I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible. - The New York Times 📦

8    07 Aug 2020 12:50 by u/TTTA

8 comments

4 u/imbalanced 07 Aug 2020 19:15
Let's do an exercise! * First let's fire up that VPN. I'm using Windscribe, but whatever you prefer is fine. * Duck Duck Go (search) * Shop directly from manufacturer web stores (instead of Amazon, can still use for ratings) * I'm still allowing for Overstock, Houzz, Wayfair, Lowes, Home Depot, and Newegg because they don't feel like "the man" * Eat only Dominos Pizza. Not relevant to this list, but very hungry right now. * Gotta find the Dominos, guess I'm migrating back to MapQuest. Wait, no, owned by Verizon. I guess the Mapbox integration in Duck Duck Go is fine. * LineageOS phone * F-Droid app store * ProtonMail rather than Gmail/Hotmail/etc * Signal Messenger client for communications * Arlo doorbell and cameras (Netgear instead of Amazon or Google) * Ubuntu computer * Ruqqus, Minds, Parler, Gab for social media * Instacart for groceries from local places * Did I mention I'm hungry right now? Might be affecting this list. * Spotify * Nintendo * Screwed on game streaming since Twitch is owned by Amazon, Mixer is owned (and closed) by Microsoft, all that's left is Facebook Gaming or YouTube. Just watch your friends through a Discord channel while on a VPN and a fake account. * Crap, I forgot about YouTube. Is Vimeo any good now? Wait, Dailymotion is still a thing? * Streaming with Philo, maybe Pluto TV * Cartoons on Crunchyroll? Nope, owned by AT&T. How about Funimation, is that still safe? * Let's bring back Monster.com and MySpace.com What else did I forget?
3 u/cybermang 07 Aug 2020 22:48
- Firefox for browsing. Not Brave like a lot of people suggest, it's a Chrome derivative. - Install ublock origin, HTTPS everywhere, and privacy badger on browser. - System76 sells their own machines with pop_os linux installed and coreboot. - Return to the age of piracy. - Also, Signal isn't that great unless the people you are texting are also using Signal. I had a hard time trying to convince my friends to care about their privacy.
1 u/utter_desperation 08 Aug 2020 03:45
> Not Brave > it's a Chrome derivative It's a Chromium derivative, which is safe. The reason people see Chrome as dangerous is that Chrome is Chromium with all of Google's tracking bullshit added in. Chromium is open source and trustworthy as long as you can see what the group that makes a derivative (Edge, Brave) does with the code.
1 u/cybermang 08 Aug 2020 11:36
I get that but we're talking about avoiding big tech and chromium is developed by Google. It's not so much about the danger, just the avoidance right?
1 u/utter_desperation 08 Aug 2020 16:08
Nah, Chromium is perfectly fine. It's FOSS. Just avoid Chrome itself and you're good.
1 u/wagesj45 08 Aug 2020 05:34
You'll need to block 1e100.net, Google's internal routing servers, as well. This will break a lot of websites that use Google APIs. You'll have to do that at the router level.
3 u/Feline 07 Aug 2020 15:44
I did it for a while, it was perfectly doable though suboptimal on several levels. Alternative search engines in particular are terrible when it comes to non-English locales.
0 u/Imperator 08 Aug 2020 15:50
It's definitely harder with services/products where there isn't a proper alternative but not impossible. Changing search engine to DuckDuckGo, your browser to Firefox and moving your stuff from Dropbox to MEGA or pCloud is super easy.