DeGoogle Yourself
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A community for those that would like to get away from Google.
Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!
Rules
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Be respectful even in disagreement
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No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.
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No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.
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founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
1
Hi, all.
We've grown considerably since rebuilding the sub (see https://lemmy.ml/post/2262830). Active monthly users 150 -> 380. 3.5k -> 5.42k subs. It seems to be growing organically now, and the higher we go, the more people will stumble across it. There is always a need to get away from Google, and hopefully our community can help people with this.
If you'd like to join us to help moderate so we have folk in place as we need them, that would be awesome.
If you are interested. Please send a message about why you think you'd be good for the role, and also an example post/comment in this community previously.
Thanks,
CrypticCoffee
2
Here I will pin a list of recommendations for software. Getting started can be daunting, and it'd be great to pull that information together here for newcomers so they can take practical steps to degoogle their lives.
Disclaimer: These are recommendations by regulars here and on privacy forums. Use at own risk. We cannot due diligence on these, so if people do have issue with items in the list, please create a post and raise your concerns.
Recommendations
Browser -
- Firefox (Strongly recommend in light of WEI and Google's plan that could potentially restrict access to websites)
- Librewolf
- Brave (Not recommended, due to Google's WEI changes. Using chromium is a bad idea. I left this in case you really must)
Search
- Duck Duck Go
- Brave
- Proton mail
- Tutanota
Cloud storage
- Proton mail
Productivity Suite (Alternative to google docs)
- Libre office (Maybe not cloud based)
- Only office (for MS doc compatibility)
Degoogled Android phones
Phone OS - https://lemm.ee/post/663113
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GrapheneOS
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LineageOS (wihh or without MicroG)
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/e/OS
Android app store -
- F-droid
Messaging
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Signal
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Element (Matrix)
Maps - https://lemmy.ml/post/2211048
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Organic Maps
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OsmAnd+
SMS - https://lemmy.ml/post/2256135
Organisation
Task lists - https://lemmy.ml/post/2249613
Calendar - https://lemm.ee/post/704703
- Fossify Calendar - https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Calendar
Discussion
These items are ones either recommended multiple times or seem to have some form of consensus on them being good and privacy focussed. I will link discussion topics so people can see the logic and reasoning behind recommendation. If you are not happy with anything here, please discuss here: https://lemmy.ml/post/2262409
If you would like another item in this, please create a post discussion and we can pull it in and link to it.
3
"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..."
4
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!
![](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/56552940-fc15-4b9b-99db-367b83efd472.png)
5
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.
7
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
8
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)?
9
"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.”...
11
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?
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do they have like a Discord server, or a subreddit, or any presence on the fediverse?
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EDIT: Added soft- to the title, since it was pissing people off. Maybe I'm still wrong. Idk, it's just a meme.
![](https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/131d44be-4615-4899-911e-0192ae7a6224.jpeg)
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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?
16
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
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177
I have my respect for GrapheneOS for addressing the Play Integrity API issue.
18
39
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.
19
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.
20
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.
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Prevent the map in Immich from sending request to a somewhat shady third-party
(lemmy.pierre-couy.fr)
Cross-posted from : https://lemmy.pierre-couy.fr/post/581642
Context : Immich default map tile provider (which gets sent a bunch of PII every time you use the map feature) is a company that I see no reason to trust. This is a follow-up to this post, with the ~~permanent~~ temporary fix I came up with. I will also summarize the general opinion from the comments, as well as some interesting piece of knowledge that commenters shared.
Hacky fix
This will use Nginx proxy module to build a caching proxy in front of Open Street Map's tileserver and to serve a custom style.json
for the maps.
This works well for me, since I already proxy all my services behind a single Nginx instance. It is probably possible to achieve similar results with other reverse proxies, but this would obviously need to be adapted.
Caching proxy
Inside Nginx's http
config block (usually in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
), create a cache zone (a directory that will hold cached responses from OSM) :
http {
# You should not need to edit existing lines in the http block, only add the line below
proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx/osm levels=1:2 keys_zone=osm:100m max_size=5g inactive=180d;
}
You may need to manually create the /var/cache/nginx/osm
directory and set its owner to Nginx's user (typically www-data
on Debian based distros).
Customize the max_size
parameter to change the maximum amount of cached data you want to store on your server. The inactive
parameter will cause Nginx to discard cached data that's not been accessed in this duration (180d ~ 6months).
Then, inside the server
block that serves your Immich instance, create a new location
block :
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name immich.your-domain.tld;
# You should not need to change your existing config, only add the location block below
location /map_proxy/ {
proxy_pass https://tile.openstreetmap.org/;
proxy_cache osm;
proxy_cache_valid 180d;
proxy_ignore_headers Cache-Control Expires;
proxy_ssl_server_name on;
proxy_ssl_name tile.openstreetmap.org;
proxy_set_header Host tile.openstreetmap.org;
proxy_set_header User-Agent "Nginx Caching Tile Proxy for self-hosters";
proxy_set_header Cookie "";
proxy_set_header Referer "";
}
}
Reload Nginx (sudo systemctl reload nginx
). Confirm this works by visiting https://immich.your-domain.tld/map_proxy/0/0/0.png
, which should now return a world map PNG (the one from https://tile.openstreetmap.org/0/0/0.png )
This config ignores cache control headers from OSM and sets its own cache validity duration (proxy_cache_valid
parameter). After the specified duration, the proxy will re-fetch the tiles. 6 months seem reasonable to me for the use case, and it can probably be set to a few years without it causing issues.
Besides being lighter on OSM's servers, the caching proxy will improve privacy by only requesting tiles from upstream when loaded for the first time. This config also strips cookies and referrer before forwarding the queries to OSM, as well as set a user agent for the proxy following OSM foundation's guidelines (according to these guidelines, you should add a contact information to this user agent)
This can probably be made to work on a different domain than the one serving your Immich instance, but this probably requires to add the appropriate headers for CORS.
Custom style.json
I came up with the following mapstyle :
{
"version": 8,
"name": "Immich Map",
"sources": {
"immich-map": {
"type": "raster",
"tileSize": 256,
"tiles": [
"https://immich.your-domain.tld/map_proxy/{z}/{x}/{y}.png"
]
}
},
"sprite": "https://maputnik.github.io/osm-liberty/sprites/osm-liberty",
"glyphs": "https://fonts.openmaptiles.org/{fontstack}/{range}.pbf",
"layers": [
{
"id": "raster-tiles",
"type": "raster",
"source": "immich-map",
"minzoom": 0,
"maxzoom": 22
}
],
"id": "immich-map-dark"
}
Replace immich.your-domain.tld
with your actual Immich domain, and remember the absolute path you save this at.
One last update to nginx's config
Since Immich currently does not provide a way to manually edit style.json
, we need to serve it from http(s). Add one more location
block below the previous one :
location /map_style.json {
alias /srv/immich/mapstyle.json;
}
Replace the alias
parameter with the location where you saved the json mapstyle. After reloading nginx, your json style will be available at https://immich.your-domain.tld/map_style.json
Configure Immich to use this
For this last part, follow steps 8, 9, 10 from this guide (use the link to map_style.json
for both light and dark themes). After clearing the browser or app's cache, the map should now be loaded from your caching proxy. You can confirm this by tailing Nginx's logs while you zoom and move around the map in Immich
Summary of comments from previous post
Self-hosting a tile server is not realistic in most cases
People who have previously worked with maps seem to confirm that there are no tile server solution lightweight enough to be self hosted by hobbyists. There is maybe some hope with generating tiles on demand, but someone with deep knowledge of the file formats involved in the process should confirm this.
Some interesting links were shared, which seem to confirm this is not realistically self-hostable with the available software :
- OSM Foundation's policy on using their tile server
- Switch2OSM
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Sequentially-generate-planet-mbtiles
General sentiment about this issue
In all this part, I want to emphasize that while there seems to be a consensus, this is only based on the few comments from the previous post and may be biased by the fact that we're discussing it on a non-mainstream platform. If you disagree with anything below, please comment this post and explain your point of view.
- Nobody declared that they had noticed the requests to a third-party server before
- A non-negligible fraction of Immich users are interested in the privacy benefits over other solutions such as Google photos. These users do not like their self-hosted services to send requests to third-party servers without warning them first
- The fix should consist of the following :
- Clearly document the implications of enabling the map, and any feature that sends requests to third parties
- Disable by default features that send requests to third parties (especially if it contains any form of geolocated data)
- Provide a way to easily change the tile provider. A
select
menu with a few pre-configuredstyle.json
would be nice, along with a way to manually editstyle.json
(or at least some of its fields) directly from the Immich config page
22
45
Hi folks,
I recently migrated to GrapheneOS and am happy with all the open-source, privacy centric apps except for navigation. In my region, OSM has limited mapping data for places, businesses, and landmarks. I contribute whenever I can, but often I can't find the place I need and have to rely on someone else using Google Maps for navigation.
I tried using Google Maps in the browser, but live navigation isn't available. I used to pre-plan routes on Google Maps on my PC, get the coordinates, and input them into OSM. However, that process was very tedious.
Today, I learned that I can use the "Share Place" feature of Google Maps Web. Among the share options - I can use OsmAnd~ to directly open that place in the OsmAnd~ navigation app.
I was about to give in and install the Google Maps app, but then I stumbled upon this feature. Many of you might already know of this feature, but I didn't, and I'm really happy that such feature exists.
Nevertheless, I'd still request OSM users to keep contributing places. So that we would not even have to rely on the browser based Google Maps.
Not exactly a DeGoogle guide, but I believe it might help transitioning.
23
It doesn’t seem to support Firefox or mobile browsers, at least not.
Maps on the web is compatible with these web browsers
On your Mac or iPad
- Safari
- Edge
- Chrome
On your Windows PC
- Edge
- Chrome
25
As if you need any more reason to degoogle, consider what would happen if Google removed you from their platform tomorrow. This article some of the problems with putting all your eggs in one basket.
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