Comment on Google forced to reveal users' search histories in Colorado court ruling

Clent@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• KISSmyOS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There are alternatives for every service they offer.

  I used to believe that, but what’s the alternative for a phone keyboard with swipe typing and speech recognition that actually works?
  Or a phone that gets reliable push messages and also works for banking?
  Cause I hate Google, but these are things I actually need in my life.

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  • techt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Understanding that you probably paraphrased for brevity, it’s hard to respond with anything helpful because only you know where the goalposts of, “actually works,” are – same thing with, “reliable push messages,” and, “works for banking.” I’ve used swipe input on the native Samsung keyboard and SwiftKey and found that they work just fine, but not as good as GBoard. If you’re going from a Google-invested product to pretty much anything else, it’s likely going to be a worse user experience, so you just have to set your expectations appropriately and keep in mind that what you’re getting in return for that is intangible but important.

    What have you tried so far, and how have they failed you with respect to the metrics you’ve stated?

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    • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Swiftkey isn’t a real option for me, it just sends my data to another one of the big 3 tech megacorporations.
      What I’ve tried:

      • Degoogled my phone with UAD and used apps that can run in the background instead of relying on Google Play Services for push. But I kept missing important messages cause push didn’t work reliably. It lead to a wild goose chase of which system apps can be disabled and which permissions revoked without losing core functions, none of which is documented properly anywhere. Location only worked outside sometimes and took 3 minutes for a fix. And it still may not even do anything for privacy because the underlying system is made by Google and could just ignore all of my settings.
      • Installed LineageOS. This solved the problems above. But my banking app refused to even launch on it.
      • Gave up, again used a debloated Android but kept Google Play Services and its dependencies intact and just used no Google account or Google apps. Now banking works, push works, location works. But Google still has unlimited root access to my device, contacts, calls, SMS, location, so really what’s the point?

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      • techt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        How feasible is it to interact with your bank or other necessary services in a browser vs using the play store app? I can see LineageOS being viable if you can make such a transition.

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  • varsock@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    for speech recognition there is “futo voice” which not only works better than Google’s speech talk-to-type by allowing the user to fluently speak, but it also works offline and doesn’t upload voice recordings anywhere.

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  • Clent@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Sounds like you’re on Android but there are still options. I am no subject matter expert but there are many who are and they are just a quick duckduckgo search away. Good luck!

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• AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is there a good alternative, maybe locally hosted, for location history?

  While I’ve recently disabled it for Google, it actually was helpful for going back in time and remembering where I was on X day, on numerous occasions. Would be cool if there was a locally hosted, open source alternative.

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  • Clent@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    liberateyourtech.com/alternatives-to-google-maps-…

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• knexcar@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If we aren’t committing any crimes, why should we care?

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  • Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good thing that laws are perfect, huh?

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  • drbluefall@toast.ooo ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

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  • CorruptBuddha@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Privacy, freedom, and corruption? Like Trump banned international travel from how many Muslim countries? The fact that that happened at all is insane. You don’t think these tools will be abused? Like the UK banned fetish porn (which has been thankfully overturned). You would be fine if say… these tools were used to monitor your sexual habits?

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  • varsock@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    if you’re not doing any weird shit at home, why have blinds in your windows?

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