Switching to more privacy friendly alternatives
Switching to more privacy friendly alternatives
How have others gotten friends/family to make the switch? I’ve been doing a cleanup of my digital life over the last year or so and am trying to move to using more privacy friendly alternatives where possible.
example: I’d love to switch to Signal only but everyone I know only uses WhatsApp. I’ve mentioned switching to people in the past but it’s always the same response (I don’t have anything to hide)
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The unfortunate fact is that most people don’t care about their privacy until it’s violated. It’s weird.
I’ve seen people complain about companies like Meta and Google but then not make any effort to try and change…people can be weird sometimes.
I suppose there are a lot of factors at play, but still 🤷🏻♂️
There's a balance between principles and practicality and for a lot of people it just hasn't tipped yet. I'm kind of in that boat myself.
On principle, I'd like to eliminate Google from my life entirely.
In practice, there is no good alternative to Google Maps. I've tried a bunch of OSM-based apps and they're just not there yet. So I use Google Maps. Not happy about it, but I still use it.
I use osmand in conjunction with gps-coordinates.net so I can get the GPS coordinates of addresses to put into osmand since it has a serious lack of addresses
Open street map data is created by volunteers. Where I live, you can practically put in any address into OsmAnd and it'll know it. Maybe you live too far out. Or there aren't enough people contributing in your area. Putting in the house numbers is a tedious task.
I highly suspect it's a lack of contributors since I live in a small city in the United States (~50k population).
Ah, okay. Different continent, ~500k people here. More if you count the neighboring cities. I've programmed in a few house numbers like 10 years ago. But generally speaking, OSM knows most hiking routes and illegal mountainbike trails in the woods. And it rarely does silly mistakes while routing me in the car. Something it used to do regularly when I started using it. Guess the experience heavily depends on where you live, then.
Apple Maps is a good alternative if you have an iPhone. Apple may not be a whole lot better, but at least they aren’t an advertising company.
How sad it is when "at least they aren’t an advertising company" is one of the better alternatives!
Yep. And YouTube on teevee, just got to pay for it. I can't suffer these ads.
No real replacement as of now for either.
Imagine paying and they are still mining you.
Wtf sort of dystopian bullshit time line is this.
Stop using them for everything else.
Ironically I found the best way to watch YouTube on the TV was to pay Google for a "Chromecast with Android TV" (or whatever it's called) and install SmartTube on it. I could have spent a while tinkering around with my Raspberry Pi to create some custom solution and given Google no money, but this cost less than 2 months of YouTube premium and now I've got a device I can do whatever with.
Didn't realize that was possible now you ate running on google controlled device...
I cant swallow that.
Hate paying them too tho
I'm paying for the convenience of a tv-optimised android device. It's relatively versatile in that you can install most android apps, but much more robust than trying to build something myself. And all I use it for is watching video so there's not really much it can data-mine compared to something serious like my phone.
I just switched to Petal Maps, though it doesn't warn me if a place is closing soon.
I’d like to give Petal Maps a serious try, but for some reason it doesn’t work with CarPlay. So it’s a no-go for me.
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@hperrin @governorkeagan Until they *realise* how much and for how long it's been violated.