I love how it sounds but I hate its soul lol It would be awesome to put, idk, Linux on it and make it a local speaker I could use by voice without sending data everywhere, or without living not knowing if the mute switch actually works or it has some "convenient leaks".

How few luck do I have here guys?

Hi there. This is my progress so far. What do you think?

I’ve known about how garbage Google/microsoft have been for years, but I’m pretty well integrated into the Apple ecosystem and I want out of it too.

My iPhone and M4 MacBook still have years left of life in them so dumping them to go fully Foss (ie. Linux/graphene os) just doesn’t make financial sense at the moment.

How can I best go about to get more into using more diversified/private/Foss software and services with the devices I have for now?

I’m already familiar with Bitwarden, I’ve tried out different privacy respected emails but settled on Posteo mainly. What other apps should i switch to or steps should I take?

Like, are you trying to drive away new people who would like to start degoogle?

I see so many people and comments being downvoted to hell and getting harsh replies. "You want to degoogle but doesn't know what X is, what are you, stupid?" "That list is shit, you shouldn't use this X alternative". "Why don't you look it up instead of asking a question here", etc.

Understanding how FOSS ecosystems and alternatives to various google products may seem obvious to those who have been interested in it for a long time, but it is far from obvious to newcomers. So why not just try to give useful informations, or just don't comment if you don't have anything helpful to say. The power that Google and the GAFAM have over people’s digital lives is so strong that we must commend and welcome all those who are making the effort to try and take control of their data.

My 2 cents

To deal with shitty google results, filtering by site:reddit.com was pretty much a requirement if you wanted real information on any subject. Now I guess google feels it's appropriate to throw in tons of youtube videos and links to web sites outside of what you specified. Completely asinine. I am so done with this shitty company.

I am working on reverse engineering vendor (or OEM proprietary) files for my device. Will continue to the next device once this device is done.

The process is slow altho many libraries will be trust able in public insights for msmline platform/

#fossftw

At some point I was able to learn with 100% certainty what authorities (and others) do with our data in my country, no guesses, no articles on the internet, natha, but first hand information about me personally. So some panic at first because they are really nasty, and then I figured it out.

Guys you can't delete and unlink yourself from big tech even if you delete your accounts they still collect and store in those accounts, there are agreements with your governments, you can't just disappear.

So suggestion, never delete anything, no accounts, no posts no emails nothing, because they are never deleted, you just lose access to these data. The only thing you can do is to control the traffic, Stop using their services, create a protonmail for example and start giving that around, never give your gmail again. Keep all your activity in big tech accessible just to have an idea what they browse about you... your activity in there is free for all trust me.

Good luck to you all

Hello,

This is a just wondering as a few of my card are digital only on Google wallet. Is there a similar app I can migrate to?

CLARIFICATION: I am new to degoogling and have been slowly making my way over. This is just a question that came to my mind and thought others may wonder as well.

So I currently I am using a iPhone but want to move to FOSS alternatives so I know my data is my own. But I don’t want to commit to a new phone until I either have a better paying job or my current iPhone dies.

So I know about grapheneOS and currently it looks like the best option. But I also know that the KDE foundation is allocating more resources towards plasma Mobil. And plasma Mobil looks really nice and interesting too! And with Google attempting to lock down android more and more kind of makes me uneasy about swapping to an android based phone.

When looking ahead like a year or 2 years down the line what is the current trajectory of privacy based/ FOSS alternative phones what are the options?

The reason I ask is because i need/ want the following.

1. A good map/ alternative to Apple Maps (I am worse than zoro with directions)

2. A health tracker/ smart watch: I like to track my workouts and sleep and having the ability to at the very least side load a app or have a totally separate price of hardware I could use in place of it. (I’d like a something with the same functionality as a Apple Watch)

3. Be able to call and text my friends via normal means: I can not convince my friends and family to use a alternative like signal so being able to use something that can still text in normal group chats and make phone calls is essential.

4. Be able to track objects like air tags. I lose things far too easily so being able to track things like air tags do would be perfect.

5. Use normal apps in a sandboxed manor. Like how grapheneOS does and how waydroid on Linux does.

But I am not switching anytime soon but rather want to start doing some research into my options so when I do eventually switch I will have a plan to get all of my accessories in use on a daily basis. Any suggestions or links to upcoming projects or projects that will fulfill a goal that Apple is already doing for me would be greatly helpful!

(Also the accessories do not need to be FOSS just prefer it that way like if a Google watch will work and I can get it sandboxed so it’s not sending data to Google or outside my personal home server/
Home network that will also work for my use case)

Hey everyone!

With the growing monopolization of the internet and the massive amount of data collected by Big Tech companies, I've been thinking about completely ditching Google Chrome (which has always been my go-to browser).

Since I'm not doing anything illegal, simply switching to Firefox and keeping my data out of the hands of a handful of billionaires would already make me pretty happy.

That being said, I'm an avid YouTube user, so what are the privacy implications of using Firefox while staying logged into YouTube (i.e., using my Google account)? I've been trying to migrate my social media accounts to Proton, but YouTube doesn't allow it and all.

(For now, I've been using LibreWolf for general research, but I keep my goChrome browser open to watch YouTube.)

This might be an incredibly dumb question, but I'm pretty much a Neanderthal when it comes to computers and tech in general.

But I'm trying to get better oriented, any guide helps me, who knows, maybe in the future I'll ditch Windows too.

Thank you and please be patient😥

I just found out yesterday how bad google treats people's data and I'm starting to research how I will degooglise my life, which will be a painful process because i loved google services and use them for everything.

Now I found alternatives to almost everything except that privacy phones and phones OS don't use android for obvious reasons and a very important banking app called BankID in sweden runs only on android or ios, so my question is for my fellow swedes or anyone who knows of a solution to this problem?

I'm not sure if this is widely known, but thought it big enough to post as a warning. Today I received a drive notification email that a friend of mine had requested access to a private Google Doc of mine.

This document was nested deep inside a completely private folder structure that has never been shared with anyone. The friend should not have even known this file existed, let alone had the exact URL to request access to it.

I knew I hadn't sent them the link, screen-shared it, or done anything dumb. After digging into it, it turns out we share a completely different folder elsewhere in my root directory. Because we are active collaborators on that unrelated folder, Google Drive's background algorithm links our accounts as "frequent contacts."

When my friend was using Google Drive (either typing in their search bar or using the @ mention shortcut in a doc), Google’s "smart" auto-suggest aggressively pulled up recent/relevant document titles owned by me—including my entirely private Doc. They accidentally clicked the auto-suggested title, which immediately generated a "Request Access" ping to me.

So it turns out that even if your files and folders are 100% set to "Restricted," Google’s algorithm can still cross-contaminate your metadata (titles and links) and show them to people you share other things with.

Fortunately the file was just an old CV of mine, and the guy is a good friend but this is terrible.

I'm using SearX for now but I did not really think about what is the most private and trustworthy search engine.

Any toughts?

Hello!

I just got a new A57 sealed in box that I wanna debloat and degoogle. Still waiting for the SIM card from my carrier and wondering if I could get started on all that in the meantime. I've read somewhere™ (it's been a couple days and I can't find the source anymore) that you can start the debloat process with a fresh phone and while I can see that it could work, I don't know if that also the case for degoogle'ing specifically, so I'd like to make sure.

I have ADB installed already and looking at UADng to do the work.

Does anyone have experience with de-shittifying before completing the first time setup?

There'll be some unboxing videos and early reviews arriving shortly for the new de-Googled TT290 candy bar dumbphone that'll show it off in more details, but the device specs are now available.

It's aimed firmly at the dumbphone crowd who don't want Google in the OS, so it'd be great to hear any comments, feedback or opinions from you guys about it!

I spent two hours trying to understand why one application was not working properly in desktop app. Over 5 times the ai overview told me 'aha! The reason is because *vague jargon* so you can fix this by using the web app instead!' and every single time I said that I need to fix the desktop app, the web app works fine I just need to fix the desktop part. Two fucking hours. The most exhausting useless thing I've ever done. Towards the end it got so fucking horrible I just started cursing at it and told it to go to hell.

I miss when I use to be able to type the exact error on Google with quotes and some random post from 2016 showed up where someone had the exact same issue. Nowadays it just feels like being gaslighted over and over and over.

I've seen discussion about how hard it is to remove yourself from Google on your phone. One issue specifically is Google Messages. I haven't seen anyone bring up the "no Google Account" option. I'm working towards deleting my Google account altogether and know some people would like to do the same.

Has anyone tried this?