DeGoogle Yourself

Just about an hour ago, I received an email informing me that my YouTube account was terminated for violations of their "scams, spam, and deceptive content" policy. The email was long winded about how I must've uploaded something or other, or commented spammy/scammy content.

Just one problem: I have never uploaded a video in the 10 years I've had my account. I comment maybe twice a year when I actually have an answer to a question someone asked in the comments. I even paid for Premium for me and my family.

Well, guess I'm screwed because I doubt the appeal robot or whatever actually changes its mind when you submit one.

Glad I at least started deGoogling. This is a very close-to-home reminder of how dependent I am on them for their services.

Google's latest flagship smartphone raises concerns about user privacy and security. It frequently transmits private user data to the tech giant before any app is installed. Moreover, the Cybernews research team has discovered that it potentially has remote management capabilities without user awareness or approval.

Cybernews researchers analyzed the new Pixel 9 Pro XL smartphone’s web traffic, focusing on what a new smartphone sends to Google.

“Every 15 minutes, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL sends a data packet to Google. The device shares location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry. Even more concerning, the phone periodically attempts to download and run new code, potentially opening up security risks,” said Aras Nazarovas, a security researcher at Cybernews...

... “The amount of data transmitted and the potential for remote management casts doubt on who truly owns the device. Users may have paid for it, but the deep integration of surveillance systems in the ecosystem may leave users vulnerable to privacy violations,” Nazarovas said...

EDIT: For those who are too lazy to click the link, this is what it says

Hello,

Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.

Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won't work anymore.

If you are interested to install Invidious at home, we remind you that we have a guide for that here: https://docs.invidious.io/installation/..

This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.

I have updated the public instance list in order to reflect on the working public instances: https://instances.invidious.io. Please don't abuse them since the number is really low.

Feel free to discuss this politely on Matrix or IRC.

PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of ActivityPub and P2P protocols.

Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube platform because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.

If you are curious about PeerTube, I can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!

Framasoft is also involved in the development of Mobilizon, a decentralized and federated alternative to Facebook Events and Meetup.

If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:

• report bugs and give your feedback on Github or on our forums
• submit your brillant ideas on our Feedback platform
• Help to translate the software, following the contributing guide
• Make a donation to help to pay bills inbound in the development of PeerTube.

On my new phone I'm tempted to switch from LineageOS for microG to IodéOS, just for the ease of a dedicated installer. What are your experiences of pros and cons?

Bonus question, while I prefer full control of my phone, Iodé lists "uninstallable apps" as a feature(?) — what in the world are those?

Edited title for clarity

"Google uses anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology, a UK watchdog has provisionally found.

The potentially unlawful behaviour could be harming thousands of UK publishers and advertisers, an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has warned.

It accuses Google of preventing rivals from "competing on a level playing field" with its own tech for the billions of pounds spent by UK businesses on online advertising.

Google said the watchdog's findings were "flawed" and said it would respond.

According to the CMA, the vast majority of businesses use Google’s services when placing digital ads on websites.

Google maintains it has a strong business incentive to help UK firms thrive, and argues that advertisers choose to use Google because its products work well and help their businesses grow.

The watchdog will now consider representations from Google before deciding what action to take..."

Greetings! I have recently ditched google and went with privacy focused alternatives. Such as SearXNG, Invidious, Lemmy etc.

However, while i was using degoogled chromium, i cant install extensions.

Is there any way i can install extensions on Degoogled Chromium? (ik this isnt the right place to ask but eh)

Thanks a lot!

I use Google Shopping (the “Shopping” tab on Google) to see if local stores carry certain products, what they cost, how far away each store is, etc. It seems to mostly search national or large regional chains, but it was still pretty useful.

Is there any alternative to this (in the US)? The “nearby” function has unfortunately got shittier and shittier over the past year or so. It's gotten less “deterministic," just mixing results from local stores with e-commerce stores, further reducing usefulness.

Hello everyone!

Recently, I saw so many posts about this and I started to think about degoogling (degoogleing?) my life.

I've started with fdroid and found some nice apps in there and I'm curious to know some alternatives I may or may not know

• Youtube: Currently, I use ReVanced and even though is just the default app with something in it, I want an alternative with background listening, import my subscriptions w/ notifications and if possible with sponsorblock
• Mail: Using a combo or Gmail + proton. I started to use proton recently and I want to move everything there when I have time. Suggestions here?
• Cloud storage: Self hosted/proton? Alternatives
• Gallery app: Stock
• Video player: Stock
• Music player: Stock
• 2FA app: I have Authy and I tried to install aegis. I also have Ente but I've never used both
• Mail app: Using K9 and the app is awesome compared to google or Samsung Mail
• Password Manager: Bitwarden
• Weather app: Currently, using Breezy weather

If possible, apps with a nice looking UI, modern with/without Material You

I'm using a Samsung S23 and I would like to know how bad it is to change ROM with something better and if it's really worth Pixel + GrapheneOS. Thanks

Edit: I forgot the most important one with probably no alternatives (?) Thanks to @[email protected] (idk how to mention)

• Samsung pay

So I finally came across a proprietary app that has broken notification support on my degoogled phone and there don't seem to be any alternative ways (like what Telegram FOSS or Signal do) to get it working. I tried a solution called ntfy but it didn't work. So is there a way to get it working now (preferably without utilizing Firebase because Google can read it all you know)?

"Google will have to face a class action lawsuit that accuses it of collecting users’ data through Chrome without their consent. In a decision on Tuesday, a federal appeals court reversed a December 2022 ruling that dismissed the case, saying the lower court should’ve reviewed Google’s disclosures and determined “whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection.”...

I'm looking for an alternative Youtube front-end for Linux Desktop but FreeTube for example doesn't support resolutions higher than 1080p. Is there an easy to use client, that supports 1440p and higher out-of-the-box?

do they have like a Discord server, or a subreddit, or any presence on the fediverse?

EDIT: Added soft- to the title, since it was pissing people off. Maybe I'm still wrong. Idk, it's just a meme.

I'm about to degoogle my stock Android phone. For the past few years, I've used it to handle the non-open source apps that I don't want running on my main phone. As I've finally weaned off GApps, I realize that I might as well go degoogle the rom as well.

edit: to be clear, I'll be using sandboxed Play services on GOS

But since that phone is my compatibility guinea pig, is it likely I'll still run into an app that demands unmodded Android with no alternatives? In your experience, has any bank or other service required the app on regular Android, with no alternative for the desktop, browser, etc?

I'm having issues and I think it's because I ran out of credit, but for the life of me I cannot figure out where to go to pay them. I'm using cheogram

I have my respect for GrapheneOS for addressing the Play Integrity API issue.

I get spammed by them all the time but have so far resisted and stayed with my crappy, slow, and expensive ADSL provider out of principle. But the ADSL provider just raised prices on me AGAIN and it's ridiculous.

What do I do? Is Google Fiber as invasive as other Google stuff? What if I just use it to tunnel a VPN to a non-Google endpoint?

This is sure annoying. It occurs to me that Comcrap might be available here as an alternative, but that must be as evil as Google. At least the ADSL company is reasonable about privacy, as such companies go.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Hi everyone,

First of all, I know WhatsApp doesn’t belong to Google so I’m technically in the wrong community.

Still I think getting rid of Facebook is part of the same movement.

I’ve been using Threema (and Signal/SMS a little bit) for years with all my close contacts, but I can’t fully get rid of WhatsApp as I’m part of some groups where I can’t convince/force everyone to move to Threema.

Because I was still on WhatsApp, a lot of people outside of the necessary groups thought it was okay to contact me on WhatsApp.

I had looked into ways of blocking everyone except these essential groups, but I couldn’t find anything on the web.

Now I think I’ve found the solution to prevent people outside of these necessary WhatsApp groups to write to me on WhatsApp. I had never heard of it before yesterday, but you can download a WhatsApp Business app which lets you send automated answers when people are writing to you.

So I basically just created an automated answer telling people that I’m using Threema/Signal/Sms and that I won’t answer on WhatsApp. Now I don’t have to write long messages telling people to please write to me on another app (and then these people keep writing on WhatsApp of course). So now it’s make the effort or leave me alone 😅

I still plan in ditching WhatsApp for good at one point, but it seems like a good temporary solution and, since I hadn’t found anyone suggesting this idea, I thought I would share it here to help people who have the same problem.

edit 2 - READ THIS BEFORE DECIDING: https://blog.jmp.chat/b/sms-censorship edit - which client do you all prefer? I'm just using cheogram atm

I asked you all what to use to replace Google Voice, and this was the most highly recommended, and you guys were absolutely right.

it's $5 a month for unlimited text and media messaging plus 120 minutes of calls to US&CA.

the main reason I was finally jumping ship is because of how atrocious Google Voice support is. I'm a little tech naïve when it comes to things that I've never encountered before, and the jmp.chat support guys were immediately responsive, polite, and actually helpful. there was a bug where I couldn't import my contacts, and the update had been pushed to the Play Store within 4 hours.