Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps.

MellowYellow13@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• viking@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Nah. I’ll start boycotting google when there are useful alternatives. Amazon, facebook, reddit - no problem.

  Google search - fine, I can get by with DDG or Yandex. Gmail - sure, whatever. Maps? Organic Maps (and other openstreetmaps front-ends) works alright for getting your bearings, but it’s a far cry from useful for finding businesses, and terrible for navigation. Waze used to be the only viable alternative, but ever since Google bought them, it’s hard to justify a full boycott without massively inconveniencing myself.

  Same for meta as a whole. Facebook and Instagram, sure, no need. But living without whatsapp is simply impossible in some countries, where it’s the de-facto standard for communication, and even used as the only means of contact with government agencies.

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  • aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    If you disapprove of internet companies caving to authoritarian politics I have bad news for you about Yandex

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  • InterrobangBang@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    We did it with Lemmy. It CAN be done!

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    • viking@infosec.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      To an extent. Lemmy is a useful substitute for reddit because it’s anonymous, so I don’t know and to an extent don’t care who I’m talking to. With messenger services it’s a different use case, I need the exact people I want to talk to on there, or it’s essentially worthless.

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      • dukethorion@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Its not completely anonymous when the server admins have your IP.

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  • MellowYellow13@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yeah its true unfortunatey

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  • TWB0109@lemmy.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Fr, I try, but it’s really not possible to get away from these companies.

    Nobody wants signal, nobody wants mastodon, nobody wants or frankly can use openstreetmaps. Alternatives are just not good enough

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    • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Alternatives are just not good enough

      And to no fault of their own of course. They just aren’t working with the same resources as Google and the others.

      I think it’s more a question of stepping down our level of comfort at this point. Can we live without a particular service that Google provides, when there are no alternatives with feature parity? Or can we live with the fact that some of the features aren’t working as well or missing, and use the alternatives anyway?

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      • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Exactly. If there were perfectly interchangeable alternatives, there would have been a true competition and those companies wouldn’t be holding the amount of power they do today.

        Moving to alternatives requires some degree of effort and giving up on some microconforts. There’s no other way. There’s no fight without any pain. If we want to fight those companies, we must sacrifice those micro conforts, even if that means reducing tech use as a whole and doing a few things the “old fashioned” way.

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      • TWB0109@lemmy.one ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Yeah, I still find it impressive how good mastodon and lemmy are given the limitations.

        For sure, and that is possible for personal things, but for social things it’s almost impossible to live without some features.

        People don’t want to step down their level of comfort when it comes to WhatsApp (where I live people don’t use SMS because they’re limited), so you’re forced to either keep your contacts (which includes family) or move to signal/threema/session/matrix/etc. But have no one to talk to

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• LMurch@thelemmy.club ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  My phone is a Pixel on Google Fi, and I have a YouTube premium account. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me :( lol

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  • MellowYellow13@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yeah its actually insane how far Googles reach has gotten

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  • Itsapersonn@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Check out c/degoogle@lemmy.ml, they have some software recommendations for degoogling. Since you have a Pixel you should be able to install GrapheneOS, which removes a lot of Google services and is a lot more secure. I would also recommend FreeTube, which is ad-free and has the feature to download videos like YT premium. You can even import your subscriptions. Welcome to the rabbit hole of degoogling.

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• AJ1@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  it really sucks when you realise that virtually everything is a US company… and yet everything they sell is made in fucking China

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