Ditching the Silicon Valley evilcorps

luc

luc

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It becomes more obvious by the day that Silicon Valley firms are completely ponerized and willing to yield their power in a way even Orwell couldn't have dreamed of. Google/YouTube, Amazon, Patreon, Apple, PayPal... these people are evil. (See the thread The YouTube purge for details.)

So I think it's a good idea to discuss some alternatives to these platforms and maybe assist each other in the transition if necessary. Thing is, it's impossible to ditch everything at the same time, and I don't think it's a good idea to abandon stuff that is still useful, such as YouTube and Facebook. No point becoming an extremist or something. I also don't think any "ditiching" will seriously hurt those evilcorps, but for me at least, I've had enough and I see it as a declaration to the universe that I don't want to put up with that Silicon Valley NWO sh*t anymore. They will use their power against you, and they will use your data against you, and they will use your data to build Skynet. So step by step.

First thing to be aware of is that there is no free lunch, i.e. if you want decent alternatives, you need to pay. But the prices are very low these days, and quite frankly, given the importance of these services in our lives, I consider these few bucks money well-spent.

Ditching Dropbox/iCloud, Google/Apple Calendar and WeTransfer, plus possibly Google Docs, Skype/Zoom, Slack...

Since I recently transitioned, first thing I want to bring up is Nextcloud. This is an open source cloud system that you can either install on your own local or remote server (nerd-heaven, but can be a bit difficult) or just sign up to one of the many providers who basically set up your own virtual server in their data center (it's almost as easy as opening a google account). The software has the same functionality as Dropbox, but even more: you can have multiple users, share stuff, have it interact with email attachments automatically, and it even lets you have video conferences, WhatsApp-style chats, web-based document editing and a calendar/contacts functionality you can sync to your desktop and smartphone, and much, much more - all running on your own server! It's super-slick too. That way, so far I got rid of Dropbox, Google Calendar, Google contacts and WeTransfer. Yay!

The costs for this service vary from provider to provider, but I found a German provider (Hetzner) who offers a Nextcloud server for 5 Euros/months, including 500GB space and 2TB traffic. You get 1TB storage for 10 bucks. There are plenty of others though.

Ditching Gmail/Apple mail etc.

I haven't ditched Gmail yet, but I'm about to do it. There are plenty of excellent email providers out there, and what the IT nerds I know tell me is that you probably should choose a company that is specialized in email, not someone who just offers it in addition to something else. Turns out handling emails these days is no trivial task. It's also probably a good idea to choose a local company (i.e. within your country) that doesn't spread their data around the globe, but instead has its own dedicated data center(s). Note that here as well, you will have to pay something (especially if you need some decent storage like me), but it might be just a few bucks a month or even a year. Great investment!

Ditching Android/iOS

These are among the worst offenders, they're sniffing out everything and as the recent facebook scandal showed, shamelessly sniff out even your contatcs' data, third party-apps etc.

First thing of course is to refuse becoming smartphone-addicted and reduce smartphone usage. Other than that, it's difficult: Google/Apple make it extremely hard to use alternative services and actively crush any open source smartphone OS (free market, yeah right!). On Android, what you can do though is install FDroid, an open source alternative to the Google Play Store where you can get all kinds of open source apps. You'll find some useful apps to get around some of Google's tyranny. This all can get a bit nerdy, but it's not that bad and might be useful to ditch some of the syncing madness on Android.

Partly becaue of Google's pressure and coercion, open source OSes have a hard time getting off the ground. There are quite a few active projects though - see here for a list. If you have a popular smartphone model, chances are you can install one of these Open Source OSs. I haven't tried it yet, partly because I have an older and not so popular model.

Ditching Google search

For me, that's a tough one. The alternative most often recommended is DuckGoGo, which is okay, but honestly not as good as Google IMO (and no wonder). I still rely on Google search a lot for my work. What you could do though is make DuckGoGo the default engine for your browser (when you search using the browser address bar) and do all your "standard search" that way. For the more complicated stuff or in-depth research, you can then visit google.com.


"Ditching attitude"

As I said, it might not be possible to ditch every Silicon Valley evilcorp, and dedicating your whole energy to that certainly doesn't seem wise. I'd say it's a baby step-process: put a little effort into ditching ONE thing. That's already a middle finger towards these tyrants. Also, whenever you have several options - such as paying via PayPal vs. paying via direct transfer, using facebook sign-up vs. creating a new account and so on - choose the non-silicon valley option if feasible. Buy on Amazon (hard to ditch that one!), but don't be tempted to use their other "free" or paid services. For some things, there are other options as well, such as Ali Baba Express. Don't sign up to the next Google or Apple service, don't use Patreon and instead use direct payment etc.

Again, there is no free lunch - a little effort and a little money is needed on your part. Gmail, Apple and the other Silicon Valley giants certainly are the most convenient, "free" options - but you pay with your data, privacy and perhaps most importantly, you pay "spiritually" by supporting Mordor :evil:

Anyway, perhaps others have more suggestions and ideas?
 
I use unseen.is as an alternative webmail for gmail and outlook, however I’ve noticed subjective preferences for gmail.com or outlook.com. Definitely not good to use an unseen.is as contact email address in a CV. 😉
 
luc said:
For me, that's a tough one. The alternative most often recommended is DuckGoGo, which is okay, but honestly not as good as Google IMO (and no wonder). I still rely on Google search a lot for my work. What you could do though is make DuckGoGo the default engine for your browser (when you search using the browser address bar) and do all your "standard search" that way. For the more complicated stuff or in-depth research, you can then visit google.com.
Click to expand...

You can use StartPage instead of DuckGoGo. It relies on Google results but anonymizes your search queries.
 
luc said:
Anyway, perhaps others have more suggestions and ideas?
Click to expand...

I'm in the business of "ditching" for quite a while now. ;-)

I'm off Google, off Apple, off PayPal, off gmail, off Dropbox already.
I'm still with Amazon though because it works so smoothly.
The combination of DuckDuckgo and Start Page works fine for me, too.
Facebook never appealed to me anyway.

The German mail provider "Posteo" charges 1 €/month and is anonymous,
or rather I am anonymous to them.
 
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For email, I've been fortunate to have avoided the difficulties with free sites. -Like those times when services like HotMail pull U-Turns or suffer massive security breaches leaving millions of users in chaos.

I've been renting space on a server to host a webpage for years now, and it came with a private email service. Once set up, I just use Mozilla Thunderbird and store messages locally on my computer and delete them from the server once downloaded.

Maintaining a personal webpage isn't something everybody would go in for or need, but it has proven to be a really useful thing to have access to in some unexpected ways. -It's like my own personal cloud, where I can share files with private contacts when necessary and not worry about file size or expiration dates and such. I probably spend about $150 every year, which is a chunk of change to look at all at once, but thought of as a monthly expense, (I pay a bill once every couple of years or so), it works out to far less than I spend on any number of trivial things I purchase in a given month, (coffee, for instance).

The technical barrier was once something which took a fair bit of research to overcome, but the interfaces are very simple these days and the hosting companies are eager to lower the access bar. If you can operate a smart phone, you're well prepared.
 
(Since no one has mentioned ProtonMail yet, <- . (It has different Plans.))

luc said:
Other than that, it's difficult: Google/Apple make it extremely hard to use alternative services and actively crush any open source smartphone OS (free market, yeah right!).
Click to expand...
There are also Microsoft phones to contemplate.

"Dumbphones" aren't a bad idea in the long run, either:
(If there were more options than AT&T and Sprint, Sonim XP5s Ultra-Rugged Phone - Sonim would be likely obtained.)
 
Altair said:
You can use StartPage instead of DuckGoGo. It relies on Google results but anonymizes your search queries.
Click to expand...

I've been using DuckDuckGo for a while but sometimes need to switch to Google if the results aren't that relevant. StartPage looks like a good alternative.

There seems to be no popular alternatives to Youtube for now. BitChute is one possibility and I know there are others but it's a matter of waiting for content creators to make the switch. There's also Gab as a twitter replacement.
 
Woodsman said:
The technical barrier was once something which took a fair bit of research to overcome, but the interfaces are very simple these days and the hosting companies are eager to lower the access bar. If you can operate a smart phone, you're well prepared.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it has become very easy. As for downloading your emails locally, not using any cloud whatsoever or using a dumbphone: all that is obviously a good idea in terms of "owning" your data. However, let's face it: those cloud services, smartphones etc. are just so dang effective and convenient. For example, unless you apply some sophisticated backup schemes, your emails are way safer stored on a good provider's server than on your local laptop, and your data is safer on a Nextcloud server than on an external hard drive. So what I (and many others I suppose) am looking for is alternatives to Big Tech that combine some of the convenience with more privacy/not sharing stuff with Silicon Valley.

It's also interesting to note that the Silicon Valley tyrants hate this very idea. Google and Apple, for example, are making great efforts to crush everyone going in that direction (which also shows that what they are really after is not even their bottom line, but your data). The Nextcloud story is also interesting: It's a fork (software split) of OwnCloud, which was a silicon valley startup, but one of the core team members had enough of the short-sighted silicon valley startup culture and moved back to Germany to found his own company. I suppose it would never really have come off the ground otherwise or would have been coopted by the other Big Tech firms.

Funny story in a similar vein: there's a tool called Rclone which basically lets you encrypt a whole lot of data and dumb it on a cloud service (dropbox, Microsoft cloud etc.). Now when Amazon started giving out its "free" massive server space, nerds said "cool" and started storing massive amounts of encrypted data there, using Rclone. So Amazon went like "wait a second, we wanted to lure you in so that you give us your data that we can then exploit, not that you dumb encrypted data here!" - and so they pulled the plug and blocked that tool... This again shows what they are really after.

So again, a good way to go for many people I guess, especially those who don't have the knowledge/time to mess with more complex IT stuff, would be to use alternative services (that always will cost something) that offer at least some of the convenience of the Big Tech overlords while giving a reasonable level of privacy, IMHO.
 
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