How digitally independent are you?
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This is a great list and thanks for posting it.
Also, the pixelfed guy needs to give up full control of his project (no matter how nicely or reasonably he argues “not yet”). I have asked on mastodon and nobody seems to know of anyone else who truly understands the project so if he dies or gets disappeared the project… Dies? Maybe? More concerningly, it isn’t open source. He cotes good reasons for this (the massive labor to refactor and whatever else goes into open sourcing a functioning project), but he also occasionally humblebrags about being offered huge sums of money to sell it to corporations. I suspect it will become corporate at some point if he doesn’t open source it soon.
Thunderbird is just a mail app, not a mail provider.
Gmail is a mail app, not only a mail provider ^^
While true in a technical sense, you’re gonna confuse everyone with this…
It was a joke reply, hence the emoji, but I see the joke was not appreciated here.
Sure, but I mean if we’re going there, it’s not a very popular mail app by comparison to Apple and Window’s default built-in mail clients/they should be in the graphic alongside Gmail.
KeepassXC for password management.
Or BitWarden, or… Many others. Single selection lists are tough.
Good point, using that too and syncing my database with syncthing between all the devices.
Worth noting that with KeePassDX, there’s a compatible mobile app.
I don’t think Thunderbird is a direct alternative to Gmail. The best alternative is to own your own domain name and use your own email server, but that’s really impractical for most people. At the very least, owning your own domain name that you use for your email is way better than relying on a service that locks you in with their own domain name.
It’s not super easy to set that up, but it’s easier than most people probably think it is. A service with imap support will let you take all your old email with you if you switch providers.
My own email service, Port87, doesn’t have custom domain support or imap, but I’m working to add both of those features. Any service you use should have both of those if you want to be independent.
Having your own Domain with Email is the hardest thing you can do.
Literally all Email Services will literally block you except you somehow manage a good Domain. No, I am not talking about the Spam folder. They will not even let that Email in.
Yep. You are 100% right about that. It’s the best thing to be independent, but it’s so fucking hard because we’ve all just let these big email providers take away this wonderful system from us.
That’s why I’m super picky about which blocklists I use for my own email service. If a blocklist charges for removing your IP, or even if they make you jump through unreasonable hoops, I refuse to use them.
I also have to check regularly to make sure my own IPs aren’t on any lists. Apple is the worst, because they use a blocklist provider that has terrible communication and service unless you pay a huge subscription fee.
(One point though, it’s not the domain that goes on the blocklist, it’s the IP address of the SMTP server. You can use a custom domain name with most providers, then you’re using their SMTP servers, so their IP addresses. If you’re unhappy with them, it’s pretty easy to switch providers for your domain, then you get to keep the same email addresses.)
Oh thanks for explaining. Now I understand more about this chaotic world.
But I would assume that a normal non-techsavy user would not even touch that route
Setting up your domain with a provider is not too difficult. You just have to add some DNS records. Most places will check them once you’re done and let you know if there’s anything wrong. The hardest part is that every domain registrar has their own DNS management interface, so you might have to read a few guides from your registrar to navigate it. It’s definitely worth doing though. It’s really nice to have your own dot com.
Here is my list, 15 out of 17 (while 2 are not applicable because I don’t use anything like that):
I’m not sure if DuckDuckGo and TMap count because they’re both just alternatives but still from big tech.
Droid-fy is a material F-Droid client though. And it is better. DuckDuckGo is USA using Bing engine, i am still using it when unhappy with Qwant results though. They need to add more time filters.
Droid-fy is a material F-Droid client though. And it is better.
Completely agree, but I just swapped over to Obtainium and getting releases directly from Github. Highly recommend.
I used it only for apps that are not in any store. Pretty handy.
Never heard of Droid-fy, will check it out.
Actually this might make for a fun propaganda game: Set up a website where every person can mark, for each item on the list, whether they made the switch, so that in the end they receive a picture they can share on social media so as to engage in a low-key “competition” with their friends.
Hmm, I wonder…does “my favourite pirate streaming service” count as avoiding big tech?
yes.
I just tried Stremio and found it to be hot garbage. I’ll stick with torrents/Jellyfin.
Jellyfin + Arr* Suite == chillin’ and singing shanties in the high seas.
Just for the record, Immich is made by futo, an American organization.
You can self host it on your own hardware for free to keep your files being on American servers, but it IS an American product.
This isn’t to shit on futo or immich btw, immich is amazing software and futo is a great org headed by Louis Rossman, the spearhead of the American side of the right to repair movement.
Edit for clarity: I mention this because of the EU flag in the image, not because this specific post is calling it that away from American products.
Haha, whoops, I’ve been using Futo Keyboard for month, (it’s amazing!) not realizing that it’s sponsored by the same company that also gives money to Immich, nice!
Hard agree on futo keyboard. The switch is a bit rough until it learns how you type but after it’s had a chance to learn it’s GOOD shit
Yo I didn’t know that was Louis Rossman!
Why Linux Mint specifically, why not just Linux? Or if they want to pick a specific distro, why not Trisquel or another FSF-endorsed distro?
why not just Linux?
Choice paralysis is a real obstacle for casual users who don’t have specific needs (e.g. anti-proprietary values) and don’t want to know what a kernel or a binary blob is, we’ve even seen this with Lemmy and other Fediverse options. So giving a specific distro suggestion is effective for this, and then later enabling them to move to other distros if there’s one more suited to them.
Linux Mint is generally well-received by beginner users, especially those moving from Windows which is similar enough to Cinnamon. Even if it’s not the ideal distro, it’s one which I believe casual users are less likely to reject. Hardware is more likely to ‘just work’, including graphics cards and non-free codecs. Non-free software readily appears in the app store, which is important if users are still dependent on them (e.g. their hobby group only uses Discord). While I personally believe in, support and create FOSS software, I don’t see how FSF-endorsement is important to the target audience, and if it risks them complaining that their NVIDIA GPU is acting weird or they’re having trouble installing proprietary tools they need for work, then I’d compromise and give them the smoothest reasonably-free option possible and allow them to decide to move to another distro later when they’re more familiar with Linux and how easy it is to try out distros.
Osmand is awesome, but Organic Maps is more GMaps like.
Nice to see Matrix’s Element client on there. Has definitely become my go-to and even managed to get friends, family, and my gaming community on there, replacing Discord entirely
Don’t get the EU flag though, we should be pushing for global sovereign alternatives. Thos could indicate the inverse in that these applications/platforms are not useable outside EU which is incorrect, and unfortunate.
Oh very cool! I whish my board game community would move from discord too, but for now it seems too much to ask.
I really appreciate this list and use lots of applications like this but I would find it impossible to complety replace YouTube with PeerTube.
I understand that and agree with you, but I still post on it and try to watch it to some degree just to help build up some momentum.
I really don’t like charts with one option. Digital independence is about choice. Linux Mint or Debian? Matrix or Signal?
I use most of the things on this list, but the key is to not bias. It’s like those Lemmy app lists where the author features the one they use at the top.
I was about to write a criticism of this infographic then I rechecked and its been updated and fixed my concerns since I last saw it. Good job!
Edit: Okay found some issues.
Thunderbird is american. Its run by mozilla, which is a california based non-profit. So still american not EU. But also its an email client, whereas gmail is an online email service provider. There are EU based email services that should be listed instead.
Librewolf is not European at all. It’s just some custom configuration of FF, which is eminently from an USA Corp. If FF dies, Librewolf dies as well. That’s anything but “independence”. Same goes for Vivaldi (Chromium) and any other usable browser you may think.
Sure, that’s technically true, but I think it’s acceptable for this infographic’s purpose.
- I don’t believe a US company profits from someone using LibreWolf (unless you want to count volunteer labor if someone upstreams their contributions, which doesn’t apply to most of the target audience)
- As you said, any other usable browser is going to be based on Chrome, FF or Apple tools. So what should it say? Nothing? Even if it’s not perfect, I believe LibreWolf is a far better suggestion than just leaving them with a default choice like Chrome or Edge, or something unusable on sites they want to use.
Whatever. Not European, so the European flag has no reason to be there.
Now this one I can get behind!
