LarsJan 6
tante

RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/115838050969984568

Since there was some interest: Here's what I did last year to Exit the billionaire castles:
https://tante.cc/2026/01/05/exiting-the-billionaire-castle/

Jan 5 at 10:14pmWeb
Show threadMarkus FeilnerJan 5
@tante welcome! I never entered them :-)
Show threadMeznor UNGRATEFUL MIDDLE POWERJan 5

@tante I've been doing this same thing! I just replaced my smartphone OS with graphene (pixel 7).

I've been off google photos for a couple years now (I have a home cloud solution), and switched email to protonmail (which also has very simple online doc/spreadsheets software; I also use LibreOffice on my PC).

I haven't replaced Windows yet on my main PC. That'll be the next thing, a Linux replacement.

Show threadMeznor UNGRATEFUL MIDDLE POWERJan 5
@tante the only thing I haven't found a good alternative for is google maps. I tried Organic maps and a couple others. They just don't match up with accuracy/reliability for places and navigation. (but I use it in incognito mode now, I don't remember seeing that option before, maybe it's a graphene thing)
Show threadJoris MeysJan 5

@Meznor
There's @CoMaps but it's also based on openstreetmaps. I find that very accurate in my region (more than Google maps) but it's dependent on a community mapping stuff and contributing info.

You could even help out with eg the app
https://streetcomplete.app/

@tante

Show threadendolexiJan 5
@Meznor @tante I can recommend HereWeGo very much
Show threadChristian WaidnerJan 5
@tante thank you for the insights and the down to earth mode.
Show threadJoris MeysJan 5

@tante
Sweet!

For search I'm testing startpage.com . Really like it to be honest. There must be a catch, but I didn't find it yet.

Show threadProScience 🇪🇺Jan 7

@JorisMeys @tante

In my experience, Startpage was once a good alternative but got so much worse over time.

I use a combo of ecosia, startpage and duckduckgo depending on what and how I'm searching for something.

Show threadGimli Son of GloinJan 5
@tante #DUTgemacht !!! - Now my todolist for the next #DIDit has grown even longer. - Thank you very much for sharing!
Show threadendolexiJan 5
@tante thanks! For Search btw I very much recommend @MetaGer -- with reliable results and a strong community foundation it's the only ethical option for me, especially since for-profit Kagi is pushing AI now as well.
Show threadGuusabcJan 5
@tante Food for thought, thank you.
Show threadMarauderPixieJan 6

@tante "I also have an Instagram account that I only use to follow tattoo artists (who sadly all just live on Instagram). Sucks but there literally is no alternative."

This one hundred percent and then some.

Show threadJez 🍞🌹Jan 6
@tante FYI I just tried to add this to my self-hosted readeck instance to read later but it looks like it fell into your AI tarpit instead.  I don't blame you for deploying such measures, AI once again making things worse for everyone...
Show threadtanteJan 6
@petrichor what user agent does your service use to crawl?
Show threadJez 🍞🌹Jan 6
@tante Had to dig around in the source code a bit but looks like it's this https://codeberg.org/readeck/readeck/src/commit/ddf1affb2e925edc51d6ac5aac0d04e60e9da7ba/internal/httpclient/client.go#L33
Cookie monster!

Show threadtanteJan 6
@petrichor Hmm. That one is a bit problematic cause it has no actually identifying strings, it's a fake user agent.
Show threadJez 🍞🌹Jan 7
@tante Looks like there's a mechanism to customise it for specific sites so I might have a poke around to see how that works.
Show threadGrebdiozJan 6
@tante smartphone-wise I switched from iOS to "canadian" GrapheneOS recently. I am positively surprised how smooth it operates. For those indispensable closed-source apps I run sandboxed Google Play Services in Androids private space.
Show threadTorben KühleJan 6
@tante Informative article, thanks 🙏. I recently started self hosting to gradually gain more control over the services i use. It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy the process since I am learning a lot. But that’s also the downside: For people who are not that technically interested and/or don’t have the time, the barrier to use such services is still high (with some exceptions).
Show threadAllan HaverholmJan 6

@tante Very nice writeup. I've been going the same route for 10-15 years, and it's heartening that somebody who actually *knows computers* makes similar choices now as I have in the past 🙂

I retired my Nextcloud server a few years ago though, because I realised I mostly used the storage as a small fry backup. I replaced the calendar and contacts sync with a Baïkal install, and sync everything else through Syncthing.

My note apparatus is just a bunch of markdown files categorised by subfolders.

Show threadProScience 🇪🇺Jan 7
@tante thanks so much for taking the time to share your experiences! Very much appreciated.
Show threadKATastrophEJan 7
@tante i've done a lot of similar things in recent years. biggest deviations are probably self-hosting my emails with @stalwartlabs (will see how this goes, if it becomes too much work i'll go with a commercial provider as well, but still with my own domain) and using searxng as my search engine. it doesn't have any ai and sources multiple different other search engines, so doesn't have it's own index. i sometimes go back to google, when i think searxng doesn't give me good results, but i never find any better results.
Show threadSteffen VoßJan 7
@tante For people who also use #Nextcloud and don't necessarily want to stream video: The Nextcloud Music app supports Ampache and Subsonic. There are clients for these protocols for every OS. And it's really cool to have synced playlists across devices.
The Nextcloud gPodder app syncs podcasts across devices, if the client supports that. AntennaPod does.