We’re reaching the end of an era wherein billions of dollars of investor money was shovelled into tech startups to build large user-bases, and now those companies (now monoliths) are beginning to constrict their user-bases and squeeze for every single penny they can possibly extract. Fair or not.
Now more than ever, it’s important for us to step back and reconsider whether we want to be billboards for these companies anymore.
For anyone unfamiliar, some good resources to have when starting your degoogling journey are below:
Privacy Guides - A list of privacy-respecting services you can use.
Plexus - A crowdsourced information bank of service compatibility with degoogled devices.
This random PDF - A study from 2018 detailing data that Google tracks about its’ users.
I degoogled by switching to an iPhone 😅 DuckDuckGo is my default search engine.
That is a sacrifice I’m not willing to make. Yikes!
I’d argue that Apple is the lesser evil when it comes to privacy 😁
Apple is the greater evil in a lot of other ways, though.
Want to publish software for iOS? You must agree to about 150 pages of extremely restrictive terms and conditions, one of which is that Apple reserves the right to remove your app at any time for any or no reason, and it frequently exercises that right.
Want to sideload an open-source app? Denied.
Want to block ads on the web? Not happening.
Want to use a browser other than Safari? Negative.
Want to take nude selfies without some Apple employee looking at them? No can do.
Want to see the operating system’s source code? Trade secret. Take a hike.
Apple is not your friend. Apple is all kinds of toxic.