Everytime i hear that someone has left behind the shackles of Big Tech i dream about the possibillity that things can change. Perhaps, with the current political climate, there is a chance...
I did it. I freed myself from Big Tech. Amazon, Apple, Automattic, Cloudflare (mostly), Google, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter. All out of my life.
The last big hurdle was my phone, which I fixed today by flashing Sailfish OS to a Sony Xperia 10iii. It works like a dream.
The only site I can't replace that still uses Cloudflare is my bank's website. I don't want to replace my bank, so I'll make that compromise.
But I'm done finding new alternatives and transferring accounts. I'm just...done with Big Tech. Feels great.
Everytime i hear that someone has left behind the shackles of Big Tech i dream about the possibillity that things can change. Perhaps, with the current political climate, there is a chance...
The real saving grace, I think, is that we only know how to build one kind of computer, and it's the kind that will run anything we can write for a computer. Which means that we never needed Big Tech and we never will. We'll always be able to write our own stuff.
I know that doesn't always work out in real life. Lots of people won't or can't leave Facebook, for instance, because it's the only place their rare disease group meets, or it's where all the parents at school plan parties and carpools, or it's the only way they get to see photos of their nieces or grandkids on another continent. The problem is still Facebook holding those relationships hostage, and only legislation forcing them to make our information portable will change it (if even that works).
But we can also build other things. Which is a huge advantage.
(And fun. I had this phone for 48 hours before I looked up how people make apps for it. Turns out Jolla provides an entire IDE for the purpose.)
The sad thing is, its not THAT long ago that we used to use Email for such things or IRC, Usenet and so on... at the moment i hope the whole Fediverse movement catches on and perhaps moves people away from corpos.
At least for the EU i have some hope that the current political climate is enough for a push to more open solutions (at least in the realm of social media)
Good to hear! Nothing is as bad as a f**king Google phone with stock rom. They spy on you since the first time you start the device. Good riddance.
Right? I barely wanted to boot it up long enough to make sure everything worked before I flashed it.
Friends keep asking why I chose Sailfish over GrapheneOS and I'm like "first, look at it, it's gorgeous and so easy to use, but second, this way I didn't have to buy a Google Pixel, which still has Google in the name even if I am kicking Google off the device."