I’m new to this idea and a Google girl so I’m interested in learning more. I’m not good with tech, but if it’s necessary I’ll do it as much as I can.
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Fuck their greed.
If you want a more elaborate answer, they hold too much power over users and they stopped truly innovating years ago.
They were evil back then as well but Google Now and Inbox were ways to siphon data that benefited users as well
didn’t see anyone touching on the most important part, and that is the decisions regarding our data we make now are coming to bite us in the ass five or ten years from now. our chicken brains can’t comprehend that, not really. we need a direct feedback loop: hot stove, finger, ouch - no more touching.
up until a decade or two ago, we didn’t have the concept of forever in our lives. do stupid shit in school, in uni they don’t know about it. fail at one job, the next one doesn’t know about it. say something stupid in front of a love interest, the next one’s blissfully unaware. in our current paradigm, all of them transgressions are with you, forever.
any and all corporations even adjacent to the advertising/harvesting/mining industries have lost the benefit of doubt, forever. our interaction with them is and should be adversarial from the get go. they should never be in the position to retain any meaningful data points and polluting their ingestion avenues and obscuring activity is mandatory.
edit: the AI example is touching on it.
That’s a really good point. We’ve lost control of this information
- I’m trying to be more anti-large corporation, especially those that have bent the knee to Trump.
- I want to support the people who make replacement apps/services that have a DIY ethic about them.
- I kind of like the challenge of it, because it’s not all that easy…which in my mind shows that it’s necessary.
If you don’t want to DeGoogle, that’s fine. It’s a personal decision. If you have all the facts and determine you’d rather stay doing what you’re doing, that’s fine.
I’d add to that great list also the problem of the steady enshittification of Google products. Just today, I was driving with Google Maps and suddenly it asked if I wanted to stop at a McDonald’s. I haven’t been to McD’s in twelve years, so you know how terribly useful that suggestion was.
I find that Maps is one of the most difficult ones to get rid of. There are replacements of course, but they don’t change directions based on current traffic patterns. I also find that for these replacements the routing isn’t very good over medium/long distances.
It’s not fine. If it was, then I wouldn’t degoogle.
I accept if someone wants to still support certain companies by using there products and services, but I don’t think it’s fine.
To me it’s about how invasive and all-encompassing Google tries to be, while giving little to no respect to our privacy.
I never explicitly and clearly agreed for a random company to follow me everywhere on the Internet, track me on millions of sites even outside Google itself, and be as reckless with the data as a kid, selling it left and right to whoever might concern. Neither do I think regular people would give such consent if consequences would be clearly explained, and not buried deep into ToS.
No, I do not have much to hide. But even if you don’t do anything bad, you don’t want a random stranger to constantly look into your windows when you’re at home, do you? It’s creepy at least. For me, Google is that stranger. And Meta. And Microsoft. And Apple etc.
So, making as little room for them in my life as humanly possible is my goal.
That’s an excellent point well made.
My motivations are not specific to google.
I don’t want a large part of my life and thoughts to be linked to my identity, queryable in someone else’s database.
I grew up in DDR and know that a large fraction of people gain pleasure by having control over others. That data is an important avenue for that.
You can already see that governments all over the EU are trying to gain control over it. (To keep the children safe ofcourse).
That’s a really interesting point. Would you be happy to share your experiences of DDR?
Sure, ask away!
Thanks so much! How many people actually believed in it? How prevalent was the blackmarket? And how safe did people feel?
How prevalent was the blackmarket?
Officially, everyone with the same job description had the same wages. This resulted in everyone becoming a slacker. So what eventually developed as a public secret, was that factories tolerated “theft” by the good employees.
So the person working in the canning factory brought home tins of food every month, which they would sell and/or trade. The boss could claim, and the books would show, that everyone has the same wages.
This is not limited to labour. Public administrators, for example, would be tolerated to put some people ahead of others for housing/holliday/etc, and they would ask for a fee.
It was a large, well known taboo that everyone, even party members participated in.
How many people actually believed in it? And how safe did people feel?
I can’t speak for the early days. By the time I was born everyone I knew recognized it for what it was: the state as a weaponized tool to steal from and hurt others. An in-group of people decided how much equality and solidarity you deserve. You scratch their back, they grant you their leftovers.
Lots of the stasi files on people were shredded, and are intentionally slow being reconstructed, as they hope most people will be dead before they can read their own file. But estimates are that around 1-in-3 people were informants for the stasi. These are often neighbours, aunts, coworkers, …
It was dog-eat-dog, and outside a small bubble you never fully trusted someone. Even then, no guarantees, as the schooling system (tried to) radicalize children into informing about their parents. The teacher would get benefits for each successfull “catch”.
Of course! It’s not just a black market, employers need to give incentives to work hard. And it encourages government bribes.
And yes, however noble the idea, the kind of people attracted to powerful positions often aren’t nice people.
Trusting nobody is a hard way to live. How did the DDR effect you long term?
Trusting nobody is a hard way to live. How did the DDR effect you long term?
Quite bad tbh. We managed to emigrate in 98. But the distrust in others, what can you say to who, etc stayed as a reflex that requires cognitive recognition, and therapy, to lessen. I think of it like a light version of split personality.
I get that totally. Things learned in childhood are hard to unlearn. Thanks for sharing it’s interesting and made me sure I want to start degoogling. I do NOT want to give people that power over me
My data is my data. Period. Or at least it should be.
Abuse of position as dominant provider of search engine (incl. censorship) and mobile OS.
Labour Practice.
e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_GoogleSimiliar reasons apply to Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, PayPal, X and so on since well before Trump & Co.
e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_TechAppologies for my aggressive tone. I really hate these companies / their owners and what they are doing to our society, wellbeing, and humanness. It could have turned out so much different, if not for their greed and egoism!
They help maintain the surveillance state. What more do you need?
Basically once they started being a military contractor actively implementing new AI solutions aiding Israel, the US, and more. Or, when they started doing evil instead of avoiding it.
(Please don’t @ me with all the “yeah but they did THIS AND THAT years ago… we all have our own cutoff point).
I feel there is a certain maximum amount of influence a for profit company should be allowed to grow to. They have long surpassed it.
The advertising has become the engine in every possible corner. It’s like searching billboards now, not websites. My email feeds the ads I get. My Gboard keyboard for my text messages feeds the ads I’m shown. Hell the websites I visit get advertised back to me. Google Lenovo for work reasons and a year later I’m still getting fed ads for Lenovo on other platforms that have no association with Google. It’s like the Adoring fan of Oblivion who really really wants to make me happy by offering me things he heard me mention once Every. Single. Day! Dude stop! Shut up and leave me the fuck alone.
I wish I could shove Google off a cliff.
It’s like searching billboards now, not websites
I like that phrasing, clever :)
If Google randomly decides to terminate my account for some reason and won’t tell me why or allow me to reasonably appeal, I’m screwed.
GDrive, my YouTube, my play store purchases, my Gmail going back since forever, and even all these 3rd party sites where I used “login with Google” could be instantly toasted and irrecoverable.
I became aware that this is way way too much exposure to one company and every component is linked together so if, hypothetically, I left a comment on YouTube that triggered some angsty AI ban algorithm, which led to the whole account getting zapped, I would be one sad puppy.
Better to selfhost, encrypt all, and be in control of my own destiny.
Fucking hell that’s a good point. I’d not thought of that
I started to think that about “login with Facebook” at some point too.
Exactly this. As a European I don’t feel comfortable anymore relying on any US service for essential needs. Stuff like youtube is fine, it’s just entertainment. But I cannot rely on big tech on anything that, if suddenly gone one day, would cause me any sort of actual annoyance. When you think about it the list is quite long and sneaky.
Moving away from US based/owned/managed services. But it takes times. Email and photos are the Hardest for me. Email because of all the account integrations and many accounts where you just can’t change your email address and photos as it requires all people involved in shared albums to migrate with me.
Moving email is hard indeed.
The easiest way forward is to get your own domain, it’s about 10EUR a year, but that doesn’t help retroactively.
Cause fuck ‘em, that’s why.
You god damn fucking right!
Deny the parasite profit and engagement
@CheeseToastie Spending my money in autocratic countries is like buying them the weapons they will point at me to take away my freedom.
Giving my data to them is pretty much the same as they monetize it.
I started degoogling because of Google’s more and more transparent business plan of data surveillance. I’m not comfortable with “paying with my information” because of the uncountable (and frankly unimaginable) ways that information can be applied by third parties without my knowledge.
“AI” is one example which wasn’t even on the chart when I started degoogling, but we can all be certain that Google and partners use any language sample available on Gmail and G drive to train theirs. This is the company that casually registered private WiFi networks in the course of mapping their Maps street view. They’ll harvest everything they can.
At heart, I don’t trust corporate mega-monopolies to take care of our best interests as online citizens, and as a European I’m super sceptical of becoming subject to less safe legislation (US, Chinese or whatever) that doesn’t offer me protections that I have or expect at home.
By not using Google (or Meta, or Amazon, or X) I can deliberately pick and choose individual services — or host them for myself — rather than hedge everything on the benevolence of one corporation that doesn’t give a shit about their users.
Thanks mate that’s thorough but easy to digest. God knows what emerging tech there is as well, they’ll be testing it on us
Because fuck Google and all these companies that profit on our personal data. They claim it is so they can better serve us but we are the slaves. Soon there will be matrix style jobs where yhe working class can trade their life to power the next gen AI for the elite class that the wealth gap has cultivated. They make things easy but it is time to do things the hard way. Digital revultion is upon us. Help those less capable to move off of the prying eyes of FAANG
(half extreme mode)
