this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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K, I'm still not using Google search engine anymore. And once I find a replacement for any other Google services and devices I have, it's out with those as well.
Both leaving reddit and leaving google s.e. were two things that I thought would be harder than they were.
Leaving google isn't hard.
Leaving YouTube specifically, however... Well, it's been getting easier as content seems to be less and less frequent or quality.
I use piped/newpipe etc. and simply support creators i watch via patreon/direct donations/merch. Less money for shitty ad company more money for creatives.
Maps is the last one to replace. There are so many ads now that I'll tolerate a lower quality alternative.
There's are some OpenStreetMap-based apps that are worth checking out. Some of them are made for specific purposes, while other are for general navigation. I've tried some of them through the time with various success, though I've still haven't found a favorite to stick with for good. But I believe making the switch is definitely possible and probably worth it!
You can install all the mentioned apps through F-Droid:
Additionally, use Transportr for public transport navigation almost anywhere in the world, and GMaps WV, a restricted WebView wrapper for accessing the web version of Google Maps. Intended for use when OpenStreetMap isn't enough.
I use OSMAND
I can definitely recommend maps.me it's a great app with default offline maps. It was a great tool when traveling abroad without internet
https://grayjay.app/
I've been using it. It's actually pretty great.
Nebula is a good alternative
I still worry that leaving Reddit is going to make it tilt to the right. I spent a decade posting there in the hopes that it would nudge people towards sanity.
The right use it and all other social media sites for coordinated disinformation. No matter how much you try to combat it you're going up against people/ideas with deep pockets and a lot of resources meaning your voice is just a drop in the bucket.
Sure, but there are a lot more of us, and we make more sense.
It's important to present people with the contrasting view when they're presented with disinformation. It's natural to believe the first thing you read if it's just a narrative with no dissent.
leaving reddit is easy leaving google is pretty damn difficult
The hard part is the cost difference (I haven't looked terribly deeply yet) Family Proton (3TB) is 395 AUD (when you sign up for 2 years)
2 TB, 125 AUD per year for google drive, and it's per year.
Pro-rata that's literally twice as expensive, and you have to sign up for 2 years to get that rate, which makes moving my stuff a hard pill to swallow :(
Is there a plug and play service that's as good as proton without the hefty premium?
(The single plans are even more steep, 24 months, 158 AUD per year for only 500 GB...)
This is something I wrote in another thread earlier but it's relevant here too
I replaced gmail with protonmail and everything else with nextcloud. Couldn't go back.
Hosting your own nextcloud I’m guessing?
If so how did you install it?
Their docker stack is pretty simple to setup
Nope, I don't have a server and I also want to secure my files in a different location so I paid for hetzner.
After a lot of privacy switching I finally did try NextCloud, but I couldn't get port forwarding to work on my Internet and gave up... For now
You are probably behind a nat. I contacted my isp and they disabled it, since it works perfectly!
What do you mean nat? For me there is an app with an option (apparently no other way) and it didn't worj
Compare what your router reports as ip and compare what your public ip is. If its not the same then that means you are behind a nat(?)(or something else) and you can't port forward now.
Question: can email from gmail be imported into proton mail?
Yes, they even have a walk through on how to do it.
https://proton.me/support/switch-from-gmail-to-proton
Based
Honestly. Off the back of this debacle I switched to Firefox and duckduckgo. Previously I used to use the shit out of incognito because I hated that when I searched for something once that I then get that thing popping up everywhere else in ads etc. Since the switch I no longer get the feeling of being stalked.
On the topic of this, what is the best alternative out there? A few years ago I've tried a couple options, out of curiosity, but the search quality was super poor for anything that's not in English, and the accuracy of found content wasn't always there
I reckon Kagi is the best search engine out there. It's paid though. Second I'd have Qwant followed by DDG.
Best? Kagi. Best free? Probably bing or searx
https://ecosia.org as a search engine :) Uses bing in the background (and newly also google), but your data isn't sold (AFAIK).
Or https://duckduckgo.com
If you want opensource there's YaCy
I'm on Kagi but I did the one time payment and am unsure about whether I'll extend. Results are good but 10 dollars a month isn't insignificant (cheap plan is orders of magnitude less than what I need in searches)
I tried kagi and wasn't impressed. For all but one or two queries the results were exactly the same as ddg. Not to mention they had that stupid metric stating 78%+ unique kagi results for every search, even though that was blatantly untrue. They seem pretty dishonest as a company.
I used Ecosia for a long time (almost 5 years) but the search results are pretty bad. Often I had to use another search engine to actually find what I was looking for. DuckDuckGo is pretty good, Brave Search is OK as well but SearXNG is my personal favorite.
I adjusted my entire digital life so I can do everything without ever connecting to Google services. I block them in my self-hosted Pi-Hole, on NextDNS and in my OPNsense Firewall.
I refuse to use services that force me to surrender to Google. Why don't people use hCaptcha, it's not perfect, but it's far better than this Google garbage...
That's why I isolate my financial stuff from everything else, separate device with a separate browser, separate dedicated IP address, etc.