DeGoogle Yourself

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A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

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Finally deleted all my big tech accounts! (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by starshadow@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

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After 6 months of painstakingly moving all my accounts from gmail to tuta, I finally deleted my google account today! No more google, meta, or apple in my life. Its crazy how much my relationship with technology has already changed. Deleting Spotify was probably the biggest change so far. Its insane how my music taste has expanded. I was so afraid of discovering less music without Spotify, but the opposite has happened. Before I had a relationship with the algorithm. Now I find music organically, looking through peoples bandcamp purchases, SoundCloud likes, and soulseek folders. I've found myself listening to albums much more and developing relationships with artists and their work rather than the algorithm! Music is everything to me, but I didn't realize how dedicating time to managing a digital library and purposefully seeking new music would transform my relationship with it. It feels like one of respect and reciprocity rather than overwhelming scrolling and recommendations and feeling like I'm in a pigeonhole.

I'm excited to see how getting rid of Instagram and the YouTube algorithm will effect my psychology. I defiantly have an addiction to the numbing that these algorithms provide. I'm sure I will replace these numbing agents with other forms of distraction, but I'm hoping they'll be at least a little less toxic. I've been reading the arch wiki a lot and thinking about picking up a new hobby...

How has this process been like for y'all? How has it impacted your life and the way you see the world?

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[–] yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

hardest part for me is services like google's "find my phone" or google maps. If I need to quickly find a business, osmand or organic maps tend to fail, or default to finding a region of a street, instead of a single address for some odd reason.

Good on you though, I'll be in the same boat by year end, if I find proper solutions

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maps has been hard. If CoMaps had better business info (just basic stuff, not even pics) and could suggest alternate routes (not based on traffic, just like 2-3 options with roughly the same ETA) I think I'd use it way more.

[–] starshadow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Yes! Same, the routes thing makes it hard in a city with traffic! I'm haply to use something like gmaps wv for finding which route is best, but then there's no way to choose a different route in comaps!

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I was using Google Maps every once in a while, not for directions, but just to find out how long it would take me to get from one place to another. And then they decided to nuke the website so that you couldn't even do that without downloading the app. And so I rediscovered that MapQuest exists. So maybe you might take a look at that.

Also, I found that OpenStreetMaps does not do particularly well with addresses, so what I do is use a website like gps-coordinates.net to convert the street address I want to go to into GPS coordinates and then paste that into OSM, works great

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago

If you're in an area where OSM doesn't have address data then you can always add the missing data yourself using something like Street Complete