My website has grown to 20 categories.
Please check it out. Which important categories and alternatives are missing? What should be removed again?
(I’ve noted earlier feedback to consider removing Proton, Brave, Signal. Which I will try to address by next month.)
I’ve added the controversial topic of AI chatbots. While I think there can’t be truly sustainable options, I think it makes a difference whether you enter your prompts on privacy-threatening, intentionally biased and military supporting providers or with providers who adhere to rules regarding fair use of AI and privacy.
#DitchBigTech #UnplugBigTech #DigitalIndependenceDay #DIDit
Feels kind of weird to bring in LLMs when they in their current state are big-tech, unethical, and not sustainable per automatic. It feels like an endorsement, and kind of waters down the rest of the message.
Also, Brave is none of the things listed on the website. It’s a Ycombinator project, backed by Peter Thiel, and they’ve hijacked affiliate links and such in the past.
If you want a chromium based browser that’s private and not big tech, then helium or ungoogled chromium would be better bets.
Ungoogled Chromium my love. I’ve been using them for years now, both on Windows and Linux and I basically have no complaints.
For Android, if on Graphene you already have Vanadium! If not, Cromite is also pretty good since it has built in Ad-blocking.
For iOS I’d recommend Orion. It has support for regular addons, both Chromium and Mozilla ones, the same ones you’d install on desktop, so you can just install desktop uBlock Origin and have all the benefits of that.
Orion isn’t Chromium based. It’s based on WebKit. Chromium uses a WebKit-fork called Blink, that’s diverged quite a bit from its origins
I am aware of this, and I didn’t say that it was. That doesn’t change the fact that Orion on iOS lets you install desktop addons from either the Google whatever they call it store, or the Firefox addon page. You could probably do it from Microsoft if you’d like, but I don’t get why anyone would go with Chromium addons on account of them being hamstrung.
You cannot do that with Safari, or Firefox. Addons for Safari on iOS come from the app store, because Apple is garbage.
WebKit is a fork of KHTML which was built by the KDE project. Orion on Linux uses WebKitGTK as well, but currently doesn’t have support for extensions. A part of me hopes that perhaps some things that the Kagi team develop for Orion on Linux can be ported to Epiphany, because that browser needed addon support years ago.
May I ask why do you consider removing Proton, Brave and Signal?
Here’s my post from February: https://lemmy.ml/post/42584169 Commenters mention questionable behaviour by Proton’s and Brave’s CEOs and Signals reliance on Big Tech infrastructure.
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In my opinion, we should only judge the product and not people surrounding it otherwise I bet we can find dirt on everybody.
But I would say even then Brave has done some shady things(the whole crypto facade).
If the people surrounding it are supporting fascism, then we definitely need to consider it. That’s one reason we got into this mess.
I’m always missing Conversations/Dino (XMPP) from chat apps. It does (almost) everything Signal/Matrix does but without a phone number and it can run on a potato.
I am new to the topic, so I can’t really contribute. But I love to see other people help the boycott.
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Switched to Vivaldi. Awesome browser on all plattforms IMO.
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Switched to Proton Mail, and feel good about it. Why is Proton bad?
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And Big Win: I now host my own Nextcloud, Kalender and paperless-ngx. Highly recommend these, from a usability point of view. Can’t say much about the technical or security perspective.
Great to hear! I can’t say anything bad about the Proton Mail product. I noted the criticism of the Trump-friendly comments by Proton’s CEO and got aware of false claims regarding the privacy of its newly released Proton Meet.
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What about self hosted options for some of these categories? For search you could do SearXNG, for music streaming plexamp, jellyfin, navidrome. Maps I’d add Gnome Maps (openstreetmap) for desktop and tablet use, obviously not a great choice for phones.
Cmaps is good. I also have Magic Earth, but it’s not free in some cases. I have it on e/OS, so it comes preinstallwd and free. Cmaps is my favorite though.
@kjtrnc Do you want to add things like @yunohost and other PaaS solutions as well as tools like @davx5app or @fdroidorg dont forget @civicrm as well so much good software @friendi.ca the list goes on
Yes, will definitely look into those. Thanks for suggesting. Social Media will be one of the next categories. Didn’t know of civicrm, looks great at first glance.
@kjtrnc You will find plenty on @degoogle and other degoogle and #demeta groups.
Or just look at the list of supported apps for #yunoshost
Great site - easy to navigate, great service, big thank you!
Am I just braindead or is there no category for games?
Thanks.🙏 Gaming / Gaming Platforms is one of the upcoming topics. Do you already have specific alternatives in mind?
I would say itch.io would be one you could post on there.
Can you play games offline with itch.io? I could play offline for a while on Steam and then they forced an internet connection suddenly. I’m getting sick of being tracked for shit I paid for.
Most of their games are DRM free so you will not need an internet connection. Here is their FAQ page for other info you may want https://itch.io/docs/general/faq
Not really, not a big gamer. As a (new) user of the site, I would expect games of outstanding quality and emulators to show up. Say SuperTuxkart and ScummVM.
Regarding interesting messengers, there’s also briar (remember somewhat recent stuff with normie news outlets being unable to shut up about some apparently famous dude making a messenger that works over Bluetooth? Briar is that, but quite a bit more mature, and also capable of working over WiFi and tor). Then, simplex, which builds upon the idea of not having a permanent id. Finally, there are reticulum meshchat, sideband and nomadnet, which are similar in purpose to briar, but take the idea to the extreme (being reticulum-based, they potentially work over anything capable of transmitting binary, from sound to entangled particles)
Why isn’t ICECAT in your list while BRAVE and VIVALDI are?
Also
AI
🤦♂️
Sounds like one of those Why Waa Waa questions. There’s currently only six browsers listed, at the moment. It’s not some all inclusive thing.
Where’s Fennec, where’s IronFox, where’s WebLibre, where’s Cromite or Helium or Tor Browser or or…?
Give these kinds of lists and the organizers time to check and test things or get additional feedback.
…and find options without all the damned trackers.
