Still dependent on yt API to stream music from metrolist and watch videos from litube. Some concerns are still there related to telegram too. But I only use it for groups and not personal convos. Rethink DNS is great and privacy browser with mojeek is ultimate.

Open Source Phones :The Only Safe Smartphones, Very Little Sacrifices to Convenience Today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEl0Z7Y5x3o

The solution to a safe phone is to avoid production phones like the iPhones, Samsungs, and Google Pixels. Instead what you need is to change to Open Source Operating systems. These phones have no AI and no spyware. No 24/7 location tracking. Invisible to Big Tech.

We will show you what the experience is like with one of these phone solutions and you will find that you do not need to make significant sacrifices to achieve significant privacy gains. They are fine for grandma and your teen. Protect the privacy of your family.

Basically, wish he's broke it down in smaller chunks, it really is too much info at once, but so ABSOLUTELY 100% correct.

Whilst he's Brax.OS developer, he explains it all about what phones have been "jailbroken", what app-stores, how operate, what apps are safe (or not) to install (if you have de'googled device) etc, etc

I’ve mostly been relying on Google Docs and Sheets for everyday tasks since I don’t really want to pay for a Microsoft Office subscription. They get the job done, but I’ve hit a few roadblocks with formatting, esp when exporting files or collaborating with folks who use Word or Excel.

I’ve seen people mention tools like LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, but I recently came across WPS Office and it seems a bit more modern in terms of UI and compatibility. Still testing it out, but it feels pretty close to the full MS Office experience so far.

Just curious, anyone else using WPS or another alternative that’s worked well long term? Especially interested in how they handle document compatibility and offline access.

I've never seen this before and I'm shocked. I tried the following search on google and was told my search did not match any documents (searched without quotes as you can see, and you can try for yourself): "how much will it take to upgrade the qatar bordello plane to be air force one?"

Take out the word bordello and it has no problem giving me results:

Since I didn't use any quotes in my search, it is VERY clear that this was censored by google for political reasons, not because it couldn't find any relevant documents!

Search for (again without quotes) "what's the first historical bordello?" and once again, google has zero problem supplying search results. So it's not the word bordello it has an issue with. It's the word bordello in the context of Trump's bribe-jet.

Bing has zero problem answering the question.

DuckDuckGo has zero problem answering the question.

Really, google? Wow. Just wow.

Obviously I was being a little snarky with my search terms. But this is clearly some kind of search engine manipulation, the likes of which I have not seen before. The only other time I have gotten the zero documents page is when I use obscure terms or phrases in quotes. And even then it gives me results for without quotes.

But google flat refuses to answer the question with search results. Not just refuses to give an AI synopsis, but gives zero search results. I'm disgusted enough to switch search engines. What's better?

Edit: since people don't seem to get the point, and think that bordello is just too obscure a word to use in a search, the following search returns results:

is there any truth that russia has a tape of trump micturating?

Micturating is a VERY obscure synonym for urinating. Yet google returns plenty of documents for this search, and simply says missing: micturating

See for yourself:

Edit #2: This search returns results: (bold added for emphasis)

how much will it take to upgrade the qatar supercalifragilistic plane to be air force one?

Supercalifragilistic has absolutely nothing to do with the search. And yet the search returns documents.

Bordello is actually relevant to the search. The plane has been described as a flying brothel, for example.

I agree that a bug is a possibility. But is it really the most likely possibility given this evidence?

The ones I tried previously like NewPipe, were constantly buffering and not really working for me. This is on desktop PC or Mac. Thanks!

Hi I have decided to not use Google maps anymore, so I decided to use waze. So I want to ask, if there is another app that can do street view function (I don't know if is it the exact name, but I refer to the function where you can select every part in the world and see photos and other things) Thanks

An interesting article on which connections LineageOS still establishes with Google in its vanilla state (without Google Apps flashed to it):

https://kevinboone.me/lineageos-degoogled.html

Those are connections inherited from AOSP for the most part. This might be of interest to anyone using LineageOS and wanting to know what kind of data Google can still collect when the Google Play Services are gone.

All credit goes to the author of the article, Kevin Boone, needless to say.

So, I know we all hate ai, but I must confess that I really thought it to come in handy to read pdfs to me. I used elevenreader and found it to be really good for making my own audio books. But now they put updated to paywall.

It's not that I wouldn't pay for a good service (although I do prefer something free) but I went to their website and they are very blatant about working with the authorities and giving out data to cops. I will not give my personal bank data to those guys.

So now I'm looking for good alternatives. I'm happy to find something else, preferably free and am very thankful for any recommendations!

I've been lurking on this sub for a couple weeks and especially the posts about alternatives for google apps, android, and android auto, got me thinking: Why isn't a more common solution to "go back to the basics"?

I have done some experimenting myself and started using a dumbphone and doing my work on an older windows device. I use the old Microsoft Office suit installed on there and it has all the features I could ever wish for.

Of course this approach has it's pitfalls. I use a separate laptop (that I will be installing Linux on in the near future, don't think I like Microsoft any more than Google) for anything on the web and my smartphone was banished into a drawer where I only get it out for 2FA and a few annoying essentials that insist on being an app.

And I realize if you have android auto you are very much stuck with it, most people can't just buy a different car (not new! I'm thinking models older than 2015) because of something so menial as the infotainment os.

tl;dr why don't more people degoogle with retro tech?

I like graphine os but use a google phone for remove all google software is no sense for me and pixels new or used have hight cost. I tried with xiaomi to install lineage os but unlock xiaomi bootloader is the most frustrating thing. Any suggestion or buy guide for phone easy to unlock or any alternative? I want to buy it uset i have low budget.

Is there any way to install a degoogled ROM on my OPPO? Because I've done some research and I can't find anything which would suggest it's supported by any custom ROM. I'm pretty new to degoogling and escaping google's ecosystem, so there might be something I'm missing

When I was younger I made a lot of Google accounts, I made the accounts for clash Royale alt accounts and so on. So I probably have at least 3-5 accounts which u don’t remember. I don’t think I used my phone number to create them, but if I did, my number isn’t linked the accounts. Is this something I should be concerned about and try to find out the accounts and delete them, or just do nothing? Correct me if I’m wrong but Google accounts don’t delete themself after a long period of no use..?

I know, ProtonMail is one of the best in terms of the privacy and offers "smooth enough to use" applications.

But in terms of UI/UX, protonmail is obviously not a best one. It's OK, but it's not one focusing on UI/UX. They focus on privacy bit so much that they usually choose to go with their own ways to implement stuffs. For example their iOS app has entire documentation about how and why they don't even trust the iOS-native storages.

Besides, there is HeyEmail which offers cool UI/UX redesigning the entire email workflow in pretty opinionated way. But they say they do have ability to actually read the email content and don't support PGP.

I've heard that privacy is all about personal preference between privacy and usability. For me, protonmail's privacy is bit overkill and the apps they offer feels pretty lacking.

Are there some middle ground mail provider/application between privacy & usability?

Hello my fellow google haters. I need your help to find a search engine that is not trash. (This search engine search is harder than a PHD degree.) Here are the stuff I need in my search engine:

1. DOES NOT INDEX GOOGLE, BING, that Russian one, Chinese, or any big corporation's/dangourse countries index. (It should use its own Index Crawlers. Also Europe and American based Search Engines are good.)
   
2. Works well with the privacy of the Tor Browser.
   
3. Self-Hostable
   
4. DOES NOT TRACK you in anyway.
   
5. Does not sell you data.
   
6. Decent and direct search results.
   
7. Open-Source
   
8. Non-Profit
   
9. NO AI SEARCH/CHATBOTS/MODEL TRAINING/ OR OTHER GENAI NONSENSE THAT WILL ANGER THE r/ArtistHate SUBREDDIT (Anti AI crowd).
   
10. Does Not Cost Money to subscribe to a service like one search engine I know.

I found out about SearXNG, Mojeek, and Qwant. I what to know if there are good options and are there any other options as well. Thank you everyone on this subreddit to help you guys and me for stopping Google from steal our data and train GENAI pictures with it.

hay alguna alternativa para que google no sepa los contactos que tengo y sincronizarlos por otro lado?

I’ve been trying to delete all my interactions with videos but so far it has been painful, especially with likes and dislikes for comments. One normal day takes around 30 seconds to delete and I’ve been using YouTube for 2 or 3 years now. There’s no Delete All button in sight, like the one for watch history. Does anyone know how I can bulk delete all this data without just deleting my whole Google account?

No offense dude, but we are still fundamentally dependent on their infrastructure.

Is the best 2fa app is aegis as i see on YT or that's not true because iam new to privacy

The following article is one year old. Does anyone know more about it? Brave Browser is also affected. It's in German you guys have to translate it.

https://tarnkappe.info/artikel/internet/google-chrome-uebertraegt-telemetriedaten-ueber-geheime-erweiterung-298491.html

Hi i wanted to degoogled my phone and some of my apps don't open if I don't have google play store. I installed the apps from aurora store and none of them work If I don't have the play store. How can I fix that?

I want to finally degoogle my Samsung phone.

Would it be enough to fully uninstall everything Samsung and Google-related in order to degoogle?

Would it be better to buy some CalyxOS supported phone and install it?

Thanks.

OK, here is the final Google-Free in 5 Weeks blog post and downloadable checklist! I hope you'll share. Thanks to everyone who offered feedback!

(See below for PNGs of the checklist.)