Forced to use my phone during a windows update which breaks my computer. My phone is shitty and slow. Google is full of unhelpful results. Youtube is showing nothing but political ads about ms-13 killing white people.

Truly 2024 is great.

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[–] btfod@hexbear.net 42 points 3 months ago (2 children)

De-googling (FOSSifying?) my digital life has been very costly, not in money but in time, effort, and loss of convenience. I make it work for me just fine, I just wish it was easier to bring my friends and family with me.

[–] newfie@lemmy.ml 23 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Do you have any recommendations on how to effectively do this now that you've gone through it?

[–] Chronicon@hexbear.net 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

there are many guides out there that are going to be a lot more organized than asking a random user.

https://tycrek.github.io/degoogle/

https://redlib.pussthecat.org/r/degoogle/wiki/index

etc.

It really depends on your usage (which products, for what, how much, etc) and your tolerance for spending time vs money vs inconvenience.

[–] btfod@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thanks comrade

[–] Chronicon@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago

rat-salute

[–] btfod@hexbear.net 12 points 3 months ago

I endorse what Chronicon posted, those guides are good. YMMV but for me the turning point was switching to grapheneOS on mobile. I've still yet to completely detach from Google but I'm enjoying the process.

[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The one thing I'm struggling to get rid of, eventhough I hate it to high heavens, is google messages. The features I do like are great but they keep adding crap I will never use(Gemini) and I'm naturally concerned with privacy. But if everyone in your life is still on one platform, it's so hard to switch.

[–] btfod@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago

I quit using google messaging when they killed Hangouts and Voice. Sorry, wish I had a recommendation for ya. Definitely feel ya about platform woes, and this is coming from a guy who got his IRL loved ones to switch to Signal back in 2017. I wanna get my peeps on Element/Matrix but already I've run into some resistance... so it goes. Good luck comrade.

[–] alexandra_kollontai@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've never used google messages, what features from it do you like? What sets it apart?

[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The main one was the automatic spam check where it'll move percieved spam messages to another tab. Most of the time it's correct and it catches all of the political spam. I also like the rcs support too since most of my friends have iphones. Then the last thing is the Ui/UX which I like, easy to attachment pics and emojis

[–] alexandra_kollontai@hexbear.net 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. I see. I barely get any spam texts so I probably wouldn't find it useful.

[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is there anything you did to not get spam text or are you chosen? Some of the ones I get aren't even selling things, just saying "hey hows it going"

[–] alexandra_kollontai@hexbear.net 1 points 3 months ago

Aside from being careful about which companies I share my phone number with, maybe spam texts are just more prevalent in your country overall?