EitanI am starting a deep tech cleanse for me and my family. The goal is to minimize dependency on large US tech. I'm intentionally not self hosting everything but looking for off-shore medium and small providers that respect privacy and don't sell data. Not looking for perfect solutions, just reasonable alternatives (thread) #privacy #degoogle
Migrated away from #google search to #kagi. Can't say enough nice things about that service. Yes, you pay. And in return you get what google felt like before it fully enshitified. There are AI features, but they are easily turned off, and they will even optionally derank AI results. There is a kid-friendly version in our family plan which is perfect for learning and research without wading thru slop.
Migrating away from #GooglePhotos to #ente. I entertained the idea of self hosting with #immich since it looks pretty and seems to be very active. Decided against it mostly out of convenience. Don't want to maintain an image of immich and manage redundant backups. I'll have our fam's ente photos backed up locally periodically. I have been a proud subscriber of #flickr for 20 years, but I need to be honest with myself that I hardly ever use it and its social features feel naive for our era.
Migrating away from #YoutubeMusic to #deezer. I tried it a number of years ago but it didn't have the obscure Hebrew music I listen to. I think that changed recently and their collection grew. Their app is not great and ChromeCast doesn't work very well with it, but I should migrate away from that eventually too. Bonus points for open-ish API that works well with #musicassistant, so lots of potential there.
One open questions is, what do we do instead of #gmail and #gapps? Overwhelemed with options with the obvious choice being #proton. I don't love the custom stack that it relies on, and I am tempted to find more vanilla services that include standard things like collabora office and #nextcloud, but I am not in love with those stacks as well.. this part feels the most sticky to me. #gapps have served us well and their ubiquity helps with collaboration with anyone.
Another open question is cellphone carrier. I have been a long time user of #googlefi. I am (a) worried about losing my number if I don't #degoogle correctly, but I am also (b) underwhelmed by the options of US carriers. Google Fi has a simple pricing structure that gives you almost global data roaming by default and an extra data SIM for your tablet/laptop. Never had to talk to a rep or walk in to a store, it is all managed really well. What alternatives are there?
The capstone project for this cleanse will be trying #grapheneos or #lineageos. I am contemplating either. The one thing I will miss is contactless phone payments. I never use it, but that one time I forgot my wallet when going to the store really saved me.
Marco Zehe@eeejay Perhaps you'd like to check Out mailbox.org and see if it fits your needs? I have been using it for quite a long time and am very happy with it.
@marco That looks like a good option as well. So many options! I might need to set up a poll
@eeejay I'd say if you really want something that does things mostly by standards, both Mailbox and FastMail are good candidates. Both use IMAP, SMTP, CalDav and CardDav etc. and don't implement proprietary protocols.
@eeejay The thing with FastMail is that their servers are in the U.S., whereas Mailbox has the servers in the EU. For me, that was a deciding factor.
@marco Server location is definitely a factor for me too. I'm on the fence about #proton though because a lot of my peers locally are switching to that and they have a suite of collaboration tools that might come in handy with that group. Their bundle deal with VPN and everything is also intriguing.
@eeejay Proton recently disclosed some user data to U.S. authorities because the moment you pay for their services, you are no longer anonymous. On top, you can only use their clients or web interface to access the service. For Apple Mail, there is a bridge, although they tend to push you to their Electron app instead if they can. Yes their bundle is intriguing, but it is not as client-agnostic, or rather, not at all.
@eeejay I've had a Proton account for a few years and have collected some experience with the service. but only with the mail side of it, I never used their VPN or Passwords features. Their accessibility story is also not the best it could be, but that's probably not as important to you as it is to me. But one can get all things done at least in the web interface.
Russ O