[wordsunite]

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better.

I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a clear, binding mission not to exploit the data, not to sell or be funded by investors who expect it to, etc. We have the power to build more than ever. We should use it.

[MontyCarloHall]

>I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products.

I noticed your own app's website [0] hosts videos on YouTube [1] and uses Stripe as a payment processor [2], which is hosted on AWS. You also mentioned that your app is vibe coded [3]; the AI labs that facilitated your vibecoding likely built and run their models using Meta's PyTorch or Google's TensorFlow.

"Just stop using" makes for a catchy manifesto in HackerNews comments, but the reality is a lot more complicated than that.

[0] https://wordsunite.us/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbCM99cz9W8

[2] https://wordsunite.us/terms

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45644698

[oceansky]

Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account.

Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment

[devsda]

I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware.

Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change the status quo within the country or overseas.

[Quothling]

Even in the EU we can't use a lot of "society important" smartphone apps without Google Play or the Apple Store. I can get a physical key thing for my national digital ID, but I can't get anything for my bank, my healthcare (which is a public service in Denmark) or any of our national digital post services. You can apply to get exempt from the digital post services, and they do have a website sollution, but still.

Don't get me wrong. I appreachiate all the work being done to get Europe out of the claws of US tech companies, but I think having an official EU app store alternative would be a good start.

[drnick1]

> Even in the EU we can't use a lot of "society important" smartphone apps without Google Play or the Apple Store.

Install GrapheneOS on a Pixel. Most Android apps just work, and unlike the stock OS, it does not spy on you.

[coffe2mug]

This doesn't help. Your contact number is shared by 50 parents' phone..are you sure of their security measures.

Even if I keep everything safe many govts are using Microsoft cloudfor day2day operations. Recently my employer lost tons of data. Every CV you send to a company or recruitment is kept often unencrypted. Every other country is fingerprinting/face ID upon arrival. Are you sure about their security?

Things that I have dumped into my email are far less consequential compared to those.

The game is lost. Very few people can have privacy.

[Quothling]

You still have to get Google Play to get the apps. It's better but it's not like it makes us less reliant on Google in the current way these apps are distributed.

[brnt]

A Pixel is depending on Google.

[biztos]

Why not just mandate that all such apps must also be available on some government-approved Linux distro, ideally one that could run on mobiles too?

[sham1]

> [...] but I can't get anything for my bank,

You most likely can.[0] Of course, banks don't tend to advertise these kinds of authentication devices, probably because people tend to find apps easier, but you absolutely should be able to get one from your bank. It's very much not a Danske Bank specific technology, and it's explicitly there to allow for accessibility for those people without "suitable" phones, e.g. old people.

It's certainly not as convenient to use the online bank with a fob like this vis-à-vis a banking app, and we should absolutely push for banks to not be reliant on Google and Apple for their apps, but it is possible to use the services without being reliant on Google or Apple.

> my healthcare (which is a public service in Denmark) or any of our national digital post services. You can apply to get exempt from the digital post services, and they do have a website solution, but still.

Now admittedly I don't know how this stuff is over there in Denmark, but here in Finland we have access to the digital healthcare services via a website, both for the national patient database and the healthcare region access. Again, not as convenient as the respective apps -- although the app for the national patient database, OmaKanta, is very much in beta stages still, and it's way more convenient to use the website even on the phone -- but it's possible. I would be very surprised if that wasn't also possible over in Denmark.

And authentication can happen via couple means that aren't reliant on the smartphone duopoly, with authentication doable with online banking -- which as established, doesn't even need a phone -- and via a "phone authentication" which IIRC only needs support insofar as it's supported by the SIM card, and then of course authentication can be done with the national ID card and a smartcard reader.

And again, the point isn't that this kind of de-Googling or de-Appleing isn't difficult or inconvenient, or that we shouldn't improve the situation, but that it's absolutely possible to get away without using these vendors. And that we should make sure that these kinds of alternatives remain possible to use.

> Don't get me wrong. I appreachiate all the work being done to get Europe out of the claws of US tech companies, but I think having an official EU app store alternative would be a good start.

Absolutely.

[0]: <https://danskebank.dk/erhverv/find-hjaelp/netbank-erhverv-bu...>

[shevy-java]

In my opinion there is a too strong connection now between these private corporations and "politicians". Everyone can be bribed.

The only way I see a change possibility is for people to think about how to change this collectively. Pushing for open source everywhere would be one partial strategy that could work in certain areas.

[joquarky]

How do we accomplish such abstract goals when 54% of U.S. adults aged 16–74 read below a sixth-grade level?

[throwawayqqq11]

I have little hope, since the EU is lobbyist-infested like the US, but there is a chance the EU will fund FOSS platforms over centralized solutions. There are already several EU wide or national funds for that and it would help immensly when that money would go to burning out solo devs and maybe even to orgs like mozilla.

https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/

[JumpCrisscross]

> it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws

Regulation and liberty mongering are very American. We do it constantly at multiple levels of government.

What kills privacy regulation is this weird strain of political nihilism that seems to strongly intersect with those who care about the issue. I've personally worked on a few bills in my time. The worst, by far, were anything to do with privacy. If you assume you're defeated by forces that be, you're never going to probe that hypothesis.

[Henchman21]

You are incorrect. There is another way to address this problem and I suspect it will come to this: average people will begin attempting to destroy data centers and their interconnection points.

Your trillion dollar investment to control the populace ain't worth shit when its on fire and the monkeys are hurling flaming shit at you.

[brookst]

What law would you propose, and have you thought through unintended consequences?

[this_user]

> make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware.

None of this is legally easy to implement or enforce, and any attempt of doing it is virtually guaranteed to create an unbelievable amount of unintended consequences as people figure out ways to game this new set of rules.

[devsda]

We need something similar to FIPS for interoperable software and standards. Organizations will fall in line when money is at stake.

Say for example your local/state/federal agency publishes (or accepts) documents exclusively in ods/odf instead of proprietary formats, that will automatically drive adoption of software and prevent lock-in.

[rzerowan]

Agressive interoperability at the protpcol and exchange format - its why email mostly works even forcing Google to back off when they tried to change email to be rendered by their cdn (i forget the name of the offering - but was similar to what news pages were being pushed for speedup). Bad actors will always abound - like Microsoft spiking the documnt standards by pushing through ooxml when odt/odf was gaining traction. Or basically just coercing the decision makers like in Berlin(?) where they moved their offices into hte city to get them to drop Linux/Openoffice.

[shevy-java]

While that may be true, people need to start somewhere. Otherwise the future will just be even more sniffing done by private entities. Do we want a sneaky Skynet that looks more like 1984?

[joquarky]

The guy who is obsessed with using Lord of the Rings to name his companies certainly does want that.

[bad_haircut72]

Everything counts, this attitude is very defeatist. Stop using it the easy ways at first, and then make conscious steps to get off these services going forward.

[prophesi]

It's probably at the same scale as gas/oil companies and recycling at this point. I'd like to believe my individual efforts will make a dent in the surveillance state, but at this volume legislation is truly the only meaningful effort to defang these multi-billion dollar companies.

[trinsic2]

Yea I noticed many of these sevices won't allow an email address not hosted with a provider that wasn't Google,Microsoft, or apple where they can collect other details. I think i tried to sign up for VanceAI, it would only accept gmail or discord connected account as a sign in.

[rsync]

"... tried to sign up for VanceAI, it would only accept gmail or discord connected account as a sign in ..."

I don't know what "VanceAI" is but I am confused ... why would they not want corporate (as in, Fortune 500) users to sign up ?

[prmoustache]

> [...] and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account.

How so?

[jasonjayr]

A lot of schools use apps like 'ParentSquare' to interact and manage the student/teacher/parent relationship, and do not offer the same level of communication through traditional channels anymore.

[digiown]

I wonder if there would be standing to sue, since public schools are an agent of the government and sending your kids to school is mandatory. Lawsuits are the usual way these types of shenanigans get sorted. Can the government really force you into contracts with private parties?

[SoftTalker]

This is because social media has trained today's young parents to be completely entitled assholes and teachers can only take so much of their abuse. What teacher is going to want to sit down for a conference with a parent who whips out a phone to record the meeting and then posts selectively edited excerpts online in order to get a few upvotes on a social platform.

[prmoustache]

And these apps require a google account?

[jasonjayr]

They require a phone that can log into an App store, so unless parents can work around that, then yes?

[devsda]

In our part of the world that's Meta/WhatsApp.

All school and class related information is shared exclusively via WhatsApp communities.

[oceansky]

He needed to verify his identity via an app at pick up time, and needed an gmail/apple account as part of the process. I don't remember which app.

[rolph]

bring my kids now or i will call the police and you will be charged with abduction.

[joquarky]

You must have a complexion on the lighter side if you think calling the police is the best solution to something like this.

[mvanbaak]

and how are you going to prove your ID? you might as well be the one abducting them, and especially if you refuse to use an app to identify yourself... (playing devils advocate here)

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Oh well, I guess there is nothing to be done. Pack it up everyone. It is over. You can't do anything. No one can learn anything. No. You heard the guy above. It is over. Go home. Do nothing.

[oceansky]

I don't mean to say that nothing can be done, I was just agreeing that it's often more complicated than it looks.

[bdangubic]

it is not complicated at all if you have resolve and understand what the ramifications of not doing anything are. I quit all social media 6 years ago, thought it would be hard, took about a week total to not even think about it. had same “trouble” in school with whatsapp groups and whatnot, threatened to sue, everything got moved to the SMS within a week………

[Schiendelman]

Apple isn't on the evil list, aside from the kowtowing every powerful leader must do not to have their business attacked.

[embedding-shape]

> Apple isn't on the evil list

Yeah, Tim Apple handing over a 24-karat gold plaque to the sitting president is completely normal behavior for CEOs to engage in, and not at all about just making as much money as possible. He had to do that, otherwise Apple as a company would disappear tomorrow. They're just trying to survive.

[ambicapter]

Unless you're going to demonstrate that handing over a golden plaque implies handing over privacy data to government agencies, I'm going to prefer the former over the latter.

[somenameforme]

Apple has already been outed as one of the participating companies in PRISM. [1] So that privacy boat has long since sailed. The public legal wrangling is likely just a mutually beneficial facade. PRISM is almost certainly illegal, but nobody can legally challenge it because the data provided from it is never directly used. Law enforcement engage in parallel construction [2] where they obtain the same evidence in a different way. So nobody can prove they were harmed by PRISM, and thus all challenges against it get tossed for lack of standing. It's very dumb.

But in any case the legal battles work as nice PR for Apple (see how much we care about privacy) and also as a great scenario for the government because any battles they win are domains where they can now legally use information directly to the courts and sidestep the parallel construction. That also takes the burden off of Apple PR in giving that information up because it can be framed as the courts and government forcing them, rather than them collaborating in mass data collection.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[Schiendelman]

I know you're being sarcastic, but yes, that's exactly what's happening. And it's really hard to fight this kind of corruption when your allies get sarcastic and angry at you instead of listening and discussing. Please consider reading the HN guidelines and thinking about how your comment might not be aligned with them.

Hank Green has a really good video about how this is happening here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jOR4wuiPeEQ

[brookst]

I don’t like that we’ve gotten to a place where presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist is the same thing as engaging in massive surveillance of the entire population.

[wredcoll]

If you or I had complete knowledge of all of apple's activities, this would be a more relevant point.

Instead we have to make judgements based on what limited information we possess and sucking up to trump is a real bad sign for things like caring about privacy/liberty/safety

[embedding-shape]

> presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist

Unfortunately, I think reality is much worse than you seem to be under the impression of. Voter suppression and military violence against your own population isn't "narcissism", it's the introduction of authoritarianism. The flagrant narcissism is a symptom of that, not the actual issue.

[anonym29]

Apple was a PRISM partner. They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

[gruez]

>They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

For something like icloud vs gmail/gdrive, they're approximately the same, but that doesn't mean "they share just as much [...] as Microsoft and Google. If they never collected data in the first place, they don't have to share with NSA. The most obvious would be for location data, which apple keeps on-device and google did not (although they did switch to on device a few years ago).

[mrcwinn]

Remember when Apple PR spent a bunch of time putting Tim Cook alongside images of RFK? Civil rights hero! That campaign wouldn’t land these days.

[wredcoll]

Rfk the brainworms guy?

[jbstack]

It doesn't have to be a binary choice between "don't use it ever" and "continue using it as much as you are now". If people stopped using these services 50% of the time, it would have a huge impact.

[random2021]

In concept what you say is correct but reality is complex. There are very few providers that implement friction free login/password and importantly security. A large number of email providers didn't implement 2FA until very recently. Even those that have terrible apps, ad infested, no app password or oAuth etc. so many governments use MS hosted services.

It is akin to Visa/MasterCard duopoly. It is hard to escape but even if one does it then it resulted only inconvenience. I still don't have my cards in phone - neither will google change path nor will govts force a change.

[jbstack]

I don't see any contradiction here with what I said. If you feel that using Google for email is unavoidable, that can be the part that you keep using. You can still easily ditch a lot of other things. E.g. Pixel phone, Google Docs, Google Drive, AWS. Each of those has plenty of, arguably better, alternatives.

[anigbrowl]

I've largely disconnected from big tech for years, perhaps 80%, and encouraged others to do likewise. When does the seismic shift happen?

I don't care for these 'bottom up' strategies because they don't have clearly defined success conditions and are more wishing than anything else. It also puts the responsibilities on consumers for 'not advocating (or voting) hard enough,' which imho is just another kind of diffusion of responsibility. Everyone ends up feeling bad for not doing enough to solve the problem when the reality is that coordinating social swarms or other sorts of collective action against tech giants with highly integrated command and lobbying structures is almost impossible.

[random2021]

> Each of those has plenty of, arguably better, alternatives.

That's the incorrect premise - for that 50% that you hope to ditch.

Pixel phone is not inherently bad. One can even buy them second hand.

The information lock in from US is impossible to escape for majority of connected world citizens.

[jbstack]

I don't understand your point. We're talking about ways to reduce dependence on big corp products. Some people object on the basis that it's not always feasible. I've responded that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You've identified some products that you think you can't move away from. I've identified some that I think you probably can, and acknowledged that you might still by stuck with those others. I don't see how your latest comment fits in.

In the context of the present debate, Pixel phone is inherently bad because it's a Google product. You're putting money in Google's bank account when you buy one, and you're running your phone the way Google wants you to. The point of the debate is whether it's feasible to move away from such things. In the case of a Pixel phone, it is possible (to some extent, anyway).

[nxpnsv]

But you can still reduce your exposure. Giving in to hopelessness seems suboptimal.

[wordsunite]

The comments are fair. My post was quick and lacked details as I was frustrated in the ever increasing enshitification of the web.

What I meant to convey, from my personal experience, is that it seemed hard to get off of platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Prime, Alexa, Ring, Google Photos, etc. but then I did it and didn’t miss them. These small moves by a lot of people, I believe, can still make a difference. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. Do I still use some services? Of course, I have Gmail and WhatsApp, and use a lot of Apple products. When I can, I choose intentionally what I use since there’s no perfect companies out there, but there are “better” ones (whatever that may be in one’s opinion). I chose cloudflare for hosting and Anthropic for vibe coding. Allowing people to use existing login info versus exposing them to more risk with self managed auth was a choice I made. There are tons of choices we make every day so trying to be more intentional is a good start.

Nobody is perfect, but we can try to improve each day in these choices we make.

[iririririr]

Talking about anti-tech-monopolies and using Stripe-paypal is extra ironic.

I can understand aws, youtube, being on google index, and other things as they sometimes are the most cost efficient or vendors don't offer alternatives... but stripe-paypal is more expensive and worse than the less-bad alternatives. jeez.

[ironsmoke]

Perfect is the enemy of good.

[miyuru]

his app has also Google, Apple logins and for first time I have seen, login with meta button.

https://app.wordsunite.us/

[Gormo]

I don't think using AWS has quite the same privacy implications to using Amazon's own SaaS services.

[m3kw9]

It’s hard that’s why he is still using it

[embedding-shape]

> I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products

It's not just hard for some though, literally their livelihood depends on it. Want to run a restaurant today? You basically must have Facebook, Instagram and Google Maps entry for enough people to discover you, probably more than half of the people we got to our restaurant who we ask, cite Google Maps as the reason they found the place, and without half our income, the restaurant wouldn't have survived.

[prmoustache]

It really depends where the restaurant is located.

[lazide]

Name a place it isn’t true.

[prmoustache]

Any city with either an actual city center, an historic center or touristic area. Any restaurant that is in a major business area.

Any neighborhood were local zoning is not a thing and local restaurant can be open. We have a lot of tapas or marisquerías places in Spain that are almost only visited by people from the same neighborhood. I like fish and seafood but don't want the smell of it in my kitchen the next day, whenever I want to eat fish I go to some place selling that and I don't need google maps to find one in my neighborhood.

Also world of mouth is still a thing in many places in this world. Reading HN feels sometimes like a weird parallel universe were people would never open their front door nor meet and to people.

[embedding-shape]

> We have a lot of tapas or marisquerías places in Spain that are almost only visited by people from the same neighborhood

Yes, this is exactly the thing. Our restaurant is in Spain, and what you're saying is very true, which is why Google Maps, Instagram and Facebook tends to be important, as again, half (~guess) the people who arrive found it via Google Maps or Instagram, the rest are people who live nearby.

[epolanski]

I'm Italian, there's plenty of stellar places with no online presence and endless customers.

[random2021]

Perhaps DPRK.

I mean deGoogle/meta etc is almost impossible

[rolph]

Alaska

[okanat]

That is going to work as the same as telling people to stop buying gas from Standard Oil or stop using Bell Telephone. Without government intervention you cannot break up their control.

[derbOac]

I agree that government restrictions usually help if they're implemented well, but part of the issue is the government is benefiting from this kind of thing.

Also, most people don't actually need something like Amazon. Not to minimize the level of investment in it, but I don't see Amazon or Google as being quite the same as Bell or Standard Oil. Maybe between Google and Apple there's some kind of duopoly like that?

My impression is people don't value — either because they don't understand or minimize — things that protect privacy and anonymity. This is a standard refrain on these kinds of forums and elsewhere — "your typical person doesn't know or care about [feature X that preserves privacy, choice, and autonomy], they just want something that works and is fun". It's been belittled as unfashionable or paranoid or performative or something, when it's really something that's had short term costs that pale in comparison to the long-term costs.

I'm not saying governments don't need to be on the "right side" but I think people need to see security as involving not just encryption and so forth, but also decentralization, anonymity, demonopolization, and censorship resistance. It needs to be seen as part of the product or service benefits.

A lot of this reminds me of stuff from the 90s, when network security was ignored for awhile for customer convenience's sake. It seems really similar now, only the thing that's been ignored is like user control and privacy or something like that.

I think the thing that's surprising to me, for example, is that it takes a Super Bowl ad for people to realize that maybe there are downsides to letting a monopoly have access to video throughout the neighborhood everywhere.

[dopidopHN2]

You can start by creating a email at tuta or proton. It does not have to be 100% overnight

[OutOfHere]

Tuta is just horrible, often rejecting account creation altogether. AtomicMail.io is a nice free alternative to Proton.

[mike-cardwell]

What's nice about AtomicMail.io? I just tested it with https://www.emailprivacytester.com and it leaked my IP and when I read the email. And I can't even find an option to turn off remote content loading, which has been a standard feature of email and webmail clients for privacy reasons for decades, and should be turned to off by default.

[dopidopHN2]

Thanks for your perspective. I've been using tuta since a year now. Nothing to report

[OutOfHere]

Tuta is pathetic because it asked for my real name, ID verification, and real phone number, altogether defeating the point of anonymity. When I refused to provide identification, it disabled and deleted the new registration. This makes it as bad as Discord.

Perhaps you have a grandfathered account, but times have changed for the worse with Tuta alone.

[dopidopHN2]

Han. My only grippe was having to install a app. None of the rest.

[mvanbaak]

but then you send a mail to $person, and this $person uses gmail, and now your mail is still indexed by google.

The only way to get around this is to use encryption. dont send plain text email.

[syntheticcdo]

And if the recipient uses a Chrome extension to handle the decryption... Google still has access to the cleartext. There's no winning.

[WarmWash]

Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free".

Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't even register.

People need to start paying for things, because if you're not paying for it, you're not in control of it.

[NotMichaelBay]

I see what you're saying but I don't think that's the answer for everything, because people also pay for conveniences, like a Ring subscription so that Amazon stores footage in their cloud for you.

The problem is centralization is more convenient for consumers. You can easily control your doorbell, your garage door, your security cameras with 1 app, and everything just works.

Open source and decentralized solutions need to be just as convenient and cheaper than centralized ones for consumers to choose them.

[bloak]

Alternatively, basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state. After all, the state provides a road network, which is similarly essential and rather more expensive.

[JumpCrisscross]

> basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state

You're looking at America in 2026 and concluding we want to give the state more control over private lives?

[shimman]

Yes, you can give control to the House of Representatives. The House should have way more control over government agencies, it's the people's house. The people deserve to have control.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> control to the House of Representatives

There is an entire branch of government whose purpose is to execute the will of Congress.

[shimman]

Let me know if you find it because the Presidency is no different than a monarch. Might be more believable if the Presidency didn't have a pardon power and wasn't elected in an extremely undemocratic fashion.

[joquarky]

> it's the people's house

You dropped an adjective: wealthy

[shimman]

No, the Senate, Presidency, and Legislative branches are for the wealthy. The constitution was literally written so a minority of rich people would have the most control over the government. Having state legislatures (who also happened to decide who can vote + how) choose senators, requiring the senate to pass bills written by the house, judges that are chosen by senators. House of reps only serve for 2 years compared to 6 or 4 or lifetime appointments.

The 17th amendment is a little over 100 years old.

People need to stop treating the US constitution as this "mythical" thing rather than the reality of it being a very undemocratic document that is highly resistant to change.

Luckily the house can be expanded with a simple majority IN the house, one way to truly combat this.

[tastyfreeze]

The more you ask around the more you will find the real divide in the US is the same as it always has been. There are those that believe a more powerful government will solve all the problems and those that just want the government to leave them alone to solve their own problems.

Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions describes the difference well.

[wredcoll]

You make a really good point I think, if the government just leaves us alone then we can solve all of our own problems with the friendly assistance of ma bell/standard oil/google/facebook.

[prmoustache]

E-mail used to be provided by your isp and there were enough different ISPs ( at least in my country ) to not have a duopoly.

[SoftTalker]

Yes, but they didn't develop it. ISP email required you to configure IMAP or more likely POP in an email application and did nothing to combat spam. Google came along and offered gmail, easy sign up, no configuration, used your web browser so no other applications to install, spam largely filtered out, just worked.

[prmoustache]

The app to install wasn't really an issue given any OS with a default desktop came with an email app.

What brought the popularity of gmail was the huge space provided which at the time felt infinite. I still remember the counter that was showing the size increasing seemingly indefinitely.

[SoftTalker]

Yes, that too. I think the initial sell was a 1GB mailbox. Which was an enormous limit at the time. And another thing the ISPs missed. Most had small limits, "mailbox full" was a common thing and you had to download/delete mail all the time which was annoying.

[drnick1]

> used your web browser so no other applications to install

I see this as a downside. Native email clients are much faster and a far better UX than a Web inbox. It's also pretty much required if you juggle multiple accounts.

[warkdarrior]

I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail

[data-ottawa]

The problem with ISP based email is once you're a customer with their email you can never switch.

[WarmWash]

Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...

[intended]

This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite.

Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue.

Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government.

[WarmWash]

I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...

[intended]

There seem to be many layoffs, and the hype say that AI has made coders redundant. Who knows? Perhaps you won’t have to depend on the many people who would happily take lower pay for the chance to contribute to their nation.

There’s more incentives than pure profit - Government seems capable enough to attract people when it comes to cyber weapons.

Governments aren’t currently making these tools, because until last year, private enterprise was good enough. It still is, minus the dependency on America and its political climate.

Personally - The issue isn’t engineer availability or salary, but committee based decision making.

[Levitz]

The neat thing about the state is that it can act directly off the incentives of the people. The state can supply such service in a private manner, given enough support from the populace.

[cgriswald]

The “incentives of the people” are famously steadfast and resolute in favor of the rights of others.

[johnisgood]

Not only that, but were it State-implemented, it would be an AWFUL implementation all the way through.

[cgriswald]

People pay for things and are still spied on.

[WarmWash]

People wear seatbelts and still die too.

We need to move in the right direction, not get paralysis in the status quo because of high profile edge cases.

No matter what there will always be warrants and wire taps. The goal is to get away from the "free flow" of information.

[cgriswald]

The point is, paying for things isn’t a solution. Paying for things is a consequence of having fixed the problem. I pay for Kagi and buy groceries from a ma-and-pa grocery store where I’m still going to be tracked if I use a credit card, bring my phone (or go with someone else who brings their phone), drive certain cars…

In most cases there can’t be movement in this direction and to the degree there can be, it isn’t enough.

[danaris]

And the problem with that is, all the money has been siphoned off by the people at the top.

That's one of the big hidden factors driving the ad/surveillance economy: people's purchasing power just isn't what it used to be, while at the same time they're expected to be paying regularly for more things than ever before (home broadband, mobile phone plans, etc).

[joquarky]

It's easy to say we should all start paying for things.

Most people don't have much of a disposable income.

[drnick1]

DuckDuckGo is free to use, and is proof that you can have privacy respecting search. They make their money like Google used to by selling rankings, not by having users log in so that they can be followed across all their devices.

[simpaticoder]

>People need to start paying for things

...with money. They are already paying for things by violating their own privacy and those around them. The irony is that the amount of money required for the service is much less the expected value of the surveillance for the provider. Service payment is an insurance expense, protecting against individual and systematic violation of the 4th Amendment rights. It's insurance (and cheap insurance) because this usually doesn't matter in practice. But sometimes it does, and when it does it REALLY does matter.

<tinfoil_hat>It would be smart for surveillance capital to fund some of these privacy forward providers, steer them to both charge you for a service and violate your privacy, hope for a very public controversy, and eventually discredit the fundamental approach.</tinfoil_hat>

[intended]

We could

- regulate the crap out of surveillance capitalism.

- enforce laws on the books

- Break up firms

Tech used to have a leg to stand on in the face of government over reach. Today, tech firms have largely adapted to the incentives that actually make themselves known every quarter.

Customer support, content moderation, compliance are avoided, and lobbying argues that if you dont let tech it easy, your economy wont innovate. Except enshittification is the term to describe how extractive mature tech markets become.

I am all for more subscription models, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of throwing our hands up and ignoring the many changes that can better align the current incentives.

[salawat]

Using AI to do anything isn't going to liberate one. It's just going to shift the dependence from one company to another. Your new feudal lord will be the people running the Santa Claus machine you're running. Don't keep trying to tell people AI is the solution. The real solution is self-hosting. And that cannot be AI'd half as easily.

[fwipsy]

The suggestion is not to depend on AI for privacy, but to use it to build products like signal which guarantee privacy. Using AI to build a product doesn't mean sharing the data from that product. In addition, right now AI has little vendor lock in and there are multiple competitive alternatives, so becoming dependent on a single company is not so likely.

[salawat]

>The suggestion is not to depend on AI for privacy, but to use it to build products like signal which guarantee privacy.

Uh huh. No. You use their system to do it, they have your prompt, and the output on hand. Even more so, they have the capability to tamper with it. They are essentially in a position to own the entire instance of the work product. It doesn't matter if they don't yet. It matters that they can. Furthermore you lose out on the learning. You lose out on any innovation. You lose out in the eyes of the law on the privacy of the communique you use to drive the black box.

>In addition, right now AI has little vendor lock in and there are multiple competitive alternatives, so becoming dependent on a single company is not so likely.

Yup. Right. Like we don't know how that ends. <gestures to />50 years of market consolidation in the distance, letting the illusion of choice speak for itself>

[adamsb6]

You can self host AI but speed and quality aren’t going to be as good as what companies can offer.

And the upfront cost will be quite high.

[harimau777]

I'm not sure its necessarily that simple. For example, because of the job market for software engineers I have moved to new cities multiple times during my adult life. As a result, my social network is highly fragmented and without Facebook it would be incredibly difficult for me to manage.

So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."

I don't say this to necessarily mean that you are completely wrong, just to point out that opting out of these companies can be more complicated than it may initially appear.

[drnick1]

> So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."

You just aren't looking for obvious alternatives that would still allow you to do all that privately. Keep your family photos offline on your own hardware. Create a contacts list on your phone (ideally de-Appled and de-Googled) and text people on Signal and/or create group chats. Tell people you are leaving Facebook because it is an evil surveillance machine, and that you can be reached on Signal, email (self-hosted) or phone.

[torben-friis]

Where are you that Facebook (the network, not meta as a company) is still minimally relevant ? I haven’t logged in in about a decade.

[BoneShard]

Facebook (if you don't use newsfeed) is a very useful product.

Local events - check

Local groups - check

Small time music bands/artist/performances/etc - check

Buy nothing groups where I can get rid of something I don't use - check

Groups for mom with kids to get organized for some kids event - check

A library having a read together event for a kids book author - check

I'm happy I don't have to use FB, but my wife uses it all the time, she just avoids newsfeeds and all the click/rage bait parts.

[torben-friis]

Is that in the US?

I’m genuinely asking, it wasn’t rethorical - none of that exists in my corner of Europe anymore. Businesses, indie stuff and local stores use instagram, groups are WhatsApp, second hand stuff has its own app.. facebook seems to be just the >60 year old crowd.

[drnick1]

Guess what, Instagram and Whatsapp belong to Facebook (Meta).

[torben-friis]

No shit. That’s why I literally made the distinction in the first post.

Meta as a company is obviously currently relevant, it’s Facebook as a social network still being used what’s surprising to me.

Here they’re almost in the same category as MySpace, something you mention in passing talking about the past.

[epolanski]

I'm polish/Italian and Facebook is the major source of local events information in both countries.

[gtowey]

People before Facebook found themselves in exactly the same situation as you and managed to survive.

People have become dependant on the convenience of these tools and become, for lack of a gentler word, lazy. Moreover we have this current sense of entitlement -- that all of these details of modern living should be done for us. Having our social circles organized and maintained for us, having infinite entertainment a button press away, food delivered to our door on a whim, cars to take us anywhere always minutes away.

People survived just fine before these conveniences, it just too a bit more effort. You could collect your friends contact information, keep an address book, call them up from time to time. It's not perfect, but it works and starts to break the silicon valley tech giant dependence.

Personally I find adding friction to these processes has actual value. When you slow down and have to put a bit more effort in, it helps you to evaluate what is important, and what truly matters. You prioritize, you make tradoffs. The process IS the richness in life. We all don't need to be jet setting globetrotters to whom paris might as well be New York or london or munich, while robots manage our social lives. There is no substitute for actively working to build a community where you are. You have to put the effort in, and in a single generation we have lost so much of it. But we can get back there again if we try.

[epolanski]

Nonsense, those aren't real relationships if you don't have numbers to each other and the relationships die with you deleting an account.

I've deleted all of my socials but LinkedIn in 2019 and I haven't missed anything at all.

[II2II]

In the main example cited by the article: how? It involves the use of surveilance systems by other people,These people may be unaware, disinterested, or even enthusiastic participants in this data collection. The same goes with data being collected by Google when the customer did not have an active subscription.

At best, we can only control our own actions. Even then, it is only possible to minimize (rather than eliminate) the use of their products without putting up barriers between ourselves and society. Consider email: we can use an alternative provider, but chances are that we will be corresponding personally or professionally with people who use Gmail or Outlook. The same goes for phones, only the alternatives available are much more limited. Plus you have some degree of tracking by the telecom networks. (I don't consider Apple or Microsoft much better on these fronts. Ultimately they have their business interests in mind and, failing that, their existence is ultimately at the whim of the state.)

[Insanity]

Meta is the easiest to cut of those. I don’t use anything from them as I don’t engage on social media, nor use their VR and AR stuff etc.

Google and Amazon are harder to complete cut imo. I have replaced Google apart from using YouTube, and I do rely on Amazon for delivery and running personal projects on AWS.

[neoCrimeLabs]

Agreed.

That said for some I can foresee Meta being hard or harder to disconnect from because of their percieved level of personal social needs.

I left facebook and many of my friendships faded away.

Awkward bumping into people conversations would happen such as: "We missed you at my birthday party!", "I didn't know about it, else I would have been there!" "We posted it to facebook..." "I deleted my facebook account 2 years ago."

My personal philosophy was maybe they were not real friends to begin with. After all in the now 5 years since deletion, not one has reached out to ask if I'm even still alive. I've reached out to a couple people, with little to no reply. None the less, it was a hard transition.

For others', that might be an impossible task.

[Insanity]

I removed Facebook about 11 years ago now. I made new friends who know I’m not on social media so we organize through text or discord. And for my core friend group they also moved to discord servers, so that made the switch easier.

I guess it can be hard initially though. Also, my core group of friends is less than 10, but that’s enough for me. I don’t need to follow what 100 other people are doing in their day to day haha.

[barnacs]

> stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products

That's the easy part. What do you do about stuff like face recognition and cameras everywhere? Should you hide your face every time you go out? Should you not speak because there might be a mic around picking up your voice?

This is only going to get worse. We can't trust companies or governments to respect our privacy. We can't trust each other to keep the data recorded by our devices private.

It seems like the fight for privacy is a lost cause. What do we do?

[mistrial9]

"trust"? Lot's of ambitious people are selling extra refined new additions to surveillance right now! "business is good" for example the 90s PDF architect Leonard Rosenthol recently put up ads promoting a brand of Ring cameras that have extra features. Of course he is making money on it. Someone on LinkedIn said "what is this?" and the reply was "adding ownership attributes to Ring camera footage is a step towards publication rights for the owner" .. almost too strange to believe but yes, this is the actual move.

[notepad0x90]

None of that helps, that's the point. How can you stop a ring camera from recording you as you're just taking a walk outside? How can you stop people's phones from tracking other people's phones, APs and BT? How can you stop ISPs from selling your real time location info, including to the cops?

[pjmlp]

Alone from that list, it means.

No Go, no Flutter, no Android, no GCP nor AWS or anyone that relies on them like Vercel and Netlify, no llama, no React or framework that builds on top of it.

Keeping the list small, there are other items that depend on those companies money and engineering teams.

[m3kw9]

Surveillance is not black or white. In this world you’d have to be a cave man to not get surveyed, you just have to pick your battles. Not using any other the big 5-10’s product or s like saying don’t buy from Walmart or something. It’s stupid

[n8cpdx]

It doesn’t just seem hard, it is hard. I’m working on it, but here’s a few examples:

- I want to delete my Amazon account because service has gotten worse and they mistreat their employees. I also want to be able to get groceries, but I don’t have a car and the walking distance grocery store just closed (due to mismanagement). Now I need to spend hours every weekend walking to the farmers market or to the Safeway a considerably distance away.

- I want my prescriptions, but the pharmacy I used to walk to is closing. Now I need to find a pharmacy delivery service that isn’t tied up with Amazon.

- I signed up for One Medical before it was Amazon and it was great. Now it sucks. There aren’t exactly a lot of great alternatives even if I wanted to pay a premium. Wtf do I do?

- I have a Microsoft account I want to delete. If I do that, I will lose access to my Xbox games, and I will lose access to download anything at all on my Xbox 360, which is loaded up with XBLA games I can only use because Microsoft has kept the download part of their store working.

- I’m not on Instagram, but businesses seem to think Instagram has completely replaced the World Wide Web - many restaurants don’t post their hours _anywhere_ but Instagram. I cannot access these details without logging in. A local “speakeasy” coffee shop has a password you have to get from the Instagram story. I just can’t go. Unfortunately the employees are not accommodating. I’ve left a nasty review but that can only go so far. Without a big tech account I can’t even do that.

[ulfw]

No no you see... when Google or Amazon or Meta et al are doing it it's a-okay. But let's ban Huawei or DJI on 'National Security' grounds because they MIGHT be doing this too!

[AtlasBarfed]

Other people are using them.

You are surrounded by people using them.

Therefore, you are subject to the mass surveillance they encode.

And by NOT using them, you mark yourself as dangerous.

[ted_bunny]

As if these tech giants are an aberration? Any company filling their niche will be under the same pressures.

[tjpnz]

Meta was easy - nothing of value is lost. Google and Amazon are a bit harder.

[anigbrowl]

Do you have any evidence that this actually works as a strategy?

[chistev]

They are everywhere