[HN Gopher] De-googling, so far
___________________________________________________________________
De-googling, so far
Author : nradk
Score : 145 points
Date : 2024-05-31 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.nradk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.nradk.com)
| terr-dav wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240531193815/https://blog.nrad...
| demosthanos wrote:
| > I think Nebula.tv is promising, and a bunch of creators I like
| upload their videos on it. I do have a Nebula account but rarely
| end up using it, since most videos get uploaded to YouTube as
| well, and when I open Nebula, I find myself having already
| watched all the interesting videos on YouTube.
|
| I've just gotten in the habit of opening up Nebula first and only
| then switching to YouTube when there's nothing new there. Even if
| you do this only once every few days it's usually enough, because
| a lot of creators upload to Nebula a week before they do YouTube.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Sadly none of my 'creators' are on nebula; But one thing worth
| trying if you do want to avoid going to youtube -- just have
| some cronjobs running yt-dlp every few hours on each channel
| you're interested in on YouTube, served up with a little auto
| index httpd via Tailscale -- makes for a pretty nice
| experience.
|
| (Seems to be limited to 1080p, but I don't really care about
| the quality of those videos tbh).
| bogwog wrote:
| I just use FreeTube. It's perfect.
| riddley wrote:
| Nebula drives me insane. I want so much to like it, but the TV
| app is so terrible. You can follow creators, but it won't show
| you when they release a new video. Did you have to pause a
| video and go away for a bit? Well too bad. Unless you search
| the name or use their bookmark feature, you can't get back to
| it. There's no way to tell it that it's suggestions aren't
| interesting. If the thing they've put a huge banner across your
| screen about is a podcast and not a video, clicking it does
| nothing. No error, no nothing (again on the TV app.)
| derlvative wrote:
| I liked duckduckgo a couple years ago before it started insisting
| on showing results in the language associated to my IP address.
| Since then I've liked brave a lot better.
| neilv wrote:
| If you're using the DDG Web site, and a bookmark, can you force
| the language in the bookmark?
|
| Example: https://duckduckgo.com/?kl=us-en&kad=en_US
| autoexec wrote:
| Duckduckgo used to advertise that they were all about getting
| out of the filter bubble but they insist on throwing a bunch of
| irrelevant totally unrelated garbage in their search results
| based on my IP address. The service has really gone downhill
| and I can't even blame it on bing
| SassyBird wrote:
| I've been getting weird results for a while: somewhere around
| the end of the first page of results or beginning of the second
| I get results which have nothing to do with my queries. Instead
| they look as if someone entered geoip result for my ip address
| as text of the query. Maybe those are some LLM experiments and
| that's part of the prompt now?
| least wrote:
| The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's
| gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more
| than any other type of video media and there are no good
| alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.
| autoexec wrote:
| The good news is that none of the content you care about is
| Google's. As soon as someone else provides a space for content
| creators to move to you can get rid of Youtube and never miss a
| single thing about it. Google has successfully pissed off
| enough youtubers that they're just waiting for the first chance
| to jump ship, just like we are as watchers.
|
| In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google.
| Use Newpipe and youtube-dl so you never see an ad.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| Yeah but operating a service like YouTube is such a money pit
| (given on recent HN threads I've read). It seems like they've
| been mostly able to work because of their huge ad network,
| targeting, etc.
| smaudet wrote:
| Yeah, the important 3rd wheel of the video space:
|
| 1) Hosting space/cpu/bandwidth. Video is one of the most
| intense data jobs out there, behind I suppose maybe AI and
| Big Data (if anyone is still doing that). You need
| Terabytes of drive space, petabytes of traffic, all the
| CDNs, processors capable of encoding inefficient video
| uploads to efficient video downloads. 2) Network effect.
| People need to actually want to come, so that people come.
| 3) Paying for all this - People don't like donating, don't
| like paying, but hard drives/servers/power banks are not
| free. So you either charge premiums or use ads.
|
| I wish more people had been willing to pay for Youtube Pro,
| e.g. (I still do), they're (still) getting worse because
| the ad-supported version(s) are still the bulk of their
| income. And so the ad-supported version is messing up
| everything, being very aggressive, etc. You/I pay for
| Netflix, why wouldn't you pay for Youtube?
|
| You can't influence the dynamic with capitalism at all when
| something is free. Sure, companies can "en-shittify", but
| at least for video this is fairly simple - when it costs
| too much/works too terribly on one video platform, you can
| move to the next one. 1) and 2) Make it harder to start a
| new paid platform, but not impossible - you can directly
| reflect the costs to your users. YT is just a black box at
| present...but would have been less so if Youtube Pro had
| been more popular (ads might have been easier to block,
| even).
| bbarnett wrote:
| There's a space for Netflix here. They have the "TV"
| class subscribers, they have all the networks, knowhow.
|
| All the initial groundwork is done.
|
| All they need is a platform for the youtube class content
| provider. They already have ad deals too.
|
| They could, if they found some model that works, snap up
| loads of talent.... and that talent could even stay on
| youtube too.
|
| As long as they keep content in its own category...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not inherently a money pit.
|
| Google and Facebook have a complete oligopoly over the ads
| market and are manipulating it so nobody else can prosper.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It seems like inherently a money pit to me. Was Google
| even profiting off it before they started cramming in ads
| and offering YT Premium?
| malfist wrote:
| Serving video data to, potentially, billions of users is
| absolutely expensive.
|
| You can't, "in a weekend" a youtube clone that can stand
| up to the first viral hit.
| skeledrew wrote:
| That's what BitTorrent is for. The main issue with
| torrenting is that non-viral content is going to have
| very low availability.
| hot_gril wrote:
| This generously assumes that the new provider won't take the
| same steps YouTube did. I feel like the only solution is to
| not care all that much about watching videos.
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| Nebula is such a streaming service. From what I understand,
| they are a subscription based company that has a profit share
| incentive for it's creators. Consequently, the creators skew
| toward educational-esque content.
| mobilejdral wrote:
| That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent
| a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is
| _literally_ optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as
| possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I
| wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.
| itishappy wrote:
| > Every time I have gone there I find content that is
| literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as
| possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes.
|
| It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform
| educational content, I get lots of longform educational
| content. I find the act of opening clickbait videos in an
| incognito window along with judicious use of the "not
| interested" button has kept it quite usable.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It 's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on
| longform educational content, I get lots of longform
| educational content._
|
| Yup. You still get the occasional dud, but most of the feed
| is relevant in my case.
|
| I once browsed YouTube without being logged in. Do not
| recommend. I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I imagine it's a
| similar experience to browsing the web without an
| adblocker.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Live the speedup ability in YouTube videos. Minimum 1.5x,
| some faster (because it's pretty obvious the creators slow
| the content down)
| the_af wrote:
| > _Every time I have gone there I find content that is
| literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as
| possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes._
|
| Depends on what you're watching.
|
| I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game
| somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched,
| and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.
|
| Having said that, I watch a ton of YouTube videos. Not
| randomly, like zapping through TV channels (do people still
| do that, by the way?). I watch videos from the dozens of
| channels I'm subscribed to, by authors I enjoy watching and
| about topics that are relevant to me. YouTube is unbeatable
| for this, because almost everyone is on YouTube, but few
| other video platforms are as universal.
|
| And yes, I pay for YouTube Premium because ads absolutely
| break YouTube. Ads make everything worse. I'm still upset
| about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments"
| embedded in their videos (looking at you, Squarespace -- you
| can go f*ck yourself); I wish paying for Premium
| automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well. At
| least some authors make self-deprecating jokes about their
| sponsored content.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Same, with a few exceptions. Once in a blue moon, I check if
| one of the two creators I care about has something I want to
| watch.
| waveBidder wrote:
| I more or less ignore the front page and use the bell as an
| rss, having found channels I like via recs from channels I
| like and friends
| annexrichmond wrote:
| I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads
| are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos
| but it's become so disruptive
|
| I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily
| long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so
| there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for
| getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is
| sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that
| could have been a short paragraph. And when you add 30 second
| ads every 5 mins it makes it even less compelling
| lawn wrote:
| Don't everyone on HN use ublock origin? I haven't seen an ad
| in years.
| usmcnapier wrote:
| Same here.
| rav3ndust wrote:
| same. firefox with ubO is my best friend.
| rossjudson wrote:
| I don't want the ads, but I'd rather see the carefully
| curated list of creators I care about be able to get paid,
| and Youtube Music works for me. Youtube Premium is worth
| it.
| instagib wrote:
| Sideloaded the latest and greatest
| YouTube++/uYou/uYouPlus/(currently uYouEnhanced) on my
| iPhone and re-sign it weekly with AltStore, Trollstore, or
| use a jailbroken equivalent on a device that managed to
| stay jailbroken.
|
| There's a few other new options I've seen through Reddit
| for web viewing, iOS content blockers, or hosting your own
| VPS invidious/piped instance with rotating ipv6 servers
| (not google/aws/digital ocean as they require using a web
| panel).
|
| You can leave ads on for whitelisted creators sponsored
| advertising content also.
| bsder wrote:
| YouTube seems to be doing subtle dark patterns if you use
| uBlock origin.
|
| For example, I can watch videos, but I often get an "error"
| if I try to seek in the video.
| riddley wrote:
| Phones and TVs.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Where do you see ads on Youtube? I have seen maybe one or two
| in 10 years.
| the_af wrote:
| I see them almost guaranteed unless I'm logged in. I ended
| up paying for Premium to remove them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| More and more content creators are just embedding them
| directly into their videos. Either by just mentioning
| sponsor names in the flow of what they are talking about,
| or doing little sidebars where they talk about/promote
| their sponsors.
|
| I don't mind these so much because they are easy to skip,
| but ad-blockers don't catch them.
| wolpoli wrote:
| It's harder to avoid bad quality videos that now you can't
| see downvotes.
|
| As for the video being unnecessarily long - I have played
| with copying the transcript from the video into ChatGPT, but
| they tend to be too long for ChatGPT to handle.
| lawn wrote:
| Kagi has an Universal Summerized function that can give you
| a nice summary of a video.
| the_af wrote:
| > _The ads are insane._
|
| The ads are indeed insane. They break YouTube in practice.
| YouTube, in its wisdom, much like a mobster in the protection
| racket, offers you an out: pay for Premium. I ended up doing
| this because YT is one of the things I use the most. The
| alternative was having Firefox with uBlock Origin on every
| mobile device in my household, I suppose, but this wasn't
| feasible.
|
| YouTube Premium took the win :(
|
| > _I just can 't see how this model is sustainable. I don't
| want to waste time watching videos that could have been a
| short paragraph_
|
| Depends on what you're watching. I always disliked, say,
| programming tutorials in video form -- give me text, to read
| and understand at my own pace. Many video tutorials are
| unnecessarily longwinded and always go at the wrong pace for
| me, either too fast or too slow.
|
| But I watch tons of videos about other topics where video is
| the right form. I watch hobby tutorials, I watch videos about
| cinema/art, etc, and I feel video is the right format for me.
| guyzero wrote:
| I find it crazy that someone will say "I still consume it more
| than any other type of video media" but somehow just paying for
| it isn't an option. You can pay to make YT ads go away. And the
| payments go to the video creators (eventually).
| PodgieTar wrote:
| I'm conflicted on this. I pay for YouTube premium - for
| background playing on my phone and for Ad-less on my TV.
|
| I pay more for Netflix, and I use it a lot less.
|
| So I'm airing on the side of agreeing, but I also think
| Googles tactics have been incredibly shoddy, and I can
| understand someone not wanting to support that.
| rc_mob wrote:
| I don't want to send google money. I happily pay nebula
| though.
| sneak wrote:
| You can't pay YouTube to remove in-video ads that the video
| creators put in. For that you need SponsorBlock anyway, so
| might as well use a 3p client that supports blocking both
| kinds of ads, without giving money to Google to continue
| building ad surveillance software.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I don't mind ads in the videos for creators I enjoy, it
| pays their bills. There's a difference between those and
| YouTube's ads which the creators don't get a big percentage
| of. I can easily fast forward those ads if I want to,
| anyways.
|
| How do you expect all this content to be made without any
| sort of money? You're basically leeching off the rest of
| us, in this case, IMO.
|
| I hate ads, but right now that's the only ticket, or paying
| for premium. Perhaps that will change, I hope.
| sneak wrote:
| I mind all ads. They rob you of your most precious and
| nonrenewable resource without consent.
|
| Ads are cancer and should be excised at every
| opportunity. Ad companies should be destroyed. Ad tech
| workers should be blackballed. Shilling is shameful.
| guyzero wrote:
| This entire forum is an advertisement for an investment
| firm. Many posts are advertisements for startups.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I'll agree in some capacity that ads are a scourge today,
| but what's your alternative? You can't just burn down the
| world ave start fresh, there has to be a better way and a
| plan to transition. Those who would just burn the world
| down are not mature. This applies to just parts of the
| world, too, such as "advertising must burn" or "let Y
| country burn because of X problem" (paraphrasing).
| jsnell wrote:
| The creators get the majority of the ad revenue from
| YouTube's ads (it's a 55/45 split).
| ok_dad wrote:
| 55% isn't big to be when you consider they made the
| content, though the cost's for video are probably higher
| than most things online.
| guyzero wrote:
| Do you walk out of a movie once someone drinks a Coke on
| screen? This seems like a level of ideological devotion
| that makes doing anything pretty difficult.
| SadTrombone wrote:
| Do you have any examples of a movie where someone spends
| a couple of minutes drinking Coke while talking about how
| delicious it is and why you should buy it?
| tomrod wrote:
| Flex the steelmaning and incentivize me to buy YouTube
| Premium when adblocking gives me the same functionality and I
| own the process to block.
|
| I'm happy to watch an occasional ad. Maybe 2 minutes for
| every day, curated and high quality advertisements relevant
| to everyone. No, I will not pay with my data. No, I will not
| accept interruption in flow, within or between videos.
|
| Interrupting during a video means adblocking is justified.
|
| Adding adverts to nonmonetized channels means adblocking is
| justified.
|
| It's my time. Google isn't paying for the use of my eyeballs,
| and I actively don't purchase things I see advertised via
| YouTube. I'm not alone in this; most people don't buy for
| digital ads. They already nefariously steal my data at every
| opportunity.
| stnmtn wrote:
| The main reason (imo) would be if you wanted no ads on
| Mobile without a lot of hassle, and the ability to play
| audio from youtube with your phone screen off.
| tomrod wrote:
| Ah, Newpipe!
| zamadatix wrote:
| I've never found defaulting to paying for services I
| consume in need of steelmaning but I suppose it ultimately
| comes down to how much you care about that sort of thing
| than the particular reasoning in the end. The biggest
| reason I _won 't_ pay for content is because it's harder to
| consume that way. E.g. actual Blu-Rays are often impossible
| to legally play the way you want on the devices you want,
| especially in comparison to a pirated mkv. YouTube Premium
| is extremely easy to pay for though, even for the whole
| family and all my devices. Solutions like uBlock Origin
| (which I use on many other sites) are actually harder and
| more fragmented in approach if I want to cover all the same
| usecases so, in the continued spirit of steelmaning each
| side, why should I seek to "pirate it" (for lack of a
| better term) instead?
|
| By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because
| despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded
| sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside
| skipping just ads anyways).
| tomrod wrote:
| > By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because
| despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the
| hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses
| outside skipping just ads anyways)
|
| Got it. So you are fine with adblocking; your take comes
| down to practicality.
|
| Debate aside, I appreciate your thoughtful response.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Interestingly the comment you're responding and the article
| the comment is responding do not mention ads as the problem
| being solved by de-Googling.
|
| I also think YouTube has gotten worse over time and I'd be
| happy to find a workable replacement despite being a long
| time YouTube Premium subscriber. I do use SponsorBlock though
| as I found supporting creators directly while paying YouTube
| for serving the content left still getting sponsorship ads as
| a bit ridiculous. It's a good product, just often
| intentionally shy of being great in interest of metrics
| lc5G wrote:
| I would pay for youtube if they provided an official API to
| download videos and stream videos in a client of my choice.
|
| I prefer to watch youtube with a custom player (mpv+yt-dlp on
| desktop, newpipe on android). I do not want to watch youtube
| on the youtube website or official youtube android app. The
| custom clients I am using are unofficial. They reverse
| engineer youtube to make it work. They often break when
| youtube changes something.
| riddley wrote:
| If only that were true!
|
| Like the OP I consume a ton of YouTube and despite my
| misgivings about Google, I was a long time subscriber to the
| YouTube/music combo deal until they started showing ads
| despite my subscription.
|
| It would happen a few times a week, and if I'm being
| charitable I could chalk it up to a deployment error, but it
| happened too many times for me to not get the impression that
| no one at YouTube gives a shit about subscribers.
| least wrote:
| I do pay for Youtube Premium precisely because it is
| something that I use basically every day. It's just kind of
| an opaque system where it's not really clear how much it is
| actually supporting video creators, how much of it is
| maintaining the service, and how much of it is lining
| Google's pockets.
|
| I watch quite a bit of videos by creators with very lower
| viewership and sub counts and I suspect they're not seeing a
| penny.
| fossuser wrote:
| Maybe they do pay for it? It's not obvious they don't. (edit:
| they mention they do pay for it below)
|
| I would have written a similar comment and I pay for Premium.
| I don't use any other Google service at this point, but I do
| have an account just for YouTube (I dig into the privacy
| settings to disable all the things I can).
|
| It wasn't really that hard if you use Apple for almost
| everything and Fastmail for mail.
|
| I use DuckDuckGo for search and occasional search again on
| Google, but that's becoming less relevant over time with LLMs
| (and generally reddit or youtube is the best place to search
| anyway for most things).
| violet13 wrote:
| They by and large don't. Most creators on YouTube aren't even
| eligible to monetize, especially if they're making niche
| educational content.
|
| Google just pockets all the revenue if you have fewer than
| 4,000 "public watch hours". If you put together an a concise
| 4-minute DIY video, an average view time will probably hover
| around 1 minute, and you will need 240k views to qualify.
| Most videos on YouTube get under 1k views.
|
| There is a negligibly small percentage of content creators /
| content farmers who live in a symbiotic relationship with the
| platform and actually make good money, but let's not pretend
| you're patronizing the creators when you're paying for
| YouTube Premium.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Paying won't make Shorts go away. Nor will it remove the 8
| other elements of the YouTube UI I have to block to make the
| site somewhat useable.
|
| Also I believe the payouts are split entirely by watchtime.
| Three minutes of watching an original song with a high-
| quality music video is worth more to me than 8 hours of some
| game stream or rambling video essay I happened to have on in
| the background while doing chores, but if YTP values both
| equally per minute it'll basically send no money to the
| creators who I believe bring the most value to the platform.
| There's even a like/dislike system, but there's no indication
| that it matters for Premium money. Channel memberships and
| superchats don't even remove ads, so even if I did decide to
| sub on a per-channel basis, I'd still need an ad blocker.
| jemmyw wrote:
| How should they split the money then? By time seems the
| fairest way. How else should they judge the quality? That
| music video you mentioned is likely to get more views so
| more money overall. But if the gamer stream is getting more
| views and watch time why shouldn't it get more money?
| cjk2 wrote:
| I use yt-dlp to download the videos, then play it on VLC on my
| iPad. Much nicer experience!
| qwerpy wrote:
| This is also my preferred way of consuming YouTube. In
| addition to zero ads, you get instant seek, consistently high
| bitrate, ability to watch anywhere, and no autoplay for the
| kids to get sent down an addiction spiral.
| timenova wrote:
| +1 for Nebula [0]. It's a great streaming service, and while the
| author primarily watches YouTube, and goes to Nebula
| occasionally, I do the opposite.
|
| I use it as my primary source for news (TLDR Daily), and watch
| content from creators such as RealLifeLore and Half As
| Interesting, among many others.
|
| Because of that, I rarely open YouTube, and even then I use
| SmartTube [1] on my Chromecast which gives a great experience.
|
| [0] https://nebula.tv
|
| [1] https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
| gfourfour wrote:
| I "de-reddited" with HN.
| the_af wrote:
| HN is not a replacement for Reddit in general though.
|
| Reddit is a collection of forums/communities with wildly
| varying topics. HN is just one specific forum.
|
| Some of the worst behaviors that are common in many Reddit subs
| are discouraged here in HN, and for that I'm thankful. But the
| topics aren't the same, so one cannot replace the other _in
| general_.
| gfourfour wrote:
| A farmers market has a narrower selection than a supermarket,
| but you'd be healthier in the long run only shopping at the
| farmers market than going to the grocery store and being
| bombarded by processed garbage, even if you try to stick to
| the good aisles.
|
| The problem with Reddit is that the worst of Reddit
| inevitably pollutes the best of Reddit. Better for your
| mental diet to avoid altogether.
| basch wrote:
| If the goal is to fill some time with something mildly
| educational, it replaces the dopamine/serotonin hit all the
| same.
| Animats wrote:
| Why is this hard? Since I quit offering a Chrome plug-in, my last
| connection to a Google account is gone. I should cancel my Google
| account, if and when I find the password.
|
| I post videos on Hardlimit, which uses PeerTube. I don't care
| about "discovery"; they're to illustrate blog postings elsewhere.
| So all I need is hosting and playout, which Peertube does just
| fine. (Peertube handles playout by mooching bandwidth off of
| other people using Peertube. So it can scale if many people are
| watching the same video. Permanent storage, though, is not
| distributed. It's not Bittorrent.)
|
| I've been using LibreOffice and its predecessors for decades now.
| My last purchase of a Microsoft product was Word 97. Desktop
| browser is Firefox. Mail client is Thunderbird. Backups are
| IDrive. Add blocking is the EFF's Privacy Badger, which breaks
| many ad systems while enforcing privacy.
|
| My phone uses F-Droid. It is not connected to a Google account.
| Browser is Fennec. App store is F-Droid. Search is DuckDuckGo.
|
| What's the problem?
| afavour wrote:
| > What's the problem?
|
| ...did you read the article?
|
| The author lists the Google alternatives they've been using,
| along with both the successes and the problems with those
| alternatives.
| hot_gril wrote:
| What's your email provider?
| stalfosknight wrote:
| It's not hard but many don't want to let go of YouTube or Gmail
| for some reason.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > for some reason
|
| Because nobody else has a content library to rival YT. (Gmail
| I don't know; this should be _relatively_ easy to switch.)
| kelnos wrote:
| The "problem" is that other people have different needs and
| usage patterns than you do. Acting like your experience should
| be universal is a bit weird.
| schaefer wrote:
| For me the degoogling sticking point is that I have a custom
| domain (registered through Google domains) that i use for both
| for my email addresses and my small personal home page.
|
| It would be nice to find a host that offers both hosting and
| email through a custom domain too.
| jdpedrie wrote:
| Fastmail lets you use custom domains for email and offers DNS
| and simple hosting.
|
| https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141-Ho...
|
| Not affiliated, just a longtime customer and fastmail enjoyer.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I use pair.com for that and they have served me well for many
| years.
| stvltvs wrote:
| Lots of hosting services would gladly provide webmail and web
| hosting on custom domains. I currently use Dreamhost.
| pyrophane wrote:
| To host email for your personal domain on Google don't you need
| to sign up for a business workspace plan?
| jiayo wrote:
| Google Domains was sold to squarespace. Your domain will be
| migrated soon/already has been. Check your inbox.
|
| > Your Google domain has been migrated to your Squarespace
| Domains account. You can now log in at Squarespace Domains with
| your Google account to manage your domain, example.org. This is
| part of Squarespace's acquisition of all domain registrations
| and customer accounts from Google Domains.
| jorams wrote:
| That's an odd sticking point. Domain registrars that _don 't_
| do all those things are an exception. For the vast, vast
| majority of them the primary things they do aside from
| registering domains is offering email and hosting.
| neilv wrote:
| > _OpenStreetMap-based apps like Organic Maps are great and I
| frequently use them, but I find myself using the Google Maps
| website a lot, for tasks like searching for restaurants to
| getting an estimate of how long my commute is going to take._
|
| Agreed, as someone who walks almost everywhere, Organic Maps is
| great on GrapheneOS.
|
| The only things I use Google Maps for are more rare: (1) see what
| hours a store is open, which IIUC is being worked on by OSM; (2)
| planning a trip via public transit; (3) StreetView, which is
| really an awesome feature.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| (1) in particular is something that you can easily contribute
| to fixing yourself. Organic Maps lets you edit store details
| from within the app.
|
| Personally, (2) and (3) are the ones that keep me on Google
| Maps, along with the real killer feature for me which is that I
| can just search "good {coffee,food,whatever} near me" and get a
| list of pretty good recommendations.
| jiayo wrote:
| For what it's worth, both Apple Maps and Bing Maps now have
| street-view like features, at least in my neck of the woods
| (Canada).
| colingoodman wrote:
| Just about all of Apple's alternates to Google services are
| fine in my experience. I recently switched from Proton Mail
| to Apple Mail and have been satisfied saving a few bucks a
| month there. I don't know how to evaluate Apple's claims to
| privacy though.
| kelnos wrote:
| I guess that's fine for diversifying the big corporate
| overlords you rely on, which I'll agree is an improvement
| over relying on Google for everything. But still, I wish
| there were open alternatives.
| poochkoishi728 wrote:
| Does anyone know how private ProtonMail is? I heard admittedly
| crackpot-sounding rumors that it was some sort of NSA honeypot,
| but verifying them seems like proving the existence of a divine
| being.
| balderdash wrote:
| I mean after the Crypto AG / Project rubicon came to light (let
| alone many of the disclosures since) I don't think you can rule
| it out - but at least it's unlikely your data is for sale
| /being actively used against you for commercial purposes
| jb1991 wrote:
| The problem is all the shared spreadsheets that are ubiquitous in
| many jobs and you typically need a Google account to participate
| in those.
| causal wrote:
| I appreciate that this also avoids other big tech solutions; i.e.
| MS and Apple.
| neilv wrote:
| > _I was even able to take trips through Uber's mobile website,
| which was a pleasant surprise. The location functionality did not
| work, but I believe that was due more to the browser than to Uber
| itself._
|
| I'm delighted that this works now.
|
| Of course companies like the proprietary-platform apps, in some
| ways. So it's great to see a tech company also embrace Web open
| standards as an option for users/customers.
| yaky wrote:
| Lyft's website used to work really well circa 2019, but stopped
| shortly after.
| rav3ndust wrote:
| i 'de-googled' my life quite a bit a long time ago - switched to
| an android distribution with no G services (lineageOS), moved
| from gmail to tuta, switched search engines, and like mentioned
| here, the one i can't fully leave is youtube, for the moment.
|
| i like odysee a lot as a platform, but it can't fully replace YT
| just yet for me, as a good deal of the channels i watch are still
| YT-only. i'd say my video-watching time is split maybe 80% yt,
| and 20% odysee at this point.
| yaky wrote:
| To add to your list (I made very similar choices):
|
| Standard Notes was pretty decent for acessing notes between
| multiple devices when I used it. Now that I am back on Android, I
| use Syncthing for both pictures and notes, without a cloud
| intermediary.
|
| Aegis instead of Google Authenticator. I found it the most
| straightforward, and it has backups/transfers not tied to any
| account.
|
| QKSMS instead of Google Messages. It doesn't support RCS and
| reactions come across as texts, but no issues otherwise.
|
| Fossify apps for other basic functionality.
|
| Something to keep in mind with custom ROMs and OSes is that only
| some have VoLTE support. Which, with 3G shutdown, is a must in
| the US, unless you are in a great 2G coverage zone.
| joshuaturner wrote:
| I can appreciate the hesitancy because you need an account, but
| Kagi is such a great search engine. Their incentives align much
| better with their actual users and because of that they support
| tons of customization/filtering options Google just can't (read:
| won't).
| rc_mob wrote:
| Man yeah I'm trying my best to do the same. it is so hard. I pay
| for kagi and email services.
|
| Buut yeah can one of you hackernews geniuses please create an
| alternative to youtube? The only alternatives I can find are
| crazy republican right wing websites that I have no desire to
| help or support.
| zeagle wrote:
| Nice write up. I've had a similar journey. I've been using
| Android auto on grapheneos without issues FYI. I did switch from
| nextcloud to Baikal as was using seafile for the file storage
| anyway. I gave up on protonmail and am using migadu with great
| effect. My plan was to eventually to switch to immich so perhaps
| a weekend evening project.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Duckduckgo has been my search engine for years now, never use
| google anymore.
|
| Only other search engine I use is yandex, which is very useful
| for search terms that US-hased search engines mess with the
| results of.
| bogwog wrote:
| OP and I are very similar lol. I bought a Pixel 7 Pro on eBay
| specifically so I could use Graphene (screw buying new; used is
| good for the planet and it doesn't give money to Google). So far,
| I have been loving it!
|
| Also switched to Organic Maps, but still use Google Maps for
| finding businesses/hours. Organic Maps is nice, but searching for
| directions is awful (at least in my South Florida area). Typing
| in any address tends to return results that only show the name of
| the street, and they're all identical. E.g. just a bunch of
| "Southwest 123rd Street, Florida", no house number or anything
| useful to distinguish them. Often times I'm forced to use Google
| Maps. This is currently the hardest Google service to quit for
| me.
|
| I went from DDG to Kagi, and stuck with Kagi because of the
| superior results. Luckily I got in early, and have an early
| adopter plan. It's a shame they can't offer better pricing though
| because it really is a superior service. Recently I've had some
| privacy concerns that have made me a bit skeptical of Kagi, but
| it's hard for me to go back to DDG or even Google now. It's just
| that good.
|
| For files I use Nextcloud exclusively. While it is slow and
| bloated as hell, I like it because I share the instance with
| family members, and it's easier for non-techie people to use it.
| It's also possible to mount it as a network drive using WebDAV so
| you can skip the bloated web interface. It works very well for me
| on KDE Dolphin.
|
| For email I use ProtonMail with custom domain too. They're
| overpriced and overrated, but it's too much work for me to switch
| at this point, and their app isn't that bad. I would recommend
| FastMail to anyone looking for a new email provider though.
|
| For YouTube, I use FreeTube. It's basically just a custom front
| end l. No ads, no spyware. Sure, I deprive creators of ad
| revenue, but that's a good thing. The less money they make on
| YouTube, the more likely they are to post on different services.
| I haven't heard of Nebula before, so I'll definitely be checking
| that out.
| blauditore wrote:
| Although this author seems pretty reasonable with regards to
| actual privacy (preferring self-hosted software), I find the
| popular echo chamber of "avoid Google, they steal your data"
| quite misguided.
|
| Yes, Google accumulates data and does stuff with it. But Google
| also has rigorous processes to lock down data and access to it,
| unlike virtually any small-to-medium cloud software provider.
| I've heard crazy stories like people looking up their friends'
| health insurance details for fun, just because almost everyone in
| the engineering part of that company had access to the production
| database.
|
| Plus, Google is so large that it constantly receives attention by
| public institutions, which makes it harder to pull off shady
| stuff without getting caught. If <random SME> sells your data to
| the highest bidder who will spam you with cold calls, no one's
| gonna bat an eye.
| noman-land wrote:
| Don't forget any large hoard of data is ripe for government
| abuse. It might not be a cold caller but a police department
| parallel constructing you into a crime conviction using faulty
| GPS data.
| blauditore wrote:
| Never though of it that way: With enough data, it's likely to
| find something that looks suspicious, for some definition
| thereof, even if just due to software errors. When looked at
| in isolation, this could convince people like real evidence.
|
| This would basically be the same as p-hacking.
| extr wrote:
| For me the point of de-googling is not to literally stop using
| every single Google service but to disengage enough that your
| entire online identity isn't tied to Google such that losing your
| account would be catastrophic.
|
| For example, I still have a gmail account I use for lots of
| random things, but critical bank/financial accounts go directly
| to a separate fastmail address (where I am confident I could get
| a human to help me if there was a serious account problem). I
| still use Google Docs suite, but "important" documents are stored
| locally as Word/Excel files. I still use Google Drive/Google
| Photos, but I make periodic backups to a local SSD + other online
| backup services (iCloud/OneDrive). Etc.
|
| I don't understand why you would want to "ditch every Google
| product and service". Some of them are objectively pretty great,
| or inherently have low switching costs (like Google Maps).
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| What happens if fastmail goes belly up?
| mfiro wrote:
| If you use it with domain you own, you can just point it to
| another email provider.
| varun_ch wrote:
| If you own your domain and make regular data exports/backups,
| nothing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| MX record change and you're off to the races. Tangentially,
| I'd also be interested in putting an acquisition together to
| acquire FastMail if ever in financial peril, in order for it
| to persist as a going concern and arguably, a public good
| (like Let's Encrypt).
| gessha wrote:
| What happens when Google kills Gmail?
| noman-land wrote:
| Simple. Google is in the business of collecting and monetizing
| my data and removing my privacy. I want them to have as little
| access to my life as possible.
| extr wrote:
| Day to day what does "monetizing my data and removing my
| privacy" actually mean to you? Are advertisers following you
| around town? Bothering you at work? Hounding you in the loo?
| Personally it seems like my data has been stolen from just
| about every company I've ever given it to EXCEPT for Google.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >Day to day what does "monetizing my data and removing my
| privacy" actually mean to you? Are advertisers following
| you around town? Bothering you at work? Hounding you in the
| loo?
|
| They are doing all of those things if you have your phone
| with you! Unless you manually go about disabling
| notifications, turning off gps access for all apps, etc.
| godelski wrote:
| They do all these things even if you don't. Even if you
| don't have a google account. The degree in which they do
| is higher if you do, but that doesn't remove it, it just
| lessens it.
|
| And it is worth noting that even turning off your GPS,
| you can still be followed. The very nature of how cell
| service works requires the ability to locate you, even if
| not to the same precision level (as aforementioned).
|
| There are of course trade-offs and this nature does not
| mean the tech is bad. But it does mean that we need to be
| aware of how it is used and how it can be abused. It is
| okay for mistakes to happen, but we need to fix them and
| resolve them, not ignore them or underplay them. My
| larger fear is that we live in a cluttered house and all
| these conversations end up being "well that piece of
| paper on the ground isn't that bad. That doesn't mean I'm
| messy." Because that is true. But there's a million
| instances of that and the accumulation is what creates
| the messy/cluttered house, not any singular piece of
| trash. If we can't see the forest from the trees, we're
| doomed. Because most of the problems that exist in our
| modern world are through these larger complex chains of
| coupled interactions. Where singular events are not that
| bad, but the system is.
| godelski wrote:
| > Are advertisers following you around town?
|
| Yes
|
| > Bothering you at work?
|
| Yes
|
| > Hounding you in the loo?
|
| If I'm taking a shit and open my phone. But also, sometimes
| at the urinal. I mean they put ads right in front of your
| face.
|
| > Personally it seems like my data has been stolen from
| just about every company I've ever given it to EXCEPT for
| Google.
|
| Google isn't in the business of selling ads, they are in
| the business of selling data. To make those ads more
| pervasive, targeted, and effective. A good ad goes
| unnoticed, it is often "native."
|
| But to me, I just think about it this way. If some dude was
| following me around and writing down everything I do (maybe
| no the exact content of my words, but who I talk to, when,
| where I go, etc -- metadata), I'd be fucking pissed and
| call law enforcement for stalking. Now I don't understand
| why this is okay if the dude's name is Mark, Sundar, or
| Satya. I don't care that they're really good at hiding and
| that their note taking often goes unnoticed. I think it is
| creepy and immoral behavior.
|
| And beyond that, I know what that data can do. Yes, it can
| be used to make a lot of useful things. I work in ML, data
| is POWERFUL. But a coin is a coin, and it can be spent on
| good things or bad things. Hell, there are even good ads.
| But the truth of the matter is that there are far too many
| abuses. More than I think is acceptable. I worry about
| growing abuse and the slow boiling of a frog[0]. The
| temperature (both metaphorical and literal) has risen all
| my life, I see no reason to think that it will cool down if
| we just continue business as usual. Each little instance of
| temperature rise may be small and not uncomfortable, but
| that doesn't mean that given enough time the temperature
| doesn't rise to a deadly point. I cannot stress this
| enough, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
| Evil is not (exclusively) created by evil men doing evil
| things. Evil is more often created by good men with good
| intentions. It is because the world is complex and because
| what we build and what we create takes on a life of its
| own, outside our hands, and outside what we imagined it
| could/would do. Ethan Zuckerman is not an evil man for
| creating something so universally hated, and he even
| created it with good intentions. But this is just the
| nature of the world and it means to be vigilant and
| careful. To be clear, it does not mean to stop progressing.
| But it does mean to be aware that the environment changes
| and that it is easy to get off track.
|
| It's easy to point fingers at specific people, but I think
| it is more important to recognize the complexity of
| reality. Because if that isn't considered, you just create
| a vacuum for the same evil/abuse to rise again. And again,
| often by people who have no malintent. And that's the
| issue: the world is too fucking complex and we want it to
| be simple(er) and we will often try to bend over backwards
| to make it so, because we humans were not designed for
| this. But we are capable of processing it. So, will we?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
| pawelmurias wrote:
| They are in a business of showing you ads. Showing your
| private data to someone is not in their interest.
| entropie wrote:
| > Showing your private data to someone is not in their
| interest.
|
| Showing your private data to someone is not in their
| interest _yet_
| er0k wrote:
| Is there any good alternative to google voice? It's the only
| google service I haven't been able to replace yet.
| jasonriddle wrote:
| I've been using Numberbarn.
|
| I've been liking it so far, no issues to report. However, I've
| only been using it for two months now.
|
| Also, similar to Google Voice, some businesses won't let you
| use a VOIP number for your phone number.
| Dudhbbh3343 wrote:
| I switched to jmp.chat a few months ago and have been
| impressed.
|
| You can even pay anonymously with crypto and have multiple
| numbers using a single app and billing account.
| christophilus wrote:
| I've done a decent job de-googling my life. YouTube is the only
| real holdout. That's mainly because I'm too cheap to pay for
| Spotify. I guess I should get around to remedying that.
| kelnos wrote:
| I would really love to run GrapheneOS (or some other Android OS
| that can prevent a lot of Google's built-in spying), but broken
| Android Auto, Google Pay, and a bunch of other things would be a
| complete showstopper for me.
|
| It makes me really sad that I've come to rely on a bunch of
| things that just aren't available at all through open software.
| nani8ot wrote:
| Is there no bank with their own mobile payment app where you
| live?
| mfiro wrote:
| Moving E-mail is the easiest part on this journey. For me the
| biggest reason, was the risk of being locked out of my E-mail
| accounts and reaching no (human) support.
|
| What I found the most difficult was the search engine. Although
| Google search has become worse, it's still far better than
| Duckduckgo in my opinion. I've found DDG very inaccurate for non-
| English queries.
| _kidlike wrote:
| kagi.com
|
| you're welcome :)
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Does anyone host their own email in a jurisdiction with a domain
| and VPS US Feds can't seize arbitrarily? If so, which webmail
| software do you use? Do you handle backups and/or high-
| availability?
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| This seems like an awful lot of work for little benefit. Although
| I use and pay for kagi, it's not to de-Google. It simply is a
| superior search engine which honors semi-advanced search filters
| better. However, when I want to search sholarly refernces, Google
| search reigns supreme.
|
| I guess I'm just a rube, but it never occurred to me to demand
| much 'something' (all the stuff Google provides me) for 'nothing'
| (refusal to allow use of my annonomized data). Since I bother
| setting my cookie settings on all new websites, I don't really
| get bombarded with personalized advertising anymore. That's my
| middle ground. (I also pay for YouTube Premium, so I don't see
| the ads there).
| settsu wrote:
| The impetus for my years long (i.e., lazy) effort to de-Google
| wasn't _just_ about the privacy issues but that those seemed to
| stem from an utter lack of empathy for users overall.
|
| In other words, it was recognizing an intolerable pattern of
| behavior, which seemed inevitable that it would cause me actual,
| material harm in some way eventually.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I was an Android user, looked at this mountain to climb 6 years
| ago and just decided to go with Apple. They offer email,
| calendar, etc, but don't run a business model based on ads and
| data mining. That said, I can't get away from YouTube and I still
| keep my Gmail account but only as a backup.
| hfe wrote:
| > my second issue with Kagi: privacy-wise, I simply don't believe
| that a service that requires login and thus naturally associates
| all your activity with your identity is better than a service
| which can be used without a login.
|
| I don't get this argument. Do you want to be protected from the
| services you use, or do you want a partnership based on trust?
| With aligned incentives, trust is easier. Without trust, not
| logging in won't save your privacy. Just pay the nice people
| money for the very nice service they provide, and let them build
| trust with you.
| thih9 wrote:
| Recently doing this got significantly easier for me.
|
| In the past years I had to actively work on not using too many
| Google products.
|
| Today Google products got bad that it feels like Google
| themselves are doing the discouraging.
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