De-Google Your Life - Part 1
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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I want to get off Google photos, but I also don’t want to pay a subscription. And I don’t really want to self host. A pay once service I’d accept, but I haven’t seen one with an extremely cursory search. I don’t need any fancy features. Just store the photos, let me see them online, and let me put them in albums.
Hosting pictures cost money
If its free, then you are the product. Can’t really expect to switch to another free product and expect any form of privacy. You could try Microsoft’s One Drive but it isn’t much different. I’ve been recommending Ente Photos which is a subscription but it’s worth it for me. About 3 or 4 bucks a month for 50GB.
Right. I get that. But I’d like to just pay once. I don’t like subscriptions. But since file storage has ongoing costs, it seems unlikely anyone would offer a pay-once-and-we’ll-host-your-files.
There is pcloud and filen.io both have lifetime plans but I’m not sure how close you can get to something like Google Photos or Ente Photos with these providers.
Google services I still use before being unGoogled:
… and the last one is just basically every employer I have worked with puts all their company data on Google & it can’t really be avoided with them >:(
Not relly true, eg YT, there are still several scripts to gut out ads, tracks and nags from YT (take a look in Greasyfork or OpenuserJS) (for YT naturally filter the newest and recent updated scripts), if one of the front-ends dont work.
Well, OSM and forks or Here maps don’t have the features of Gmaps (eg Street view) but are way enough for the most use.
For translations, OpenSource isn’t sinonimo of bad, eg, CrowTranslate for Desktop or the Linguist extension for the browser are FOSS and maybe the best you can find out there, multiengines for more than 120 lenguages, they use the APIs of Google, Yandex and others (customizable, Linguist use also the Bergamot Translator(At the moment still in developement and only EU languages, but they’ll add more soon)), similar to the front-ends for YT, so Google isn’t a problem.
Yes, naturally if you are an Google user for your work, few you can do, but there are alternatives to use Google only the minimum needed.
A YouTube alternative client doesn’t change that all of the infrastructure is Google’s. Even this video shows you need YouTube to reach the audience you want for this style of content.
I hadn’t heard of new translators options in the last two years, but only Lingva listed the two non-English languages I actually use. The rest are all European-based languages. I may have some time to check it out, but it looked like quite a bit of tooling to set up.
Both translators mencioned, Crow and Linguist are full customizable with cusom translators, Crow include, among others, also Lingva by default nd both can traduce more than 120 lenguages, depending on which engine you activate, posting even in Sanscrit if you want
Can’t help but mention Yandex is 100% as evil as Google is.
Out of popular choices, DeepL is probably least evil. Reverso is often a nice pick, too, especially Reverso Context.
There are also things like LibreTranslate, though the quality is generally lower (but can absolutely come in handy for simpler requests)
Yandex might be the same as Google, but spreading your footprint across services still has value as a technique for mitigation. The only other thing I use Yandex for is the occasional image search since it can sometimes do a better job than others.
Fair enough; however, to me it’s only optimal when there are no alternatives.
But to each their own.
You also can use a LLM model
A local open-source one, preferably.
I used AI to summarize the different Google products and services listed in the video along with their suggested alternatives and timestamps. AI is pretty cool sometimes.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
94-326
328-493
534-671
674-794
827-1074
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Brave has an openly homophobic founder, it’s weird to me that they’d mention the crypto issues and not this
Yes, I did it oftn. But main reason to avoid Brave is the somewhat fishy Crypto Policy and the betrayal of users in the past, redirecting searches to related crypto companies, which shows dubious business ethics regarding the user. For me Brave is simply not trustworth.
My main issue with it is the fact that the company has shown it is willing to cross boundaries.
Much better reasons than insinuating a piece of software is homophobic.
Homophobic the CEO Eich, but for the user it’s more important the ethics of the company, questionable in Brave.
Yes. I’m agreeing.
And Microsoft has a habit of interfering with democracies and bribing governments. Let’s not pretend any big tech is a saint. The difference between dumb billionaires like Eich and Musk and others is that they have bad PR.
I don’t like Microsoft either and I’m not sure the relevance of you bringing this up, is this trolling?
It’s not trolling. Eich is a scumbag but if you ditch Brave, right now your only real options and Microsoft Bing and Google. And I think MS and Google do way more bad to the world than Eich. How many MS nd Google executives do you think are right wingers donating to anti gay groups? Definitely not zero.
I disagree that those are the only options, even in the video we are commenting on they name some others
who cares
plenty of people?
De-google your life when they post on YT, a Google service.
Get that narcissistic mofo outta here. The Madison situation blew everything over the water.
If they post it on a non-google platform, they only gonna reach people that already don’t use Google…
You did see the report they released right? Outside consultant coming to the conclusion no egregious things happened? I’d give them the benefit of the doubt at this point tbh.
Did you not read this? https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8882921
Edit: I mean the WHOLE thing.
Yes, I read it. Outside reputable company found no wrong doing. LTT released a statement. By mentioning the lawsuit, they also shut down speculation that they have a weak position.
OP of that post projects their own horrible experience onto LTT. They add nothing at all to the situation, they don’t offer any new proof whatsoever. Fuck that tbh. I feel sorry for their personal experience, but this has nothing to do with whole Madison story.
When the Madison story came out, I unsubbed from LTT. Always believe the victim. But then more and more info came out that cast quite some doubt on the veracity of the whole story.
Now it sounds more like an employee that had an (maybe very much so for them) unpleasant experience at a company and lashed out. Turns out the work company wasn’t as bad as she made it out to look. Shit happens.
I thought I should comment to highlight that LTT has not improved and has doubled down in their attempts to cover over sexual harassment in recent days putting out the following statement earlier in the week:-
As you can see, they hired an outside legal firm to declare that they did nothing wrong in enabling said sexual harassment because there wasn’t a paper trail, despite them admitting that the victim was told to talk it out with the abuser.
They followed up by threatening the victim with a lawsuit for continuing to speak out.
I feel that, as a woman and a victim of sexual harassment myself, its only fair that I must stand by other women that the patriarchy attempts to silence and ensure that those who wish to uphold a safe space for sexual harassment are held to account and not given an unopposed platform.
Oh fuck off, they were found to not have done anything that was alleged. You were wrong, suck it up and apologize.
Frankly we have all moved on. If you don’t want to support LTT no one is stopping you. I am not the biggest fan either but I think we need to move on.
When you say “we”, who do you mean there? “Just moving on” from sexual harassment dodges accountability and moreover is what allows them to feel safe in fostering such a culture.
Except, no sexual harassment actually happened.
That lady said there is smoke, and you said OK let’s put this fire out. Meanwhile, the fire department called you and said that there is no smoke here and no fire. Yet, you show up, garden hose in hand yelling come on guys let’s put this fire out!!!
There is no fire. She lied. It happens. Sometimes people do stupid shit for clout. That doesn’t mean that you need to assume all women are lying when they claim sexual harassment.
What it does mean is that instead of believing all women without question, you should instead hear them out, then investigate, and if the evidence is there, then you support them and amplify their claims.
Supporting women can be expressed in demanding investigations into their claims.
Sometimes people lie. It’s very important that you understand this. Believing anyone without question is outright stupid. However clearly there is a trend with women being sexually harassed. Because that trend exists then that lends more credence to their claims. And they should be taken VERY seriously. The claims should not be dismissed, but investigated.
In this case, the claims were investigated and found to be untrue.
Oh no, not consequences for his actions! How unfair!
You are assuming intent, and ignoring the false statements made. What I see is them hiring a third party to do an investigation, exactly what the public called for. Would you rather the former employee pay for it?
There was no threat, only a statement of fact that the evidence was strong enough for a defamation case, and that they did not wish do go down that path.
While I ain’t gonna excuse some shiti company atro turf, why is this being “litigated” on the web?
Criminal misconduct should be handled by the police.
If misconduct that us not criminal gets handled by civil court.
What outcome is the victim looking for here?
Madison, the victim, told her story online and was met with the vitriolic, violent hatred you’d expect from a woman pointing out the misogyny of the internet’s favorite tech boy. She shared her story mostly to warn other women what to expect from working there as well as a step in her own healing process.
She never wanted to sue them since they are much wealthier than her and she kind of just wanted to move past that part of her life. Linus Media Group isn’t going to sue her for defamation because even if they can win, as they claim (which I personally have my own doubts, but I’m an outside observer with no legal education), it’s still a very bad look.
Since no parties are bringing litigation to a court, the litigation happens in the court of public opinion.
She said, he said…
Also, I don’t doubt they prolly dunked on her at the office tbh. Anyone who worked a job knows that office is subject to jail house rules and everything it entails.
Yeah, I’m just gonna go ahead and say you can’t see past your own biases on this one.
Providing this statement is hardly doubling down and if anything moves in the other direction. Hiring a legit firm with a reputation of its own to defend is by all accounts the right thing to do, particularly after all the other fumbles that took place. Was waiting for an investigatory body to come along and do the legwork for free the more sensible option? No one was silenced here, and these allegations were made without proof. I tend to believe others, but this cuts both ways.
I’d say that laying your own experiences out as germane is gross, but then I do appreciate those strong biases being highlighted. For my own part I’d have rather not defended a media outlet that I do not care for.
I would love to hear from that private investigation. Instead, we just got the summary from the LTT Twitter post.
I am positive there is a PDF of a physical report that is not being shown right now. My question is why? This gives me weird bill bar summarizing the mueller report vibes
Yeah, that wasn’t seen to me. I was imagining that whenever the report was done, that the third party would have some sort of press event about it.
We aren’t even getting the report. We’re getting a summary of the report from the person that had to pay to get it done.
Frat boy, incel culture over at LTT. Shocker they treat women as they do but also a shocker nothing will change 🙄
Also their damage control wreaks of “I don’t really know what I’m doing I just want all the bad press to die already.”
Thanks for this, I’ve been wondering for a while what was of that investigation.
I hope one day there will be a good Google Wallet alternative. I’ve got a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS, and Google Wallet does not work because Google doesn’t trust it. It would be great to get something in it’s place.
I really hope this happens. NFC payments are the only thing that keeps me from switching to GrapheneOS. Seeing how the situation with big tech unfolds, it’s not impossible that I will decide to give up this convenience though.
This. I go cycling a lot and sometimes I want a drink or a snack on the way and the convenience of taking only my phone and still being able to pay for things is unbeatable. I even use my banks own payment app, but it doesn’t support Graphene either, so unless I wanna just go back to keeping 10€ in my case and giving any coin change as tip I’m stuck on my stock Pixel.
Let’s hold the breath for the first bank or official exchange to support GNU Taler.
Apparently a few coop banks somewhere are adopting/have adopted taler, so hopefully it takes off.
Knowing the speed of free software alternatives it will either be ready really soon or in 3 decades it will be forgotten
Doing things the right and good way takes time.
True, but you can burn though funding quickly without having a source of income.
This video was fantastic and I hope they keep this series up. I’m switching to Kagi from ddg because of this vid and I’ll spend time this weekend looking into ente/immich and all the DNS options highlighted here.
Super excited. It’s weird paying for email or search engines given they’ve always been free in my lifetime but the services have been noticeably worse as of late and I miss an Internet constantly bombarding you with things you should believe or buy.
I’ve degoogled apart from:
Give GrapheneOS a go on that Pixel!
I have half of what you have. Did away with Google Photos and moved to self-hosted Immich. No regrets. My case could be somewhat different though, since I only share my pictures and videos with my wife (almost 1TB between pics and videos).
I’m sold on Pixels, mainly because they are basically the only phones that can be seamlessly deGoogled (the irony).
I have half of what you have. Did away with Google Photos and moved to self-hosted Immich. No regrets. My case could be somewhat different though, since I only share my pictures and videos with my wife (almost 1TB between pics and videos).
I’m sold on Pixels, mainly because they are basically the only phones that can be seamlessly deGoogled (the irony).
Nice to see a YouTuber with a massive audience demystifying some of the alternatives to Google. There are of course many smaller channels who have provided better and more in-depth guides in the past, but someone this mainstream weighing in on their side does a lot to help the cause.
For the lazy like myself
@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al whoa thats neat! I often wish a YouTube video were just a blog post or forum thread … how can I do something like this myself?
I used Google Gemini. Just asked it to summarise and pasted the link and voila.
Oh the irony!
Uhm.
Thanks, AI?
See this should be what AI does. Not screenshoting my activities.
It literally is!
Google’s 😂
deleted by creator
Yep. Its also visible in my previous comment if you don’t want to go onto the spaceman website. Earlier this week. It included a threat to sue her for defamation.
…which is totally reasonable because her allegations turned out to be unsubstantiated.
I appreciated his comparison charts for various alternatives and the features they offered. I’m going to check out Ente and Stingle for self-hosted photo backup.
Ente is as close as you can get to Google Photos with E2EE right now. I recently migrated there. The migration wasn’t painless and involved some scripting to handle albums and duplicates but the service itself is really good. Can recommend!
Check out immich as well!
Ente is great if you need a drop-in Google Photos replacement that is open-source, E2EE, externally audited and private. It’s the perfect solution for families tbh. Switched to it like two weeks ago and it’s been great so far.
Thanks for the feedback!
You’re welcome!
posts on youtube
They also upload to their own platform to be fair (floatplane)
Where else would he post it, that would not be preaching to the choir?
I don’t expect him to stop using youtube and upload on it but all least put some exclusives on other platform to support like behind the scenes ir put old videos ob alternatives to create change
You mean that floatplane thing he has?
LTT has social media accounts everywhere. They could’ve uploaded to floatplane and posted that link instead.
Not that I blame him for using YouTube but it’s the same chicken and egg problem we’ve had for awhile. No one uses alternatives because the creators aren’t there, and they’re not there because viewers aren’t either.
They don’t have the capability to share free videos from Floatplane. They mentioned it on WAN a few weeks ago.
I’m sure this was posted to floatplane though, considering they upload all of their videos there
Still, happy he did, kids got reach…
Well, you’re sure to reach tons of Google users there
It feels weird coming from LTT.
In what way? There are tech savvy people on the team, so obviously many of them are well aware of the privacy concerns. Besides, they don’t live in a vacuum, so they see the same posts and videos we do.
Probably they just noticed that now is the right time to talk about this.
A surprise for sure, but a welcome one.
I agree and I still have my doubts that he would personally use many of these alternatives. Still, we should not gatekeep the message. Anyone this big discussing the positives of de-googling will certainly push it further into mainstream society.
That’s besides the point. LTT is a corporation at this point so they’ll use whatever corporations use. The video provided genuine value for its audience so they deserve praise for that.
They did a video about alternatives to Adobe a while back. And while they generally liked and praised programs such as Affinity, they did conclude that as a company, even minor losses in productivity (e.g. for their editors) quickly add up.
So yeah, it would not be the first time they present and praise alternatives even of they don’t end up using them.
The decision to use Adobe suite is more likely to be a company wide decision. Part of Adobe suite lock-in is also familiarity making things faster. By promoting others, that may help future generations avoid at least part of the problem.
Google services may be much more piecemeal. Even if the boss personally happens to think there’s a productivity benefit to using a given search engine, it would be unusual to block others.
Practicing what you preach is sometimes important, but I’m not sure how much it bears on these issues. A single company eschewing either won’t make a difference. Getting the public to slowly consider alternatives may.
Its is a sign of the times I suppose.