We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.
And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already ‘good little pets’ of these giants.
Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don’t have individual opinions.
Although the fight still continues, It’s time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It’s time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it’s almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.
PC
For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Mobile
For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.
I think it’s time to stop and think whether we really need all of those services? We’ve been slowly trapped into social networks and various unecessary services through dark patterns, and now we somehow can’t imagine being without them, even though they actively make everything worse.
What was the last time you watched a Youtube video that actually was worth the time, and wasn’t just a shallow content about something vaguely interesting, but something you’ll probably could live without? Do we really need to agregate news and articles from the whole internet, while there probably are good local newspaper/news sites that will get you up to speed, without giving you clickbait articles? For example, we have a pretty great news company that is independent and funded entierly by users, and it’s enough for keeping up to speed on world events without having to scroll through a lot of bullshit.
The more enshitificated the internet gets, the more I’m starting to realize that I really don’t need almost any of it. Sure, some things are pretty usefull, like cloud storage, but almost anything I needed so far was solved by just getting a NAS with Nextcloud. The only thing I really need the internet for is messaging and email. And if I want to stay up to date, we have amazing smaller local sites for both gaming news and for world news, and those two are enough.
The more that I think about my internet usage, the more I’m realizing that I don’t really mind its enshitification - because ever since it started happening, I’ve been just removing addictions from my life and replacing it with more niche or smaller sites that are updated less frequently, don’t stalk me, and I’ve slowly started to realize that thanks to that I can do a lot more done and don’t get trapped by scrolling through clickbaity dopamine rush made to keep me glued to a screen.
I recommend reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism . I’ve already read it several times, and never managed to get into fully implementing it. I did stop using Facebook, and reduced my Reddit usage drastically during those years, but this enshitification is only making it easier to just not using anything I really don’t need. I’m looking forward to WEI and other “You can’t do this” stuff that will come with it, because it’s exactly the trigger that will make me stop and think “Do I really need to do this? Or are there better ways how to solve this.”. And the answer is almost always “Nope”.
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I have converted almost everyone I know in my age group, so some care. I think its mostly a lack of education issue, but trying to teach people probably gets interpreted as a bad sales pitch so I don’t push anymore. I do my thing, people see it and ask questions, slow victory
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Between X and Z, the always forgotten “Gen whY”
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Don’t lose hope. I was one of the average Joe who was using facebook, insta, yt, gmail all of the proprietory shit. However as I learned about privacy I seeked alternative now I’m replying you on Lemmy! As for facebook and insta I stopped using it and using Invidious for yt. :)
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It’s been getting ridiculous. One of the apps on my partner’s phone recently warned that they wouldn’t open with Developer options enabled.
This app is a fucking drink menu and digital punch card for a popular coffee shop, what could be done from the developer options that affects this app in any way? Especially since I only enabled developer options to speed up the godawful Android animations. Out of principal I’ve stopped going there and deleted the app.
Here’s a massive list of “Alternative Internet” software. There are some blockchain items in there, but otherwise it’s pretty extensive.
Maybe they store the punch card info locally and don’t double check with any databases on their side? It sounds really dumb, but that’s the only reason I can think of
That was my thought, too. But what’s the worst that could happen in that scenario? “Oh no, that guy keeps getting free drinks.” Big whoop, you already have plenty of people actually paying for your overpriced drinks. I don’t know, it’s really dumb.
Even if they store it locally, developer mode wouldnt do anything against it, im pretty sure ZArchiver and a notepad editor is enough to do that.
This isn’t the last stand. This is the latest stand. While this fight might seem the biggest, never forget it’s not the last we’ll have to take part in. If this fails, they’ll keep coming with some new idea later on down the road in order to deny us our right to privacy. Don’t give up. Keep giving them hell every step of the way.
Services I Use:
- LibreX (search engine)
- CloudTube (YouTube proxy)
- PeerTube (federated YouTube alternative)
- Tutanota (mail & calendar)
- Organic Maps (maps app based around OpenStreetMap)
- Cryptee (encrypted notes)
- Matrix (chat)
- LibreOffice + Collabora Office (office suite)
- Kiwix (offline Wikipedia & other wikis)
- NetNewsWire (RSS reader, for news)
Arms of the Fediverse I Use Regularly:
- Mastodon
- Pixelfed
- Lemmy
- PeerTube
- WordPress
Dormant Arms of the Fediverse:
- Friendica
- Kbin
- Funkwhale
- WriteFreely
I have installed Linux on all four of my laptops, and I’m hoping to migrate from my iPhone to a Pixel with DivestOS as soon as I move out of my parents’ house (I’m currently 17), or sooner if possible.
I have also swapped many web apps for desktop apps, and my music collection has been based around CDs and DRM-free files since it started in 2016. In addition, I still use DVDs, VHS tapes, and (to a lesser extent) good old-fashioned Torrents for my films and TV shows.
If the internet becomes altogether too bad, there’s always Gemini. Making web apps is trickier, but entirely feasible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
I think there was also a federated social media site on Gemini, which could interact with Mastodon, but I can’t find it.
If you’re in the EU, Taiwan or US, may I suggest a Fairphone? They have open bootloaders and support re-locking. You can get a Fairphone with /e/os pre-installed on murena.com /e/os is great and Fairphone has stellar customer support.
Edit: thanks for helping me discover Kiwix. That’s awesome.
If you’re in the EU, Taiwan or US
Fairphone is increasingly becoming a global option. Their network compatibility seems to be improving with each generation, whereas earlier models were pretty much limited to the EU. Definitely work looking at if you’re outside of those three regions, since they have full (or close to full) network compatibility in many other places now.
I didn’t know they were that compatible. That’s awesome!
Yeah it’s pretty great. They still might be somewhat difficult to buy everywhere but if you can find one then there’s a good chance it will work. It’s increasingly becoming a legitimate alternative instead of the very niche product it started off as.
If all else fails, I vote we start taking this to the people like the crazy gun nuts, the anti-vaxxers, and the crazy religious folks. Specifically the ones who aren’t as smart.
Convince them that googl€ is going to censor all the information/imagery regarding guns, Jesus, and anti-vax no matter what they say and tell them that if they want it back/to stay, they gotta pull the election riot thing that happened in Washington DC at googl€ headquarters.
If the message spreads far and quick enough, we might see them pull it off. I’d hope it works and we see them break into the headquarters and storm the place. Even if googl€ calls in the police because they get word of this happening, they won’t be able to stop a large enough crowd. In that scenario, if we’re lucky, we’d see the death of many of the traitors destroying the free web. It’s a win-win for our cause and theirs since what we would be telling them is a lie, but the people who actually go wouldn’t believe it’s a lie.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. You’re basing your understanding of an entire group of people off a stereotype that circulates on social media. If you gathered up everybody you just described, you’d have an army barely capable of storming a McDonald’s. Touch grass
I was talking about getting those who actually fit that stereotype and not just everyone in those groups.
I’m positive you can get enough of them to believe it through clever social engineering and falsified information/files since the people I am referring to are the ones where that type of tactic works on since they tend not to do any research that disproves their beliefs and refuse to listen to anyone of a differing opinion.
America is full of unintelligent people, so it’s possible it could happen.
Libredirect is a Firefox addon that can redirect links to more privacy friendly services. For example, clicking someone’s YouTube link will redirect you to Piped or Invidious instead.
It could be user error, but most redirects wouldn’t work for me. I slowly removed the ones that usually didn’t go through, which left me with all of them disabled so I had to remove it. But I keep my eye open for updates
I had to tinker with the settings. Most of the default instances didn’t work for me, so I had to find the ones that did and add them.
Fortunately, there is a list of suggested public instances and a feature that lets you automatically ping them so you can see which ones work and add them to your “favorite instances.”
It’s a little bit confusing because to add your favorites, you have to temporarily enable the bypass, even if you don’t want it to auto redirect all the time, so you can add and remove your favorite instances.
And some of them have been gutted due to restrictions placed by web sites, the most notorious examples of which are libreddit and teddit.
Google is so schizophrenic. I highly recommend Pixel phones. There’s a number of privacy oriented operating systems you can install that directly support Pixel phones because Google is so open with their platform.
Pixel - best privacy phone
Android - worst OS for privacy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pixel is the new age Nexus phone, meaning Google designed it with dev’s in mind. This is why you’re able to unlock the bootloader, flash a new OS and then relock it. The hardware is for sure the most secure on the market too. Android also being based off the Linux kernel means Google’s required to publish the code for it as well. These aspects are why it’s a common choice for privacy respecting OS’s. If Google wants to stand toe to toe with Apple, they have to incentivize it’s use and this is a decent approach.
I don’t think individual action like changing browsers and operating systems is gonna work anymore at this point. By its very nature only a minority of nerds will do it.
We either need to build a complete alternative to the internet as we know it, or to borrow a page from our commie friends and pressure collectively for political change.
A handful of nerds taking the time and effort to switch to FOSS are not going to make a dent, we have to force them to play fair, or change the game completely.
let’s be a bit more optimistic! There may need to be a FSF/GNU-ACLU political angle to sustain individual privacy, or at least, to reign in “big tech” (in US terms, FSF + GOP for the surprise tag team whaaaaa) and the free market (1.0 defn c.o. A. Smith) says if it is better, it can be made and sold to consumers looking to purchase to beat out the inferior product.
the whole reason why people use the internet is nerds said “hey, check out this, it’s super cool”. It’s education…people may know, and not care, and that is ok. People who do care can help those would care if they only knew. Such is the way of any great idea.
Trying? It’s a little late to do anything about it now. The internet is controlled by like 5 companies right now.
It didn’t pan out the way it was intended. They came in a scooped everything up. Even the sites not owned by them are most likely running in their datacenters.Time for Gemini?
Gemini (or things like that) is a part of the solution. We unfortunately need to create spaces outside the WWW…
How
I’ve started moving over some of my services from Google to Proton now. Using my own domain so a switch in the future is as simple to do as changing the DNS. It’s something I can recommend everyone.
Too bad I can’t get my work to switch from Google.
Firefox on android isn’t really all that great. Use a freed soft fork like mull
GrapheneOS setup is very easy, anyone who can follow a manual is able to do it.
Not sharing a service, but a talk I only recently discovered, probably here. From 2011 and more current than ever.
28c3: “The coming war on general computation” by Cory Doctorow.
What’s the consensus on https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ and https://www.privacytools.io/ ? I was always just using privacytools’ recommendations, but then discovered that the original people behind it somehow split into privacyguides, and both sites have almost entirely different recommendations.
So, which one to believe?
Privacy Guides. It was formed by former Privacy Tools staff after the founder went AWOL while retaining full control over the domain. Since then, Privacy Tools has begun making “recommendations” based on sponsorships, even going so far as to remove competitors from the website despite them being vastly superior options. You can read about it here.
What do you mean tor is not usable on normal internet anymore?
