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Alternatives to American or Big Tech stuff
Aldo
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
The past few weeks have been absolutely crazy to me! And not just because of all the things, but also because of all the other things. This thread is for a very specific purpose: lets talk about different websites, services and technology to use instead of the shit from the big American players. To be as precise as possible: this is the thread to talk about wanting less of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple in your life and explore non-American companies.
Because we have a few threads that are kiiiinda in this area already I want to experiment with some extra guidelines. This is for a sensible reason: we can learn a lot more from each other when we reduce some distractions that seem to pop up a lot in online discussions.
1. This is a Musk-free zone! There’s other threads to talk about him. Let’s run on the assumption we are not touching anything he owns.
2. Lets not get tribal about this! Maybe you’re particularly fond of one service, but avoid getting cross with someone who is with a competitor.
3. We gotta accept that stepping away from Big Tech is more difficult to some than to others. This can be frustrating, but lets just recognize that now and try to keep it chill in this thread.
The below is an attempt to list areas Big Tech rules and give a short rundown of the biggest actors in it. Usually that’s just the Big Techs, but sometimes there’s a viable alternative known by a larger audience.
Mobile phones. Many phones are from Chinese or American companies and run on software from Google and Apple.
Operating System So there’s Microsoft and iOS and then there’s Linux with its many distros.
Internet browsers. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari are the biggest players. Then there’s Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation is currently mostly sponsored by Google. Attempts for a new browser structure to compete with Chromium and Gecko are in development.
e-mail. Google has Gmail, Microsoft has hotmail, Apple has iCloud mail, Yahoo has Yahoo. Your e-mail is not just a way for companies to reach you, it’s often also your digital identity.
instant messaging Different IM services are popular in different parts of the world. For most of Europe it’s Whatsapp (Meta), but there’s a lot of alternatives. Many of them are run by Big Tech! One challenge (and the reason why there’s regional differences) is that you mostly IM with people you know IRL. That means that switching to a different app is not just a personal choice, but you need to convince your friends/family to join.
Social Networks/many-to-many communication For many the start of all this bullshit. Besides the negative effects of the infinite scrolling social media platforms, there’s also the owners of these platforms that heavily influence what you get to see and what is allowed on a platform. This ranges from LinkedIn (Microsoft), YouTube (Google), Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Bluesky (previous CEO of Twitter), TikTok (ByteDance/Chinese govt) Reddit (kinda independent in a sense) and many smaller platforms usually part of the Fediverse (independent).
Office software/spreadsheets/text documents Used to be everyone grabbed a copy of Office to be able to open .doc files. That was quickly tackled by Google and browsers. But what if you want to write a document or spread a sheet without Big Tech involved?
Maps Google, Apple and Microsoft all have their own map services and have bought up a lot of companies in this area. Like how Waze is just part of Google. A digital map is not just a passive document, it’s also a way to look up opening hours or reviews. OpenStreetMap is dependent on active contributors, depending on your area a few enthusiasts can have created a viable alternative to Big Tech Map.
Translating stuff, which is essentially the purview of AI-stuff now. Besides the translating service baked into your OS there’s DeepL from Germany.
Other stuff! Kinda running out of steam here. There’s definitely more stuff. Uhh Videogames and music!
I’ll write some notes on stuff I’ve switched to in upcoming posts, but wanted the OP to be a bit less Aldo-talks-about-his-stuff-all-the-time.
Because we have a few threads that are kiiiinda in this area already I want to experiment with some extra guidelines. This is for a sensible reason: we can learn a lot more from each other when we reduce some distractions that seem to pop up a lot in online discussions.
1. This is a Musk-free zone! There’s other threads to talk about him. Let’s run on the assumption we are not touching anything he owns.
2. Lets not get tribal about this! Maybe you’re particularly fond of one service, but avoid getting cross with someone who is with a competitor.
3. We gotta accept that stepping away from Big Tech is more difficult to some than to others. This can be frustrating, but lets just recognize that now and try to keep it chill in this thread.
The below is an attempt to list areas Big Tech rules and give a short rundown of the biggest actors in it. Usually that’s just the Big Techs, but sometimes there’s a viable alternative known by a larger audience.
Mobile phones. Many phones are from Chinese or American companies and run on software from Google and Apple.
Operating System So there’s Microsoft and iOS and then there’s Linux with its many distros.
Internet browsers. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari are the biggest players. Then there’s Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation is currently mostly sponsored by Google. Attempts for a new browser structure to compete with Chromium and Gecko are in development.
e-mail. Google has Gmail, Microsoft has hotmail, Apple has iCloud mail, Yahoo has Yahoo. Your e-mail is not just a way for companies to reach you, it’s often also your digital identity.
instant messaging Different IM services are popular in different parts of the world. For most of Europe it’s Whatsapp (Meta), but there’s a lot of alternatives. Many of them are run by Big Tech! One challenge (and the reason why there’s regional differences) is that you mostly IM with people you know IRL. That means that switching to a different app is not just a personal choice, but you need to convince your friends/family to join.
Social Networks/many-to-many communication For many the start of all this bullshit. Besides the negative effects of the infinite scrolling social media platforms, there’s also the owners of these platforms that heavily influence what you get to see and what is allowed on a platform. This ranges from LinkedIn (Microsoft), YouTube (Google), Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Bluesky (previous CEO of Twitter), TikTok (ByteDance/Chinese govt) Reddit (kinda independent in a sense) and many smaller platforms usually part of the Fediverse (independent).
Office software/spreadsheets/text documents Used to be everyone grabbed a copy of Office to be able to open .doc files. That was quickly tackled by Google and browsers. But what if you want to write a document or spread a sheet without Big Tech involved?
Maps Google, Apple and Microsoft all have their own map services and have bought up a lot of companies in this area. Like how Waze is just part of Google. A digital map is not just a passive document, it’s also a way to look up opening hours or reviews. OpenStreetMap is dependent on active contributors, depending on your area a few enthusiasts can have created a viable alternative to Big Tech Map.
Translating stuff, which is essentially the purview of AI-stuff now. Besides the translating service baked into your OS there’s DeepL from Germany.
Other stuff! Kinda running out of steam here. There’s definitely more stuff. Uhh Videogames and music!
I’ll write some notes on stuff I’ve switched to in upcoming posts, but wanted the OP to be a bit less Aldo-talks-about-his-stuff-all-the-time.
Anzekay on
+12
Posts
OS: use Linux, Ubuntu is a pretty good distro with a UI.
Browser: I believe they're still US based, but Brave is privacy focused. Its built off Chromium but I'd argue that's probably a good thing and it's the stuff added into Chrome that's actually an issue
Email: there's five bajillion options including hosting your own. Proton is probably the most popular off the top of my head for privacy focused. Its Swiss based as well
IM: it's American again, but Signal is a mostly open source encrypted option that is popular among the privacy focused. Its also run by a non-profit.
Office Products: there's several options, but LibreOffice is the main one. Its a fork of OpenOffice which was the standard but the owner allowed to die.
Map: I think is going to be country dependent and you'll likely have the best success finding the main competitor in your country. If you just want an actual map then there's probably a lot of options, but if you want reviews, hours, etc then you need enough users to make it worthwhile so there's probably only one other option.
I switched from Gmail to FastMail last year, but I'm not very impressed by their spam filtering, so maybe I'll check out Tuta. (I have my own domains, so if I can just import my emails there's no visible change to people mailing me.)
(Apologies if this is beyond the scope of the thread; it seems tech-adjacent but I will see myself out if this isn't the right place.)
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I am struggling with one thing: I have a duck.com address I use to filter out mail trackers, but they're also US-based and I just can't tell if Tuta is already protecting my privacy against nosy trackers anyway?
No that's fine, no worries. If it spins out into a more long-lasting subject it might be interesting to move over to the movies thread. I think there's something to be said for buying 2nd hand. For most media from 10 years ago there's probably more than enough people trying to get rid of their physical stuff. Although for newer stuff I think you're pretty much forced to legally buy/rent from places that big movie studios want you to buy/rent from. Like Disney will just dictate where people can watch their stuff. But then again, Trump hates Disney so maybe Disney is now good actually??? Trying to come to terms with this reality is hard.
They're also unhinged on social media.
https://calyxos.org/
All google's tracking stuff is scrubbed out, but it still is able to use the hardware level security capabilities of android due to the AOSP underpinnings. You can use a non-official app store they provide, or sideload mainstream apps through an anonymous play store. Signal, Brave, and other obvious privacy-focused apps are included by default.
The closest you will find to a modern mobile device that is untethered from the worst of the internet right now. And if you are fine with slightly less great specs but want absolutely no money going to google, you can run this OS on the Fairphone ( https://www.fairphone.com/ ), that trades top flight flagship features for repairability and the fact that you truly own the device. Plus it has it's own degoogled OS (/e/os) which you can use, or switch for calyxos or whatever should you wish.
On the Cupertino side of the shop, iPhones are more or less secure already, but you absolutely should disable iCloud Backups in favor of local encrypted backups to your computer, as Apple has zero issue handing the iCloud backups over to authorities if requested but cannot get into the local stuff without your credentials. Also, never ever allow apps to do cross-app tracking. You can drive a truck through the holes that creates in your data security. And the EU has forced Apple to allow for sideloading and alternate app stores; just be aware of the risks should you choose to use those, as there is a bit less scrutiny on what may or may not be included in apps delivered through those channels.
My experience with SteamOS over the last nearly 3 years of Steam Deck ownership has been pretty educational as far as how relatively newbie-friendly Linux can be now. (iirc it's based on Arch Linux.) Unfortunately it's not ready for general use on any old hardware yet, which would be kind of ideal as it's now familiar; and I still definitely consider myself a Linux newbie so alternative suggestions like these are welcomed.
Mint I've heard about, it always comes up as a friendly version of Linux for the inexperienced; Zorin (god that name makes me think A View to a Kill and Christopher Walken) less often, but its site there does a good job of selling it.
I have a 2017-era Alienware (Dell) laptop that doesn't support Win11 (much to my chagrin I must admit) but is otherwise still a perfectly usable and quick general-purpose machine, so I've been eyeing up putting Linux on it at some point anyway to extend its lifespan. It's not ready to be retired yet.
Steam | XBL
Please can you elaborate on that?
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
I don't usually trust much German software
Email alternatives I dunno but for anyone looking for a VPN airvpn is commonly viewed as the best with port forwarding and no US affiliation.
I now have a small sling bag that contains
- a Polaroid Go camera
- a flip phone (now on Mint Mobile, cheap as fuck too)
- a Gameboy Advance (put in a backlit screen even!)
- a book of crossword puzzles and a pen
- a deck of cards
- a handheld Garmin GPS that fits in that phone holder people use in cars that clips to the AC vent
- my 2004 iPod mini (with a new battery and SD storage)
- zero targeted ads, zero ads of any kind actually
- no generative or suggested AI
That's step 1.
Step 2 is building a new Linux PC for a few things I need a PC for (ripping DVDs/CDs, CHIRP radio programming, non iTunes music management, etc etc)
Step 3 is switching off of Gmail and Google Search
Step 4 is likely gonna be a pihole
I've decided to just go back to like 2005 and pretend that's where I live now
Thank you for making this thread!
Mullvad is apparently another good no-log VPN, but doesn't have port forwarding. And because it's in the 14 eyes or whatever, is probably subject to additional crazy shit.
Traditional VPNs have a central server that all your devices route their traffic through, so then it’s your decision if you trust that VPN provider with your traffic.
I’m using Tailscale (btw). This is a mesh overlay network — there is no central server your traffic goes through. The tl;dr is that the only central bit is a handshake service that helps your devices to find each other, then all the traffic goes directly between those devices, or routed in a mesh network between devices that can’t reach each other directly.
It’s been amazingly easy to get up and running, no bothering with opening/forwarding ports in the router and shit.
Tailscale is a Canadian company, there are others that do pretty much the same. Free for up to 100 devices, since there’s not much done on their end after the initial matchmaking.
Is there a reason for that? We're looking at Box now.
Can you explain a bit what you mean by "running an instance"? Like is a consumer able to buy a plan from Nextcloud or Owncloud, or do they have to go through someone else?
I know a lot of people complain about this feature but one thing that makes OneDrive indispensable to me is the ability to save directly to it from Office and to move things around in File Explorer. Having to upload revisions or edit within a browser is just a bridge too far for me. But if there's an alternative, especially one with more storage at a reasonable price, that can do the same thing for my household use, I'd go for it.
no, I absolutely appreciate your candor because I have definitely had people insisting that one open source solution or another is "just as convenient or more" as whatever mainstream thing I was using. Actually going into it having some idea what I'm in for is important.
If you don't need Steam VR then Mint is prolly the #1 option for a distro to migrate to, though.
Re: Brave browser
The CEO is a piece of shit who got ousted from Mozilla for being a homophobe so that's not great.
Librewolf is prolly where it's at though I haven't found a mobile equivalent yet.
EDIT: Read the article posted up above and will need to try out Vivaldi
This is the way.
Steam | XBL
Brave also has integrated tor which may have legitimate uses, but is also the engine of anonymity for the dark web. For home computing and mobile, I am mostly happy with firefox+uBlock. Firefox also still has uBlock on its mobile browser which is a godsend for making online recipe pages actually usable.
As far as I'm aware, it's not exactly the same. They're searching for an alternative to ads for website revenue and a crypto token actually seems like maybe a decent use case for that though iirc it's not successful. You can also easily turn it off which is what I did.
I definitely think it's a superior choice to Firefox from a privacy perspective and it uses Chromium which is also a better engine.
Can you explain why this is the case? I know chromium is the better engine as I definitely notice slower performance and occasionally a page that won't load right, but I am curious as to why you say the privacy on Firefox is inferior.
Firefox collects and shares user data. I believe you can go into settings and turn this off, but it's on by default. Brave does not.
You'll also wanna rip your discs as a backup since as we've just seen thanks to Warner Brothers finding new and exciting ways to shit the bed, discs can fail.
For that MakeMKV works fantastically tho you'll wanna snap up a Bluray ripper now sooner rather than later since who knows how long they'll be around and it's specific models that work best for this due to a need for custom firmware.
https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19634
And once you've got your digital copies you can then install Jellyfin which is basically Plex but free and open source and by all accounts a lot better.
Doing your best to implement 3 2 1 backup habits will ensure far fewer data disasters in your future!
Maintain three copies of your data: This includes the original data and at least two copies.
Use two different types of media for storage: Store your data on two distinct forms of media to enhance redundancy.
Keep at least one copy off-site: To ensure data safety, have one backup copy stored in an off-site location, separate from your primary data and on-site backups.
In Waterfox I run the following extensions:
NoScript to block all javascript elements by default and whitelist what I need to run websites I want to visit. Often it's enough to just open an article in reader view (F9), or just allow the main domain. You'll quickly notice websites have javascript elements from all kinds of companies and those are usually completely useless elements for you as someone who just wants to read an article or look at a picture of a cat.
uBlock Origin as my main driver adblocker. As long as they block YouTube ads I will use them. They're great at making websites readable again. Before uBlock I had a custom hosts file that had almost all ad-serving domains on it. The file I used was maintained by someone whose health took a turn for the worst and stopped with updating. He referred to this Github page and I'll probably return to that if uBlock ever evaporates.
Phone browsing is a bit of a struggle by comparison:but I finally made the switch from Brave to Vivaldi. They're all pretty similar in use though! I run Blokada 5 to block domains that are shit. I sometimes have to add a domain because the standard list I use is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a universal blacklist. It's fine, though. I prefer manually clicking the button to allow a website vs just randomly browsing to some shitty website and hoping Android is smart enough to keep my phone from harm.
--
Thanks to everyone for talking about OSs, I think that's the most daunting thing for me. I grew up with Windows 95 and never used a different OS. When I built my current PC I was wondering if I should start using Mint, but folks on the forums warned me that it does take some getting used to and it would make more sense to practice with a virtual desktop. It's just that taking time to practice with a different OS takes effort and I can't motivate myself to start trying this. It's a me-problem.
So, not exactly Critical or life changing, but Crave is a streaming service that is Canadian for people looking for alternatives to Prime, Netflix, Hulu or other services and while it does still have a bunch of american programs it also hosts a lot of Canadian ones like Letterkenny
Not by all accounts - by use case. The real benefit to Plex is device support. I can watch Plex on pretty much any of my devices, and the last time I looked into Jellyfin, that wasn't the case.
Note that I have a lifetime sub to Plex, so my use of Plex is dependent on me retaining that access without any more dollars. If/When they rescind that (As is the way with enshittification), I'll switch, but if you've paid for Plex, the feature set and support it has is still pretty good. Also, the Plex music app is fantastic.
Integrating with tor is a great privacy feature and we would all be a lot better of if more people started using it for daily browsing.
PlexAmp is cool but Symfonium (is on Android, idk about IOS) can connect to Plex and other stuff like Jellyfin and Emby which does diminish the need for PlexAmp.
I do have a Plex lifetime but as it is America based and doing partnerships with T Mobile and all that I figured bringing up alternatives in the thread for alternatives would be better.
EDIT: Vivaldi doesn't have any extensions in mobile so I tried Waterfox and these forums work a lot better on it than regular Firefox mobile so I'm already digging it