De-googling, so far
blog.nradk.com
blog.nradk.com
For example, I still have a gmail account I use for lots of random things, but critical bank/financial accounts go directly to a separate fastmail address (where I am confident I could get a human to help me if there was a serious account problem). I still use Google Docs suite, but "important" documents are stored locally as Word/Excel files. I still use Google Drive/Google Photos, but I make periodic backups to a local SSD + other online backup services (iCloud/OneDrive). Etc.
I don't understand why you would want to "ditch every Google product and service". Some of them are objectively pretty great, or inherently have low switching costs (like Google Maps).
They are doing all of those things if you have your phone with you! Unless you manually go about disabling notifications, turning off gps access for all apps, etc.
And it is worth noting that even turning off your GPS, you can still be followed. The very nature of how cell service works requires the ability to locate you, even if not to the same precision level (as aforementioned).
There are of course trade-offs and this nature does not mean the tech is bad. But it does mean that we need to be aware of how it is used and how it can be abused. It is okay for mistakes to happen, but we need to fix them and resolve them, not ignore them or underplay them. My larger fear is that we live in a cluttered house and all these conversations end up being "well that piece of paper on the ground isn't that bad. That doesn't mean I'm messy." Because that is true. But there's a million instances of that and the accumulation is what creates the messy/cluttered house, not any singular piece of trash. If we can't see the forest from the trees, we're doomed. Because most of the problems that exist in our modern world are through these larger complex chains of coupled interactions. Where singular events are not that bad, but the system is.
Yes
> Bothering you at work?
Yes
> Hounding you in the loo?
If I'm taking a shit and open my phone. But also, sometimes at the urinal. I mean they put ads right in front of your face.
> Personally it seems like my data has been stolen from just about every company I've ever given it to EXCEPT for Google.
Google isn't in the business of selling ads, they are in the business of selling data. To make those ads more pervasive, targeted, and effective. A good ad goes unnoticed, it is often "native."
But to me, I just think about it this way. If some dude was following me around and writing down everything I do (maybe no the exact content of my words, but who I talk to, when, where I go, etc -- metadata), I'd be fucking pissed and call law enforcement for stalking. Now I don't understand why this is okay if the dude's name is Mark, Sundar, or Satya. I don't care that they're really good at hiding and that their note taking often goes unnoticed. I think it is creepy and immoral behavior.
And beyond that, I know what that data can do. Yes, it can be used to make a lot of useful things. I work in ML, data is POWERFUL. But a coin is a coin, and it can be spent on good things or bad things. Hell, there are even good ads. But the truth of the matter is that there are far too many abuses. More than I think is acceptable. I worry about growing abuse and the slow boiling of a frog[0]. The temperature (both metaphorical and literal) has risen all my life, I see no reason to think that it will cool down if we just continue business as usual. Each little instance of temperature rise may be small and not uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean that given enough time the temperature doesn't rise to a deadly point. I cannot stress this enough, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Evil is not (exclusively) created by evil men doing evil things. Evil is more often created by good men with good intentions. It is because the world is complex and because what we build and what we create takes on a life of its own, outside our hands, and outside what we imagined it could/would do. Ethan Zuckerman is not an evil man for creating something so universally hated, and he even created it with good intentions. But this is just the nature of the world and it means to be vigilant and careful. To be clear, it does not mean to stop progressing. But it does mean to be aware that the environment changes and that it is easy to get off track.
It's easy to point fingers at specific people, but I think it is more important to recognize the complexity of reality. Because if that isn't considered, you just create a vacuum for the same evil/abuse to rise again. And again, often by people who have no malintent. And that's the issue: the world is too fucking complex and we want it to be simple(er) and we will often try to bend over backwards to make it so, because we humans were not designed for this. But we are capable of processing it. So, will we?
Here's the metaphor. Google offers free video cameras to any person who wants them. The cameras collect thousands of data points about every single person who enters their field of view. The cameras pick up every movement on the streets, in the shops. Every word uttered. They note all conversations and relationships. They send this data into a central database where every person gets a lifetime profile where they are uniquely identified and where all the aggregate data across all the free cameras in the world is collated and stored together.
Google now has a moment by moment timeline of everyone in the world, updating in real time.
Now, using this cache of information, anyone can bid for my attention in real time as I go about my life. While I'm at the bank (website). While I'm at the bar (website). While I'm at the grocery store (website). While I'm at the library (website). Around every corner is a digital billboard that's watching what my hands are doing, where my eyes are looking, what I'm saying. It knows my name, where I'm from, what I do, and who my family is, and it wants to sell me something.
This world is grotesque to me. It's about much more than data breaches.
I didn't even get into the government overreach capabilities such a dataset would enable, nay, tempt.
Practical impact is important to recognize but the concept of potential impact, otherwise known as risk, is most certainly valid; having the most intimate details of your identity stored outside of your own control can have profound risks for any bad actor especially when our methods of securing our identities haven’t kept up with the pace of it being collected.
...and many of us would simply rather not use Google products if that's the deal they're offering. Hence, the original article link.
You're welcome to make this Faustian bargain for yourself, but you don't get to make it for the rest of us, and neither does Google.
It means you can a permanent, and non erasable, record of being arrested, even if you just happen to be near the same location a crime was committed:
"Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police" - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-loc...
Disclaimer: I am all for an effective and just law enforcement...
> Are advertisers following you around town?
Yes the are: "Jeffrey Epstein’s Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker" - https://www.wired.com/story/jeffrey-epstein-island-visitors-...
Disclaimer: Never visited Epstein’s Island...
Showing your private data to someone is not in their interest yet
It's also been well studied how so-called anonymized datasets can be de-anonymized in various ways and then all the historical data is de-anonymized.
What you once thought was benign and not noteworthy can easily be used against you as the times and attitudes of a society change. Many examples can be seen both in modern day "cancellations" as well as in the historical record like Nazis using census data to find people with undesirable characteristics and murdering them (with IBM's help).
This is not far fetched conspiracy theory paranoia bate. It is factual events from reality.
If a company has a contract with an entity who pays them money for their services, it is literally in their interest to do it.
These tech companies work with all the rest of the companies to use our own computers against us.
Most folks have normalized the data collection, the dark patterns and the faustian bargains that are now happening on a daily basis.
Treating them with ridicule is just not necessary. The folks who say no are really working for the rest of us.
I can give you a couple website that are intimately intertwined with google services:
- the california FTB website (califorina's IRS) - the california DMV website (not only drivers licenses, but real id) - kaiser permanente (health care)
Most normal people, or your kids, or your parents are required to use these sites (or it is very difficult not to use them). Why should they be tracked by advertisers? why should nobody complain?
Google is the air of a teeming metropolis in a developing country. Every breath is polluted with foreign substances that someone else out there. Your capacity suffers as each action is taxed by the aerosolized tar.
searX is mountain air. Pure, but cold and so so thin. You struggle to collect enough oxygen, waiting for the life-giving molecules to trickle in. A bracing adventure for most, a home for the hardy, adapted few.
DuckDuckGo is the air of a rich suburb. The pollution is manageable and pressure sufficient. You breathe freely, undistracted, content in the assumption that your essential need is satisfied. It is sufficient, comfortable, unremarkable, there.
Kagi is a seaside breeze, wafting the richness of a vibrant and alien ecosystem through your awareness. You may sense the oily tang of a nearby dockyard; it’s but one note in the harmony, fading behind the marine life, the ocean salts, the sizzling morsels of upshore boardwalk. You breathe deeply. Your awareness stretches, stitching scent to sound; your focus dances across the possibilities, musing which possibility to explore today. A corner of your mind resents the cost of your rented villa; another fantasizes about buying it, about making this place your home. Could I afford it…?
Is it though? To the extent that I need to pay for an alternative? I struggle to recall when I ever searched for something and went down to the second half of my screen. I do agree searching using the Google app on an Android phone is crazy, but who would subject themselves to that? On a browser with a proper ad blocker, I don't see how it is that horrible.
Do you have an example of a search where Google gives such an odious result, but another engine's is excellent?
In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google. Use Newpipe and youtube-dl so you never see an ad.
1) Hosting space/cpu/bandwidth. Video is one of the most intense data jobs out there, behind I suppose maybe AI and Big Data (if anyone is still doing that). You need Terabytes of drive space, petabytes of traffic, all the CDNs, processors capable of encoding inefficient video uploads to efficient video downloads. 2) Network effect. People need to actually want to come, so that people come. 3) Paying for all this - People don't like donating, don't like paying, but hard drives/servers/power banks are not free. So you either charge premiums or use ads.
I wish more people had been willing to pay for Youtube Pro, e.g. (I still do), they're (still) getting worse because the ad-supported version(s) are still the bulk of their income. And so the ad-supported version is messing up everything, being very aggressive, etc. You/I pay for Netflix, why wouldn't you pay for Youtube?
You can't influence the dynamic with capitalism at all when something is free. Sure, companies can "en-shittify", but at least for video this is fairly simple - when it costs too much/works too terribly on one video platform, you can move to the next one. 1) and 2) Make it harder to start a new paid platform, but not impossible - you can directly reflect the costs to your users. YT is just a black box at present...but would have been less so if Youtube Pro had been more popular (ads might have been easier to block, even).
All the initial groundwork is done.
All they need is a platform for the youtube class content provider. They already have ad deals too.
They could, if they found some model that works, snap up loads of talent.... and that talent could even stay on youtube too.
As long as they keep content in its own category...
Google and Facebook have a complete oligopoly over the ads market and are manipulating it so nobody else can prosper.
You can't, "in a weekend" a youtube clone that can stand up to the first viral hit.
It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform educational content, I get lots of longform educational content. I find the act of opening clickbait videos in an incognito window along with judicious use of the "not interested" button has kept it quite usable.
Yup. You still get the occasional dud, but most of the feed is relevant in my case.
I once browsed YouTube without being logged in. Do not recommend. I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I imagine it's a similar experience to browsing the web without an adblocker.
Depends on what you're watching.
I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched, and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.
Having said that, I watch a ton of YouTube videos. Not randomly, like zapping through TV channels (do people still do that, by the way?). I watch videos from the dozens of channels I'm subscribed to, by authors I enjoy watching and about topics that are relevant to me. YouTube is unbeatable for this, because almost everyone is on YouTube, but few other video platforms are as universal.
And yes, I pay for YouTube Premium because ads absolutely break YouTube. Ads make everything worse. I'm still upset about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments" embedded in their videos (looking at you, Squarespace -- you can go f*ck yourself); I wish paying for Premium automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well. At least some authors make self-deprecating jokes about their sponsored content.
May I introduce you to SponsorBlock:
For any content I’m interested in, a blog post with pictures beats it. If it needs video then have it interspersed throughout the page.
LLM summarisers are the only thing that make YouTube usable for me in that I can still get the content without wasting time.
I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph. And when you add 30 second ads every 5 mins it makes it even less compelling
There’s a few other new options I’ve seen through Reddit for web viewing, iOS content blockers, or hosting your own VPS invidious/piped instance with rotating ipv6 servers (not google/aws/digital ocean as they require using a web panel).
You can leave ads on for whitelisted creators sponsored advertising content also.
For example, I can watch videos, but I often get an "error" if I try to seek in the video.
I don't mind these so much because they are easy to skip, but ad-blockers don't catch them.
As for the video being unnecessarily long - I have played with copying the transcript from the video into ChatGPT, but they tend to be too long for ChatGPT to handle.
The ads are indeed insane. They break YouTube in practice. YouTube, in its wisdom, much like a mobster in the protection racket, offers you an out: pay for Premium. I ended up doing this because YT is one of the things I use the most. The alternative was having Firefox with uBlock Origin on every mobile device in my household, I suppose, but this wasn't feasible.
YouTube Premium took the win :(
> I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph
Depends on what you're watching. I always disliked, say, programming tutorials in video form -- give me text, to read and understand at my own pace. Many video tutorials are unnecessarily longwinded and always go at the wrong pace for me, either too fast or too slow.
But I watch tons of videos about other topics where video is the right form. I watch hobby tutorials, I watch videos about cinema/art, etc, and I feel video is the right format for me.
I pay more for Netflix, and I use it a lot less.
So I’m airing on the side of agreeing, but I also think Googles tactics have been incredibly shoddy, and I can understand someone not wanting to support that.
How do you expect all this content to be made without any sort of money? You’re basically leeching off the rest of us, in this case, IMO.
I hate ads, but right now that’s the only ticket, or paying for premium. Perhaps that will change, I hope.
Ads are cancer and should be excised at every opportunity. Ad companies should be destroyed. Ad tech workers should be blackballed. Shilling is shameful.
I cannot agree on blackballing workers. That’s just another form of control we shouldn’t exercise. Imagine if someone blackballed you for your career doing whatever you do? They’re just trying to survive and earn a living. Maybe I’ll agree on shaming and calling out execs though.
It should be hazardous to your career to engage in certain types of business. Mass murder, advertising, spyware, spam, network abuse (DDoS), or conspiracy to commit same should always make people think twice about hiring you.
I'm happy to watch an occasional ad. Maybe 2 minutes for every day, curated and high quality advertisements relevant to everyone. No, I will not pay with my data. No, I will not accept interruption in flow, within or between videos.
Interrupting during a video means adblocking is justified.
Adding adverts to nonmonetized channels means adblocking is justified.
It's my time. Google isn't paying for the use of my eyeballs, and I actively don't purchase things I see advertised via YouTube. I'm not alone in this; most people don't buy for digital ads. They already nefariously steal my data at every opportunity.
By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside skipping just ads anyways).
Got it. So you are fine with adblocking; your take comes down to practicality.
Debate aside, I appreciate your thoughtful response.
Excluding some other somewhat reasonable scenarios which break the mold in corner cases (like accessing the dozens of subscription news sites that get posted on HN with no way to actually pay for them properly except spending more time managing the subscriptions than actually reading article or two a day) my "I paid everyone for the content so I can consume it the way that works for me" stance and reasoning doesn't really apply when you intentionally skip the first step "I paid everyone for" out of disinterest in doing so.
I also think YouTube has gotten worse over time and I'd be happy to find a workable replacement despite being a long time YouTube Premium subscriber. I do use SponsorBlock though as I found supporting creators directly while paying YouTube for serving the content left still getting sponsorship ads as a bit ridiculous. It's a good product, just often intentionally shy of being great in interest of metrics
I prefer to watch youtube with a custom player (mpv+yt-dlp on desktop, newpipe on android). I do not want to watch youtube on the youtube website or official youtube android app. The custom clients I am using are unofficial. They reverse engineer youtube to make it work. They often break when youtube changes something.
Like the OP I consume a ton of YouTube and despite my misgivings about Google, I was a long time subscriber to the YouTube/music combo deal until they started showing ads despite my subscription.
It would happen a few times a week, and if I'm being charitable I could chalk it up to a deployment error, but it happened too many times for me to not get the impression that no one at YouTube gives a shit about subscribers.
I watch quite a bit of videos by creators with very lower viewership and sub counts and I suspect they're not seeing a penny.
I would have written a similar comment and I pay for Premium. I don't use any other Google service at this point, but I do have an account just for YouTube (I dig into the privacy settings to disable all the things I can).
It wasn't really that hard if you use Apple for almost everything and Fastmail for mail.
I use DuckDuckGo for search and occasional search again on Google, but that's becoming less relevant over time with LLMs (and generally reddit or youtube is the best place to search anyway for most things).
Google just pockets all the revenue if you have fewer than 4,000 "public watch hours". If you put together an a concise 4-minute DIY video, an average view time will probably hover around 1 minute, and you will need 240k views to qualify. Most videos on YouTube get under 1k views.
There is a negligibly small percentage of content creators / content farmers who live in a symbiotic relationship with the platform and actually make good money, but let's not pretend you're patronizing the creators when you're paying for YouTube Premium.
With less than 4k public watch hours your channel has barely made any money. It is accumulated for your videos for the entire channel, that isn't per video.
And no, youtube isn't making money on those videos, it costs them more to store etc and most of them aren't getting any ads anyway. Instead you get free video upload on youtube, normally you pay for that.
Youtube makes their money from the big creators that draws in a lot of views per video, there efficiency of scale lets them get over the profitability hump.
Also I believe the payouts are split entirely by watchtime. Three minutes of watching an original song with a high-quality music video is worth more to me than 8 hours of some game stream or rambling video essay I happened to have on in the background while doing chores, but if YTP values both equally per minute it'll basically send no money to the creators who I believe bring the most value to the platform. There's even a like/dislike system, but there's no indication that it matters for Premium money. Channel memberships and superchats don't even remove ads, so even if I did decide to sub on a per-channel basis, I'd still need an ad blocker.
Agreed, as someone who walks almost everywhere, Organic Maps is great on GrapheneOS.
The only things I use Google Maps for are more rare: (1) see what hours a store is open, which IIUC is being worked on by OSM; (2) planning a trip via public transit; (3) StreetView, which is really an awesome feature.
Personally, (2) and (3) are the ones that keep me on Google Maps, along with the real killer feature for me which is that I can just search "good {coffee,food,whatever} near me" and get a list of pretty good recommendations.
In other words, it was recognizing an intolerable pattern of behavior, which seemed inevitable that it would cause me actual, material harm in some way eventually.
Yes, Google accumulates data and does stuff with it. But Google also has rigorous processes to lock down data and access to it, unlike virtually any small-to-medium cloud software provider. I've heard crazy stories like people looking up their friends' health insurance details for fun, just because almost everyone in the engineering part of that company had access to the production database.
Plus, Google is so large that it constantly receives attention by public institutions, which makes it harder to pull off shady stuff without getting caught. If <random SME> sells your data to the highest bidder who will spam you with cold calls, no one's gonna bat an eye.
This would basically be the same as p-hacking.
Also switched to Organic Maps, but still use Google Maps for finding businesses/hours. Organic Maps is nice, but searching for directions is awful (at least in my South Florida area). Typing in any address tends to return results that only show the name of the street, and they're all identical. E.g. just a bunch of "Southwest 123rd Street, Florida", no house number or anything useful to distinguish them. Often times I'm forced to use Google Maps. This is currently the hardest Google service to quit for me.
I went from DDG to Kagi, and stuck with Kagi because of the superior results. Luckily I got in early, and have an early adopter plan. It's a shame they can't offer better pricing though because it really is a superior service. Recently I've had some privacy concerns that have made me a bit skeptical of Kagi, but it's hard for me to go back to DDG or even Google now. It's just that good.
For files I use Nextcloud exclusively. While it is slow and bloated as hell, I like it because I share the instance with family members, and it's easier for non-techie people to use it. It's also possible to mount it as a network drive using WebDAV so you can skip the bloated web interface. It works very well for me on KDE Dolphin.
For email I use ProtonMail with custom domain too. They're overpriced and overrated, but it's too much work for me to switch at this point, and their app isn't that bad. I would recommend FastMail to anyone looking for a new email provider though.
For YouTube, I use FreeTube. It's basically just a custom front end l. No ads, no spyware. Sure, I deprive creators of ad revenue, but that's a good thing. The less money they make on YouTube, the more likely they are to post on different services. I haven't heard of Nebula before, so I'll definitely be checking that out.
I went the opposite route, but I feel like Proton is better geared to business use (the plans and included products just seem more attractive to me). And yeah the Swiss angle is mostly PR but eh, maybe that could be useful and it's one more thing. "Defense in depth," kinda.
When I switched I didn't really notice Proton being that much more expensive for my uses either.
I'm delighted that this works now.
Of course companies like the proprietary-platform apps, in some ways. So it's great to see a tech company also embrace Web open standards as an option for users/customers.
I guess I'm just a rube, but it never occurred to me to demand much 'something' (all the stuff Google provides me) for 'nothing' (refusal to allow use of my annonomized data). Since I bother setting my cookie settings on all new websites, I don't really get bombarded with personalized advertising anymore. That's my middle ground. (I also pay for YouTube Premium, so I don't see the ads there).
I've just gotten in the habit of opening up Nebula first and only then switching to YouTube when there's nothing new there. Even if you do this only once every few days it's usually enough, because a lot of creators upload to Nebula a week before they do YouTube.
(Seems to be limited to 1080p, but I don't really care about the quality of those videos tbh).
I don't get this argument. Do you want to be protected from the services you use, or do you want a partnership based on trust? With aligned incentives, trust is easier. Without trust, not logging in won't save your privacy. Just pay the nice people money for the very nice service they provide, and let them build trust with you.
i like odysee a lot as a platform, but it can't fully replace YT just yet for me, as a good deal of the channels i watch are still YT-only. i'd say my video-watching time is split maybe 80% yt, and 20% odysee at this point.
The point for me is data availability, I do want to own my data. So for emails and service I do own my domain name, so I can change third parties services, if I use any (email) in a transparent manner for my correspondent. I own the domain, I own the mail address, my website URL etc, I have a "home address" on the net.
Similarly I do use third party email services, simply because hosting one myself meaning ending up too often in GMail and co spam, BUT, I own my mails because I do not keep them on third party IMAPs but on my homeserver, the mail provider is just a relay of my "incomplete" mail infra.
For contact I've used Radicale, now testing https://github.com/tchapi/davis
For files I have a desktop centric setup, the homeserver run a paperless-ngx instance with "a certain set of docs" meaning I do not mirror my org-mode/org-attach entire home structure to paperless but only some selected docs to have them available on the go via mobile if I need them and simple webdav dir to share some if needed. I do not want OwnCloud considering it a monster I can't really know by it's mere size so I prefer giving up with it.
I've tried Immich and Jellyfin for my photos and movies/music but they end up essentially unused.
For RSS TT-RSS is far from perfect but can handle conveniently a significant number of posts quickly skimming them also on the go.
Wireguard is nice enough to encapsulate my services
To make it short, my point is not avoid a company like Google than choosing another like Proton, my point is being able to have and work with my data if some services disappear in a snap.
What I found the most difficult was the search engine. Although Google search has become worse, it's still far better than Duckduckgo in my opinion. I've found DDG very inaccurate for non-English queries.
you're welcome :)
It makes me really sad that I've come to rely on a bunch of things that just aren't available at all through open software.
It would be nice to find a host that offers both hosting and email through a custom domain too.
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141-Ho...
Not affiliated, just a longtime customer and fastmail enjoyer.
> Your Google domain has been migrated to your Squarespace Domains account. You can now log in at Squarespace Domains with your Google account to manage your domain, example.org. This is part of Squarespace's acquisition of all domain registrations and customer accounts from Google Domains.
Standard Notes was pretty decent for acessing notes between multiple devices when I used it. Now that I am back on Android, I use Syncthing for both pictures and notes, without a cloud intermediary.
Aegis instead of Google Authenticator. I found it the most straightforward, and it has backups/transfers not tied to any account.
QKSMS instead of Google Messages. It doesn't support RCS and reactions come across as texts, but no issues otherwise.
Fossify apps for other basic functionality.
Something to keep in mind with custom ROMs and OSes is that only some have VoLTE support. Which, with 3G shutdown, is a must in the US, unless you are in a great 2G coverage zone.
My weak point has been Apple Photos. It “just works” for me and I really appreciate that it does all processing for faces, cats, etc. locally and in a native app. Every other option I find either doesn’t do syncing, offers an Electron app, or forces viewing through a browser.
Does anyone know of a solution that fits the bill? I will happily self-host.
Professional enough to resell accounts and works nicely on phones.
It supports high availability, mx relays and takes scheduled backups to directory of choosing.
I've been satisfied with support and it's a rock solid product that's finally starting to mature after many company take overs.
Only other search engine I use is yandex, which is very useful for search terms that US-hased search engines mess with the results of.
In the past years I had to actively work on not using too many Google products.
Today Google products got bad that it feels like Google themselves are doing the discouraging.
I've been liking it so far, no issues to report. However, I've only been using it for two months now.
Also, similar to Google Voice, some businesses won't let you use a VOIP number for your phone number.
You can even pay anonymously with crypto and have multiple numbers using a single app and billing account.
If you reply with a way to send it to you privately, you can have one.
I use it as my primary source for news (TLDR Daily), and watch content from creators such as RealLifeLore and Half As Interesting, among many others.
Because of that, I rarely open YouTube, and even then I use SmartTube [1] on my Chromecast which gives a great experience.
What I never see is someone who proposes "de-Googling" and foregoing a replacement.
Consider the following generic example.
Google acquires some company that intermediates some task that people perform using a computer. Now Google collects data about its users.
A hypothetical computer user makes use of this intermediary "service" as well as others offered by Google. Eventually user decides he wants to stop giving away data to Google.
User then publishes to the web the idea of ceasing to use Google-owned intermediaries by using other, "equivalent" intermediaries for each and _every_ service. Or he tries to replicate role of the intermediary himself through "self-hosting".
But he never considers that in some cases using an intermediary is itself a problem, or may be unnecessary, irrespective of whether it is Google or some other entity. Why does he need to preserve each and _every_ Google acquisition by finding a replacement.
The use of an intermediary allows data collection and in almost all cases that's why someone started a so-called "tech" company. They saw opportunity to profit from being an intermediary (middleman).
The attempt to find a replacement for _every_ Google-owned intermediary seems rather brainless. As if every Google acquisition is something that must exist and must be used.
Certainly there is an arguable privacy benefit from using disparate third parties for different tasks instead of using the same one for every task. However there is also a benefit from not using a third party at all, or even from not performing the task via a server (self-hosting).
Reddit is a collection of forums/communities with wildly varying topics. HN is just one specific forum.
Some of the worst behaviors that are common in many Reddit subs are discouraged here in HN, and for that I'm thankful. But the topics aren't the same, so one cannot replace the other in general.
The problem with Reddit is that the worst of Reddit inevitably pollutes the best of Reddit. Better for your mental diet to avoid altogether.
> The problem with Reddit is that the worst of Reddit inevitably pollutes the best of Reddit. Better for your mental diet to avoid altogether.
Reddit does attract some unsavory types, but on the other hand, HN has a very narrow focus while Reddit covers more topics I'm interested in. It wouldn't make sense to avoid it, or to claim HN is a way to de-reddit -- they don't cover the same niches!
And I don't go randomly browsing Reddit looking for subs to read; instead I seek out subs about specific topics I'm interested in. I would say it's HN that I browse randomly, without looking for anything in particular... HN is a "random news" portal for me.
What I meant was that I don’t visit Reddit by instinct anymore when I’m bored - even “good” subreddits. The general user base is not high quality. Even for topics I’m interested in, I really can’t stand the Reddit vibe that inevitably seeps through. It’s incredibly predictable.
Buut yeah can one of you hackernews geniuses please create an alternative to youtube? The only alternatives I can find are crazy republican right wing websites that I have no desire to help or support.
I post videos on Hardlimit, which uses PeerTube. I don't care about "discovery"; they're to illustrate blog postings elsewhere. So all I need is hosting and playout, which Peertube does just fine. (Peertube handles playout by mooching bandwidth off of other people using Peertube. So it can scale if many people are watching the same video. Permanent storage, though, is not distributed. It's not Bittorrent.)
I've been using LibreOffice and its predecessors for decades now. My last purchase of a Microsoft product was Word 97. Desktop browser is Firefox. Mail client is Thunderbird. Backups are IDrive. Add blocking is the EFF's Privacy Badger, which breaks many ad systems while enforcing privacy.
My phone uses F-Droid. It is not connected to a Google account. Browser is Fennec. App store is F-Droid. Search is DuckDuckGo.
What's the problem?
…did you read the article?
The author lists the Google alternatives they’ve been using, along with both the successes and the problems with those alternatives.
Incoming is a site of my own, "animats.com".
Because nobody else has a content library to rival YT. (Gmail I don't know; this should be relatively easy to switch.)