i wonder how many canadians that were sitting on the fence about de-googling are no longer sitting on that fence…
start by changing your default search, google ai overviews made it useless anyways. check out duck duck go or startpage
stop using google spyware browser (chrome and all chrome builds) and switch to firefox (or preferably a privacy focused fork, i.e. waterfox, librewolf
learn linux… quit windows
self-host your own server and run your own localized, private apps, immich instead of google photos, vaultwarden instead of password manager, jellyfin instead of netflix, etc.
Startpage is the duckduck alternative that uses google, its unknown wether they have a contract.
These places are still better then google/bing themselves but people often wrongfully assume that they provide a privacy oriented service.
If you really want to go anticorporate you can host your own searxng, which still by default uses results from google and bing but can be configured to use any on your preference and its code open to verify that they do not give exclusive permission to certain paying corporations.
Using searxng it can happen that some google result could not be retrieved because of api limits… one has to wonder why Startpage does not have those limits.
But even just getting off the main Google search page is huge. So much of this is about adopting a posture of flexibility and taking responsibility for your data to some extent, and which companies you can and can’t tolerate. So just rejecting the convenience of using Google as search is great.
Because now you don’t feel so totally helpless—you’ve got an example of exercising your agency over your “digital life” and you can keep doing it as needed/desired with greater ease.
Main thing to realise is you’re not going to find a drop-in replacement for Google that is some giant centralised search and auth platform strangely super-motivated to reduce friction between you accessing products online.
I did say there still better then the main page but i guess i should have put more emphasis on that.
I know many people irl who are are into computers and use ddg, blindly trusting that there search is fully private while there current search terms are directly used to serve them ads (somehow that does not count as personalized)
Its shades of grey, i am very happy they took agency to get rid of google but I really wish people, at least in the computer sector, where more aware of how far corporate reach goes.
qwant together with ecosia are working on establishing a fully independent search index but at this point it is really in its early days, with ficus on France and Germany.
Sure, duckduckgo dosent have their own web crawlers. Duckduckgo uses someone elses index in this case Microsofts. This dosent mean they sell your data to microsoft or that your search queries fingerprint you the same way as microsoft. They just use microsoft’s big list of websites
Yeahhhhh… I was actually just thinking about this the other day, and kinda realized that a lot of people in my dad’s generation cosplayed as lawn maintenance landscapers in their spare time, I larp sysadmin
i wonder how many canadians that were sitting on the fence about de-googling are no longer sitting on that fence…
start by changing your default search, google ai overviews made it useless anyways. check out duck duck go or startpage
stop using google spyware browser (chrome and all chrome builds) and switch to firefox (or preferably a privacy focused fork, i.e. waterfox, librewolf
learn linux… quit windows
self-host your own server and run your own localized, private apps, immich instead of google photos, vaultwarden instead of password manager, jellyfin instead of netflix, etc.
5.???
Duckduckgo is backed by microsoft/bing which they have a contract with.
Startpage is the duckduck alternative that uses google, its unknown wether they have a contract.
These places are still better then google/bing themselves but people often wrongfully assume that they provide a privacy oriented service.
If you really want to go anticorporate you can host your own searxng, which still by default uses results from google and bing but can be configured to use any on your preference and its code open to verify that they do not give exclusive permission to certain paying corporations.
Using searxng it can happen that some google result could not be retrieved because of api limits… one has to wonder why Startpage does not have those limits.
But even just getting off the main Google search page is huge. So much of this is about adopting a posture of flexibility and taking responsibility for your data to some extent, and which companies you can and can’t tolerate. So just rejecting the convenience of using Google as search is great.
Because now you don’t feel so totally helpless—you’ve got an example of exercising your agency over your “digital life” and you can keep doing it as needed/desired with greater ease.
Main thing to realise is you’re not going to find a drop-in replacement for Google that is some giant centralised search and auth platform strangely super-motivated to reduce friction between you accessing products online.
I did say there still better then the main page but i guess i should have put more emphasis on that.
I know many people irl who are are into computers and use ddg, blindly trusting that there search is fully private while there current search terms are directly used to serve them ads (somehow that does not count as personalized)
Its shades of grey, i am very happy they took agency to get rid of google but I really wish people, at least in the computer sector, where more aware of how far corporate reach goes.
qwant together with ecosia are working on establishing a fully independent search index but at this point it is really in its early days, with ficus on France and Germany.
Sure, duckduckgo dosent have their own web crawlers. Duckduckgo uses someone elses index in this case Microsofts. This dosent mean they sell your data to microsoft or that your search queries fingerprint you the same way as microsoft. They just use microsoft’s big list of websites
What do you think they provide then? DDG sits between me and Bing, the latter doesn’t get my data.
The problem is, “who wants to be a computer admin?” To which Google says, “I’ll be yours (and I’ll narc on you too for ads and IC).”
Yeahhhhh… I was actually just thinking about this the other day, and kinda realized that a lot of people in my dad’s generation cosplayed as lawn maintenance landscapers in their spare time, I larp sysadmin