If you like democracy and human rights, then you must stay away from google because of the huge power that company has, power that is outside the reach of any democratic institution. Google's power is not used to benefit people, instead it is used to increase Google's profits and power even further.

Oh and if you are a google user, then don't blame anyone else -- you are the problem! You need to change.

3/?

If you share links to youtube videos, stop doing that right now! There are alternatives, see #PeerTube

If you use gmail, switch to another service right now!

If you use an android phone, throw that away and help build #MobileLinux instead. As long as you are using android, you are helping google preserve its dangerous near-monopoly.

4/?

If you tell people to "just search for it" instead of giving them a link, you need to change that too: you are effectively giving google the power to decide what people will find.

Oh and one more thing: when you leave google, make sure to not end up in the claws of another of the giants that are no better, like Apple or Microsoft. They are equally bad.

Be free! Do not let google own you, and do not help google own others around you.

5/5

@eliasr
I'd like to say it all doesn't have to be everything all at once too. Stepping into FOSS can require learning curves which can be a big scary thing to someone used to having "domesticated tech." Take it all one good chunk at a time, start with "switch to firefox/join a peertube" work up to "degoogle my mobile OS" or " install or join a NextCloud server."

Great part about the fedi is its full of folks that can provide input and information along the way.

@DavBot

> it all doesn't have to be
> everything all at once too

Agreed, as long as people don't think they're done because they took one little step. In that case: well done, good step, now think about the next step!

@eliasr
Indeed. I think we are approaching the time where we will soon no longer have the option to uncheck private and spooky things when it comes to operating systems. I hope if more folks push forward into FOSS systems, applications, and platforms that more folks will find easier entry into operating and hosting their own data.

@DavBot I think there is hope, not least because of the strong support for human rights, so strong that pretty much everyone signed a UN declaration about it a long time ago. That includes the right to private communication, for example.

That was a long time ago, since then the "digital" things crept up on us and most people have not yet understood that the struggle for FOSS is fundamentally the same as the one for human rights. But I think they will see it, eventually.

@eliasr I agree with you on all points.

Regarding android, I'm curious: what do you think about the Replicant project? On the one hand it's supposed to bring freedom, but on the other hand would its existence help android itself stay strong? Would it help g**gle in any way?

@cosmin about Replicant and other "de-googled" android variants, while I respect the effort to try to make something free from google, I think the resources and effort spent on those would be better spent building something that is meant to be free from the beginning, instead of taking what google made and trying to strip away the bad parts.

1/2

@cosmin For those projects, it is still google that makes the important decisions about future versions and so on. Google leads and they follow. They cannot really say that they are independent from google.

I think the FOSS world should build what we want according to our needs, where freedom and power for the user is the core principle. We should not need to care about what google thinks, and whatever google's business decisions are, that should be irrelevant for us.

2/2

@eliasr Yes, there are some alternatives, but mostly they are also not daily use ready, like a Linux based mobile phone. And the system alone is not as much important as the applications base for it. Which is also a biggest weakness of the every of such projects. This issue needs to be properly solved by the every such system developers. Without that it will be only another fancy, niche thing and most of the average people won't even use it.

@MartinBe @eliasr Good point! Add to this that 90% of the standard users does not care and most of them does even know about the whole open/closed source topic. Anything such people cares is that the device they buy simply works, apps are available and functional. And that's it, that's all they care about. Okay, and also the device end-price is important to them. Nothing literally else. Such a time we have now. Devise must be simple, usable, cheap for the masses.

@eliasr if a company has a monopoly, it doesn't make sense to ask people to boycott

@jake2 thanks for commenting but I don't understand what you mean. Would you like to elaborate?

@eliasr by definition, if there is a monopoly, there is no alternative product to use.

@jake2 but it can still make sense to tell people to boycott.

Example: let's say a mafia organization has a monopoly on selling drugs in my city. If I go around telling people in that city to boycott (i.e. to stop taking drugs), does that not make sense?

@eliasr no, it wouldn't, that would show a complete misunderstanding of how addiction works