if your entire digital life is tied to Google and they do block you, you have no recourse. Google doesn't talk to humans for reconsideration. You're just out of luck.
Google is too much of a risk for a stable life
Always make a new account for every website, never sign in via your Google account, Microsoft account, etc. It was a neat feature when it came out, but it's just too much of a risk.
My dislike of Google (Alphabet) as an organization is my motivation. I want nothing to do with them.
Most seem to mention privacy. Choice as important as privacy. Do things your own way. Selecting the services you want to do common things on your device. As I went along I realised how deep google enforcement was and how hard they made choice for users. That made me want to rip off even more google from the device. I came to a state that I host every service I run my self.
That's why it's called a walled garden. If you're enjoying the garden, you don't notice the walls. Until the day you get tired of it, try to leave, and suddenly you realize just how high the walls have gotten when you weren't paying attention.
That's partially why the Integrity bullshit with chromium is worrying: the average user will not appreciate the issue until it really affects them, and by that point, it will be far too late.
Privacy was the reason it started, but I was also constantly bothered by the growing annual profits they earned from people basically giving away access to their information and livelihoods for free. I realized how valuable our information is, and the only way to break this deepening centralization and control of it, was to take it all back. Self-hosting and supporting FOSS are my methods to regain control in this war. It has become a sort of holy war for me at this point. Lol
Privacy is my biggest thing. But, no. Then there's the whole "I don't to put all my eggs in one basket" argument too. Last, but not least: my battery life is also much better when all of the invasive tracking is blocked :)
Especially when the person carrying the basket like to chuck eggs out of it at random. Never know when google will discontinue a service.
I agree with this. I actually feel that the way they have restricted certain advanced search strings on the search engine is the most criminal of all. To me, watering down search results on a product that was previously excellent, is manipulation and control of information and thus, restricts people actual life. They are an extremely sly company and the control goes all the way to the top.
What are examples of advanced search strings they're restricting? I haven't heard of this. Do other search engines restrict them?
As a general rule, I also hate monopolies
Primarily yes, however a few other reasons are that i like FOSS, see no advertising (thanks to controld dns), and it makes midrange phones run much better than they would with all that crap in the background.
It started as a privacy thing but as I dug deeper, I found that all of the foss alternatives I found were simply much better in terms of functionality & usability
No. I've met a guy whose google account got banned. It almost ruined his life (primary mail address, access to his Google business site, most of his phone's functionality, docs, private photos, etc. all gone in an instant). And there was not a single thing he could do about it.
I don't want to put my life into the hands of a faceless corporation that isolates itself completely from its customers (or should I say, products?) when things go wrong.
Now that Google is looking through all of Google Drive for content for its bots, I'm worried that I'll be banned for all the porn I've written. Which isn't good because my email address is tied to everything, including my Steam account. That would be thousands of dollars worth of games lost.
For me, privacy on the Internet was something I wanted for a long time, but was too lazy to do. The decisive moment for me was the story with Reddit, at the same time YouTube goes against adblockers, Twitter goes down and Google develops technology to determine with which browser I visit websites.
Lemmy quickly intrigued me, and privacy is a big deal here. I don't want my digital life to be controlled by mega-corporations, so I'm gradually getting out. I'm slowly working my way through https://www.privacyguides.org/ and https://www.privacytools.io/ and hope to be done by the end of the year.
So far I have managed to
- Set up Pihole
- Set up Bitwarden
- Set up New email address
- I am using SearXNG
- Librefox for PC and Icedraven for Android are downloaded and will be used soon.
Next phone will be a Pixel, so I can use GrapheneOS.
So to answer your question, yes mostly privacy.
- Lack of privacy
- Arbitrary cancel culture with no recourse
- Corruption and bloating of open standards like web
- Non consensual logins (android, chrome)
- Sabotage of federated services (email, xmpp)
- Suggestion of new tracking methods (like FLoC) when old tracking methods (like 3rd party cookies) are phased out
- Centralization of information flow (eg: AMP)
- Bait and switch tactics (like YouTube ads)
- Support for horrible laws (like illegitimate DMCA strikes)
- Locking down devices (with remote attestation, safetynet api, etc)
- Geolocking apps unnecessarily
- Invasive use of credit card information to prove location (why not just use GPS or cell info?)
- Incompatibility with open standards to achieve user lockins (eg: IMAP, caldav, carddav)
- Riding the open source wave with projects that don't behave like one (AOSP, chromium)
- Untrustworthiness when it comes to long term presence of services
No.
Too powerful and licensing isn't as good as it wa sin the past. Google was a great company but not anymore. It's like they hired apple people who gain more and more power within the company over the years.
No i hate google as well.
Seriously, Fuk google 😡
Started with privacy Followed into fuck the big company's And ended up in the ballpark of "Foss software works so much better and functions so much nicer"
Seriously, it seemed like I would be settling a lot more to avoid having ads shoved down my throat, but most of these foss apps are so much better than the mainstream bloatware in every way
Another reason I'm doing it is I know they will just shut it down soon anyways.
Privacy and I no longer trust Google for anything long term.
I also want to avoid being too dependent on Google's service and then get locked behind a paywall or something. One never knows.
I control the distribution of power in the tech world. I am God.
It was secondary to challenging big tech corporations and their abuses to the Global South.
For me, yes. It's the thing that drives me, but as I get on, the more I dislike the company and would be happy if they failed for being shit privacy wise.
Privacy and Google's ToS
Privacy and debloating, mostly.
I don't but if I did, it would be a speed or battery thing
Privacy is a big one and there's some good points in this thread, but I'd like to ad that G is an advertising company before anything else. All they've every really wanted to do is sell you as a product.
Control over your whole experience
That’s the main reason
Simplifies things. I don't want all that proprietary bloat and features shoved into my phone. I want to simplify it. When roms base themselves off of AOSP you tend to go down to the essentials, which is really all you need. Then if you need that extra stuff, you can build up from there.
Besides, even use less my phone
Privacy mainly but to also get away from centralized platforms like youtube.
Ads. I am not interested in content that paid the most for Ads. I'm looking for content that exists not to make money for the website, or the person creating that content. So given those things, Google provides negative value to me.