DeGoogle Yourself

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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!

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  2. No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.

  3. No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.

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founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
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Hi, all.

We've grown considerably since rebuilding the sub (see https://lemmy.ml/post/2262830). Active monthly users 150 -> 380. 3.5k -> 5.42k subs. It seems to be growing organically now, and the higher we go, the more people will stumble across it. There is always a need to get away from Google, and hopefully our community can help people with this.

If you'd like to join us to help moderate so we have folk in place as we need them, that would be awesome.

If you are interested. Please send a message about why you think you'd be good for the role, and also an example post/comment in this community previously.

Thanks,

CrypticCoffee

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Here I will pin a list of recommendations for software. Getting started can be daunting, and it'd be great to pull that information together here for newcomers so they can take practical steps to degoogle their lives.

Disclaimer: These are recommendations by regulars here and on privacy forums. Use at own risk. We cannot due diligence on these, so if people do have issue with items in the list, please create a post and raise your concerns.

Recommendations

Browser -

  • Firefox (Strongly recommend in light of WEI and Google's plan that could potentially restrict access to websites)
  • Librewolf
  • Brave (Not recommended, due to Google's WEI changes. Using chromium is a bad idea. I left this in case you really must)

Search

  • Duck Duck Go
  • Brave

Email

  • Proton mail
  • Tutanota

Cloud storage

  • Proton mail

Productivity Suite (Alternative to google docs)

  • Libre office (Maybe not cloud based)
  • Only office (for MS doc compatibility)

Degoogled Android phones

Phone OS - https://lemm.ee/post/663113

  • GrapheneOS

  • LineageOS (wihh or without MicroG)

  • /e/OS

Android app store -

  • F-droid

Messaging

  • Signal

  • Element (Matrix)

Maps - https://lemmy.ml/post/2211048

  • Organic Maps

  • OsmAnd+

SMS - https://lemmy.ml/post/2256135

Organisation

Task lists - https://lemmy.ml/post/2249613

Calendar - https://lemm.ee/post/704703

Discussion

These items are ones either recommended multiple times or seem to have some form of consensus on them being good and privacy focussed. I will link discussion topics so people can see the logic and reasoning behind recommendation. If you are not happy with anything here, please discuss here: https://lemmy.ml/post/2262409

If you would like another item in this, please create a post discussion and we can pull it in and link to it.

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submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Yingwu to c/[email protected]
 
 

EDIT: I decided on Mailbox.org!

Cross-posted from "Looking for a good e-mail provider that's not Tuta/Proton" by @[email protected] in [email protected]


I'd like to use a third-party client like Thunderbird to handle my e-mails, which rules out both Tuta and Proton (I know Proton has their bridge, but I don't want to rely on it). I'm willing to compromise on my e-mails not being encrypted, as long as the e-mail provider has a reputation of caring about the customer's privacy. If I truly want to encrypt a message, I'll encrypt it myself. I've been looking at Mailbox.org, and while I've been hearing good things, people have also been complaining about their lack of support, outdated interface as well as that they don't enforce DKIM/DMARC which enables spoofing.

I would like to be able to use my own custom domain, but also to use their own domain for my e-mail aliases. EU-based only.

Any thoughts?

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I have an aging (2 years old now) flagship smartphone and basically want a camera that's as decent as the one I already have, but without Google servers getting pinged every time I'm traveling and want to remember where I am - apparently my phone GPS isn't enough, Google Play Services insist they must get involved.

Some ideal requirements would include:

  • ~3x zoom
  • Solid macro photography
  • Optical image stabilization
  • Functional in low light
  • A sensor at least the same size as my phone's (1/1.3")
  • Small enough to fit in some pocket
  • GPS tagging
  • A sub-$800 price tag?

I understand this is a huge ask, and that modern cell phones have a pocket dimension that somehow fits this hardware inside of them, but I figured I may as well check.

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I don't like the default GrapheneOS apps, looking to switch.

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Does Iphone have something like fdroid that allows installation of cool apps like ones for jellyfin, etc?

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Hi folks, Planning on moving back to android after five years due to wanting better privacy and foss apps. I’ve been curious about folks experiences with pixel phones and grapheneOS on them while maintaining a distance from google services. Has there been better experiences with the pixel 9 or have they been the same with the 8? Would the 8 be more worthwhile because both have the years support ahead of them with just the one year of difference?

I do have some apps I rely on that I know coming over will be a shift but I can get over. This includes signal, Lemmy, YouTube, Ente Auth, banking apps, plex. Those I think will be easy.

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This is seriously dumb, but here we are. If that's true, I will happily delete it.

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Free at last! (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

I finally feel free and in control of my data!

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This was slowly driving me insane over the past few weeks and there were no results when searching for it, so I'll post it here for posterity.

I have a work profile set up through Shelter on one of my phones. Several weeks ago, I started noticing that a few times each week, I would be prompted for my PIN when trying to open a work app while the work profile was deactivated. Not once, but twice, once to activate the profile, and a second time to open the app itself. I checked every relevant setting I could think of, including "Use one lock" for work profile and device screen, and all the PIN prompts said were "For added security, enter your device PIN" with no further explanation.

Today, I snapped, stormed into the security settings, and disabled my device's PIN entirely. I think the resulting catharsis let me finally think straight and realize in the next two minutes why. Sometimes, I'll turn off the work profile. Sometimes, I'll unlock with my fingerprint instead of my PIN. The two coincide a few times each week.

The PIN can unlock both the personal and work profiles. But the fingerprint only unlocks the personal profile. So if I unlock with only my fingerprint, when it comes time to unlock the work profile, it isn't "sufficiently unlocked" and I need to enter the PIN. Why at the end of this process I still need to enter it again to open the app itself is beyond me.

TL;DR: Unlocking your phone with the PIN unlocks both personal and work profiles. The fingerprint only unlocks the personal profile.

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Hey.

My phone is a Pixel 8A Graphene OS Phone. I Want to make this phone a Hardended phone. A safe phone. Privacy friendly phone. Not a Watched or tapped into phone. Basically limit the spying and intercepting and get control of the spying mechanisms that may be at play.

The phone has Sandboxed google.play services.

(grapheneos) and 1 profile (owner)

The phone has a kyc sim card. ( currently no way out)

Thanks.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31250679

"this morning, as I was finishing up work on a video about a new mini Pi cluster, I got a cheerful email from YouTube saying my video on LibreELEC on the Pi 5 was removed because it promoted:

Dangerous or Harmful Content Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn't allowed on YouTube.

I never described any of that stuff, only how to self-host your own media library.

This wasn't my first rodeo—in October last year, I got a strike for showing people how to install Jellyfin!

In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)

So I thought, this case will be similar:

  • The video's been up for over a year, without issue
  • The video's had over half a million views
  • The video doesn't promote or highlight any tools used to circumvent copyright, get around paid subscriptions, or reproduce any content illegally

Slam-dunk, right? Well, not according to whomever reviewed my appeal. Apparently self-hosted open source media library management is harmful.

Who knew open source software could be so subversive?"

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On my hmd skyline i am degoogling. My dialer and sms messenger are all google apps anders i am assuming google is tracking the metadata. I have replaced my dialer with simple dialer and the sms service with QUIK SMS. However, i was wondering if there are any spam filtering apps i Can use that Will keep me safe? should I answer? Seems To Be The best But it is not FOSS. Can i trust it?

Thanks in advance!

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FUUU

Does anyone know of an ad blocker blocker blocker?

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I use Qwant now instead of Google search,

I miss just being able to type 23 * 3 + 210 * 2 into the search bar and getting a answer.

I also miss just typing tsla or 1 eur to usd and getting a answer, I use FireFox, are there plugins for this?
Or what would be a workaround?

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I am trying to slowly peel away from Google and my next task is Google Calendar. I currently have a couple shared calendars with other people and I'm not going to be able to break them free from Google quite yet. I have a next cloud server I was hoping to set up to be my primary source but I need to be able to interact with the shared calendars as well. Can I create a group calendar and have other persons, Google Calendar sync to it?

I'm not married to Next Cloud. It was just what I have available. I can do a different setup if that would work better.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

TIA

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For example, how do I know that the Samsung calendar app is any better than the g calendar app? Is the only way to go full open source (I'd prefer this, yes).

Also, should we stop using things like the default photo gallery? I have a feeling they steal data from that as well.

I know this is more phone related but I don't have this issue on my pc since I mostly use linux and open source software.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30794282

New design for video management and publication pages, rework of the display and filter system for sensitive content… this new version is ready for the summer!


PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of ActivityPub and P2P protocols.

Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube platform because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.

If you are curious about PeerTube, we can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!

If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:

If you want to follow the PeerTube project:


Folks, we've started a crowdfunding campaign to help to improve our PeerTube mobile app and bring PeerTube to everyone's pocket!
You can learn more about the campaign on the dedicated website!

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Hi guys! I'm the proud owner of a blackberry keyone. To work with docs, sheets and slides I have Collabora Office, that is indeed a very good suite. But, as expected it's slow and sluggish in the phone. What other degoogled alternative can I use to work and open docs, sheets and slides?

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I am boycotting brave because of its sizeable amount of controversies and because it is American. I have decided to swap to Vivaldi but I have noticed a significant performance decrease on Speedometer 3.1 Benchmarks. Furthermore, according to EFF Cover my Tracks I now have a unique finger print and am easier to track.

My setup consists of using uBlock Origin (normal not lite) instead of Vivaldi's built in tracker & ad blocker.

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Hi. I currently own a Google Pixel 8A Phone.

I Flashed this with Graphene OS A while Ago, and been using it since.

I Have a Query.

What is the best and most simplest way to make it a locked down phone, avoid tracked and monitoring by officials and corrupt officials... Like I have beef with local corrupt feds level.

I Want to make it a Safe private and hardened phone. Make it a Safe phone, privacy friendly phone.

How to achieve this?

Thanks.

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Hello!

Like many of you, I'm looking to reduce my usage of google services. Starting with emails, calendar, drive and photos. I have seen many alternative, but I'm not sure which one to pick. I have criterias that I don't think are unusual but I often don't find the information I'm looking for in their documentation.

So I'm looking for feedback on your experience to help me chose.

Emails I own a domain name I want to use. Being able to have a catch all email would be a plus.

Calendar No special need. As long as I can send invitation to people that are not using the same service it's fine by me.

Drive I want to store my documents securely. Having a gdoc/sheet equivalent would be appreciated but is not mandatory. I also need to be able to share folders or documents with a link to view them.

Photo I want the solution to automatically sync the photo from my phone to the cloud like Google photos does. I can't find this information on any service. At least, if it's not automatic, it should be a single click. Photo sharing should be like drive sharing. I need to be able to create shared albums. Ideally it should have an application that could cast photos to a chromecast, but that may be a lot to ask for!

Backup I want to be able to regularly query the service for any new/updated documents or photos. Then I'll download them and create a password protected archive to store somewhere. I really want to be able to do that automatically. So the service should have an API allowing that. If none exist, how do you manage your backups?

I know there are great self-hosted solutions, but I'm not ready to do that yet.

So far I've seen many providers recommendations for specific services, I could do with one provider for each services, but ideally I'd like to do everything in the same place for a practical reason. 

I've been looking at Infomaniak or Nextcloud which seems to be a good candidates for me. If someone has feedback to share about them I would appreciate it!

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Over the past few months, I embarked on a rewarding digital journey to move away from US big tech and towards more European [EU], open source [FOSS], privacy-oriented [P], and decentralized [D] alternatives.

I'm sharing my experience here in case it can be useful to others, as well as to gather any additional thoughts or suggestions:

  • Desktop OS: Microsoft Windows 11 --> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed + KDE [EU][FOSS]
  • Web browser: Google Chrome --> Brave --> Vivaldi --> Mozilla Firefox + Strict privacy settings, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Conset-O-Matic [FOSS][P]
  • Email: Gmail --> Infomaniak Mail [EU][FOSS]
  • Calendar: Google Calendar --> Infomaniak Calendar [EU][FOSS] + OneCalendar [EU]
  • Files: Dropbox --> Infomaniak kDrive [EU][FOSS]
  • Photos: Google Photos --> Infomaniak kDrive [EU][FOSS]
  • Notes: Google Keep --> Notesnook [FOSS][P]
  • Social Media:
    • Facebook --> Nothing
    • Twitter/X --> Mastodon (mas.to) [EU][FOSS][D]
    • Reddit --> Lemmy (lemm.ee) [EU][FOSS][D]
  • AI Chatbot: OpenAI ChatGPT --> Mistral AI Le Chat [EU]
  • Videos: Youtube --> Unwatched [EU][FOSS][P]
  • Podcasts: Apple Podcasts --> Spotify --> Pocket Casts [FOSS]
  • Translate: Google Translate --> DeepL [EU]
  • Maps: Google Maps --> Organic Maps [EU][FOSS][P]
  • Weather: Apple Weather --> YR [EU]
  • Online payments: PayPal --> Revolut [EU]
  • Password manager: LastPass --> Mozilla Firefox --> Bitwarden [FOSS][P]
  • Online shopping: Amazon --> Cdiscount [EU]
  • Travel booking: Booking.com --> Direct booking

And here's the list of things I couldn't let go of:

  • Mobile OS: iOS | I have a business iPhone which is also my personal phone
  • Messaging: WhatsApp | The network effect is too big here: family, friends, local businesses, etc
  • Streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ | These come basically for free with my ISP and are too convenient for the moment (esp. w/ kids)
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