We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.
And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already ‘good little pets’ of these giants.
Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don’t have individual opinions.
Although the fight still continues, It’s time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It’s time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it’s almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.
PC
For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Mobile
For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.
It’s been getting ridiculous. One of the apps on my partner’s phone recently warned that they wouldn’t open with Developer options enabled.
This app is a fucking drink menu and digital punch card for a popular coffee shop, what could be done from the developer options that affects this app in any way? Especially since I only enabled developer options to speed up the godawful Android animations. Out of principal I’ve stopped going there and deleted the app.
Here’s a massive list of “Alternative Internet” software. There are some blockchain items in there, but otherwise it’s pretty extensive.
I’d have done the same, and perhaps have written them a 🌟 lovely 🌟 feedback. Not even banks and brokers do that.
I just gave it a review. They don’t seem to read the reviews, but maybe someone else will see it and agree.
Maybe they store the punch card info locally and don’t double check with any databases on their side? It sounds really dumb, but that’s the only reason I can think of
That was my thought, too. But what’s the worst that could happen in that scenario? “Oh no, that guy keeps getting free drinks.” Big whoop, you already have plenty of people actually paying for your overpriced drinks. I don’t know, it’s really dumb.
Even if they store it locally, developer mode wouldnt do anything against it, im pretty sure ZArchiver and a notepad editor is enough to do that.
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I have converted almost everyone I know in my age group, so some care. I think its mostly a lack of education issue, but trying to teach people probably gets interpreted as a bad sales pitch so I don’t push anymore. I do my thing, people see it and ask questions, slow victory
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Between X and Z, the always forgotten “Gen whY”
Don’t lose hope. I was one of the average Joe who was using facebook, insta, yt, gmail all of the proprietory shit. However as I learned about privacy I seeked alternative now I’m replying you on Lemmy! As for facebook and insta I stopped using it and using Invidious for yt. :)
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Not sharing a service, but a talk I only recently discovered, probably here. From 2011 and more current than ever.
28c3: “The coming war on general computation” by Cory Doctorow.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
will watch.
Services I Use:
- LibreX (search engine)
- CloudTube (YouTube proxy)
- PeerTube (federated YouTube alternative)
- Tutanota (mail & calendar)
- Organic Maps (maps app based around OpenStreetMap)
- Cryptee (encrypted notes)
- Matrix (chat)
- LibreOffice + Collabora Office (office suite)
- Kiwix (offline Wikipedia & other wikis)
- NetNewsWire (RSS reader, for news)
Arms of the Fediverse I Use Regularly:
- Mastodon
- Pixelfed
- Lemmy
- PeerTube
- WordPress
Dormant Arms of the Fediverse:
- Friendica
- Kbin
- Funkwhale
- WriteFreely
I have installed Linux on all four of my laptops, and I’m hoping to migrate from my iPhone to a Pixel with DivestOS as soon as I move out of my parents’ house (I’m currently 17), or sooner if possible.
I have also swapped many web apps for desktop apps, and my music collection has been based around CDs and DRM-free files since it started in 2016. In addition, I still use DVDs, VHS tapes, and (to a lesser extent) good old-fashioned Torrents for my films and TV shows.
If the internet becomes altogether too bad, there’s always Gemini. Making web apps is trickier, but entirely feasible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
I think there was also a federated social media site on Gemini, which could interact with Mastodon, but I can’t find it.
If you’re in the EU, Taiwan or US, may I suggest a Fairphone? They have open bootloaders and support re-locking. You can get a Fairphone with /e/os pre-installed on murena.com /e/os is great and Fairphone has stellar customer support.
Edit: thanks for helping me discover Kiwix. That’s awesome.
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I didn’t know they were that compatible. That’s awesome!
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Of course! I keep forgetting about Fairphone!
Bookmarked! Make a post for others to see!
If all else fails, I vote we start taking this to the people like the crazy gun nuts, the anti-vaxxers, and the crazy religious folks. Specifically the ones who aren’t as smart.
Convince them that googl€ is going to censor all the information/imagery regarding guns, Jesus, and anti-vax no matter what they say and tell them that if they want it back/to stay, they gotta pull the election riot thing that happened in Washington DC at googl€ headquarters.
If the message spreads far and quick enough, we might see them pull it off. I’d hope it works and we see them break into the headquarters and storm the place. Even if googl€ calls in the police because they get word of this happening, they won’t be able to stop a large enough crowd. In that scenario, if we’re lucky, we’d see the death of many of the traitors destroying the free web. It’s a win-win for our cause and theirs since what we would be telling them is a lie, but the people who actually go wouldn’t believe it’s a lie.
lol that’s pretty desperate… A better idea I think is let all of us privacy minded individuals from the world migrate t ONE country specifically thereby becoming a major force or even the majority of them. Then we can have like minded politicians and government that can help us protect our privacy. An island in this shit world.
What about swiss or sweden? Are they good?
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I was talking about getting those who actually fit that stereotype and not just everyone in those groups.
I’m positive you can get enough of them to believe it through clever social engineering and falsified information/files since the people I am referring to are the ones where that type of tactic works on since they tend not to do any research that disproves their beliefs and refuse to listen to anyone of a differing opinion.
America is full of unintelligent people, so it’s possible it could happen.
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Libredirect is a Firefox addon that can redirect links to more privacy friendly services. For example, clicking someone’s YouTube link will redirect you to Piped or Invidious instead.
It could be user error, but most redirects wouldn’t work for me. I slowly removed the ones that usually didn’t go through, which left me with all of them disabled so I had to remove it. But I keep my eye open for updates
I had to tinker with the settings. Most of the default instances didn’t work for me, so I had to find the ones that did and add them.
Fortunately, there is a list of suggested public instances and a feature that lets you automatically ping them so you can see which ones work and add them to your “favorite instances.”
It’s a little bit confusing because to add your favorites, you have to temporarily enable the bypass, even if you don’t want it to auto redirect all the time, so you can add and remove your favorite instances.
And some of them have been gutted due to restrictions placed by web sites, the most notorious examples of which are libreddit and teddit.
Google is so schizophrenic. I highly recommend Pixel phones. There’s a number of privacy oriented operating systems you can install that directly support Pixel phones because Google is so open with their platform.
Pixel - best privacy phone
Android - worst OS for privacy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pixel is the new age Nexus phone, meaning Google designed it with dev’s in mind. This is why you’re able to unlock the bootloader, flash a new OS and then relock it. The hardware is for sure the most secure on the market too. Android also being based off the Linux kernel means Google’s required to publish the code for it as well. These aspects are why it’s a common choice for privacy respecting OS’s. If Google wants to stand toe to toe with Apple, they have to incentivize it’s use and this is a decent approach.
It certainly feels depressing but let’s try to look on the bright side.
What we can do with FOSS is orders of magnitude more than what was possible a decade or two ago. Even geeks used Windows in the 1990s. Android is a privacy nightmare, but its forkable FOSS version is not so far upstream. For the hardware and low-level software, the open options are getting better: CoreBoot, Pinebooks, RISC-V etc. As are the services: E2E messaging, Fediverse, OSM, Wikipedia.
It’s just that we’re asking so much more of of these tools than we did before, because the internet has taken over everything. And the corporate spyware always looks slicker, and its UX is better, and it stays one step ahead, and most people don’t care and take what they’re given.
But the reality is that things have never been better, if we can accept that we will not have the cutting-edge convenience of Big Tech’s options.
And of course we have to stay on our guard over certain red lines. I’d say the most urgent red line is the web, which is the world’s de-facto open software platform. We need to defeat Google’s evil plans for it, at all costs. That one is existential, but for the rest I’m fairly optimistic.
I think it’s time to stop and think whether we really need all of those services? We’ve been slowly trapped into social networks and various unecessary services through dark patterns, and now we somehow can’t imagine being without them, even though they actively make everything worse.
What was the last time you watched a Youtube video that actually was worth the time, and wasn’t just a shallow content about something vaguely interesting, but something you’ll probably could live without? Do we really need to agregate news and articles from the whole internet, while there probably are good local newspaper/news sites that will get you up to speed, without giving you clickbait articles? For example, we have a pretty great news company that is independent and funded entierly by users, and it’s enough for keeping up to speed on world events without having to scroll through a lot of bullshit.
The more enshitificated the internet gets, the more I’m starting to realize that I really don’t need almost any of it. Sure, some things are pretty usefull, like cloud storage, but almost anything I needed so far was solved by just getting a NAS with Nextcloud. The only thing I really need the internet for is messaging and email. And if I want to stay up to date, we have amazing smaller local sites for both gaming news and for world news, and those two are enough.
The more that I think about my internet usage, the more I’m realizing that I don’t really mind its enshitification - because ever since it started happening, I’ve been just removing addictions from my life and replacing it with more niche or smaller sites that are updated less frequently, don’t stalk me, and I’ve slowly started to realize that thanks to that I can do a lot more done and don’t get trapped by scrolling through clickbaity dopamine rush made to keep me glued to a screen.
I recommend reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism . I’ve already read it several times, and never managed to get into fully implementing it. I did stop using Facebook, and reduced my Reddit usage drastically during those years, but this enshitification is only making it easier to just not using anything I really don’t need. I’m looking forward to WEI and other “You can’t do this” stuff that will come with it, because it’s exactly the trigger that will make me stop and think “Do I really need to do this? Or are there better ways how to solve this.”. And the answer is almost always “Nope”.
I don’t think individual action like changing browsers and operating systems is gonna work anymore at this point. By its very nature only a minority of nerds will do it.
We either need to build a complete alternative to the internet as we know it, or to borrow a page from our commie friends and pressure collectively for political change.
A handful of nerds taking the time and effort to switch to FOSS are not going to make a dent, we have to force them to play fair, or change the game completely.
let’s be a bit more optimistic! There may need to be a FSF/GNU-ACLU political angle to sustain individual privacy, or at least, to reign in “big tech” (in US terms, FSF + GOP for the surprise tag team whaaaaa) and the free market (1.0 defn c.o. A. Smith) says if it is better, it can be made and sold to consumers looking to purchase to beat out the inferior product.
the whole reason why people use the internet is nerds said “hey, check out this, it’s super cool”. It’s education…people may know, and not care, and that is ok. People who do care can help those would care if they only knew. Such is the way of any great idea.
The enshitification has started right when smartphones came about. I bet most of the these anti-user trends could be traced back to smart phones. and none could have been started on PCs .
Now you can’t even have a bank account if you want to use a privacy respecting device. third parties are dictating what and how to use our own devices. and its is very disgusting that masses have been sleep walking into this just for the meer satisfaction of going viral on tiktok and to have a thousand friends on Facebook and insta0
The enshitification has started right when smartphones came about.
Oh my friend, I can tell you’re young :)
The shit internet started in the mid 90’s. That’s when the internet became popular and accessible to non-computer-savvy folks. The massive commercialisation of the internet soon ensued, and ads, crappy websites, spam and all the rest soon followed.
Privacy was already dead at the turn of the millenium. Don’t take my word for it: Scott McNealy said it in 1999 and the sumbitch knew what he was talking about.
I’ve known that privacy had gone the way of the dodos since then. That’s 24 years ago. The difference now is that the fascist surveillance capitalism system we live in is now fully in place and the trap is closing on all of us who let it happen.
People are waking up to the fact that they’re in the trap and it’s closing, but I’m pretty sure too late to do anything about it peacefully at this point. It will take a full-blown dystopia for people to revolt and things to change, and it’s not gonna happen tomorrow.
As long as there is a person in the picture, there is a layer, and in that layer is the opportunity space for privacy & separation.
Ultimately, political machines need citizen metadata to justify their propaganda budgets; combined with fascism 1.0 as defined by Mussolini - the integration of state + business (corporations are people?) it makes for a world where whatever bad looks, expect it to get worse. It will be up to the next generation to see the bigger picture.
Sadly, the joke’s on the metadata generation, set theory says* elements in a set can’t influence elements outside of the set, so all this data is…useless.
We’re all human, individuals, if we were better than human we wouldn’t need metadata to understand the human condition. Since we are human, even having that metadata isn’t enough, we can’t change the way we are–we simply can’t know what we are blind to. Each one of us is a small orbit of ideas just outside a box that contains pawns and kings at the end of the game. We’ll always just be human, either laid back and chil, content to live on Mount Vernon in our old age, or Ozymandius.
Which is why most dictators resort to murder, since murder is the simplest part of us, but ultimately, that just leads to future generations reading desert pedestals.
*no it doesn’t, not really
Technically, you can: there are workarounds to use banking apps on rooted mobiles but it’s a bit of work. Or, you can purchase an older pixel and use Graphene
People using Windows and MacOS, and to some extent even Ubuntu, are using cancer. I will not speak for them.
Now, there are some things that can be done in the current situation, and a few suggestions for possibilities in the future. However, I will refrain from commenting about events which rely heavily on probability.
- As long as the relevant APIs are open to developers, “proxies” will be created, and people can enjoy relative privacy.
- Once these APIs are no longer available, it is only a matter of time before Web crawling these sites for content will no longer be possible.
- When that happens, we have to attempt to fall back towards the basis of our technologies: networking and systems (specifically, virtualisation). Technically speaking, in the worst case, you could run a VNC stream from a virtualised browser to your main computer to be able to engage with sites which utilise DRM. Run a VPN alongside said browser and companies like Google will have a fairly difficult time in tracking you (if you maintain relative privacy hygiene and understand contextual tracking by the bigger companies - using distinct, virtualised browsers should help).
I do not know much about SOCKS5 to be able to comment on how useful that would be (I don’t even use proxies because I’m never sure if they are as useful as VPNs for privacy).
Cheers
This isn’t the last stand. This is the latest stand. While this fight might seem the biggest, never forget it’s not the last we’ll have to take part in. If this fails, they’ll keep coming with some new idea later on down the road in order to deny us our right to privacy. Don’t give up. Keep giving them hell every step of the way.
As someone who always wanted to learn Tor but never took the leap; What happened to make it unusable?
CloudFlare now puts ‘protection’ on front of a ton of sites via it’s CDN. Last I checked (almost a decade ago now…) That was beginning to impact the ability of Tor users to browse the open web.
i wouldn’t say graphene or calyxOS are difficult to setup. The instructions are pretty straight forward.
Add monero to your list as people who respect privacy need money that respects privacy too.
good suggestion!
