I have Proton Mail, and there are Sync and Rebel as Google Drive alternatives, but when you are in the Apple ecosystem, it is so hard; nothing works so seamlessly as iCloud. And of course we are both on Substack.
Yeah, I've been on Proton for years too. iCloud is the one Apple service I'll still be paying for after this, but I am looking at alternatives to its built-in applications.
I just discovered Ecosia. They plant trees and fund green tech. For some reason, despite their green mission, their browser has an AI chat feature. Other than that, no notes so far.
I left Gmail for ProtonMail (Swiss with distributed servers throughout the world and iCloud for ProtonDrive (see above). Freemium in both cases. When Substack refused to enforce its TOS with openly fascist and racist posters, I took my little newsletter to Ghost (UK and Ireland, I think). I see the attraction of Substack and admit Ghost is not a one for one alternative, but it is progressing well toward seamless integration with the Fediverse. I search on DuckDuckGo. Google broke itself anyway, so no real loss for me.
It ain’t just the oligarchs for me. Though they are certainly enough. US threats to Canada’s sovereignty pushed me over the edge.
I am trying to get off Adobe, but haven’t found an acceptable alternative. And now I need a new phone and… well!
https://european-alternatives.eu/ is great. Help start the revolution away from the way too powerful! Even if you can't get completely out of the US tech scene, maybe some lesser companies like Mozilla with Firefox and Thunderbird.
Well I'd say that being in Canada that you would start there. 😉 But did want to provide the link in case anyone else is interested in starting the search themselves.
Yes please! The AI slop being forced on us from every direction is doing my head in - like, it's lame, and patronising, and also have none of these goons watched Terminator??!! - so any way of lessening my dependence on all these US-based, fascism-enabling platforms would be most welcome!
Look at the open source projects that already exist. Proxmox instead of VMWare or AWS, HestiaPi instead of Nest, Nextcloud instead of GDrive/GCal, Jirsi instead of Zoom, the Fediverse or Nostr instead of Meta and X, Matrix instead of Slack/Discord, and when your ready a Linux distro (e.g. PopOS!) instead of Windows or macOS. These have all existed for years and we'd love to have your support at undermining big, for-profit tech companies. We won't rug pull you, force you to pay a subscription ot decide that we're going to discontinue that product because it's not profitable enough for us.
Hello. "Right wing extremist" and software engineer here.
I've been "off US tech" for many years now for the most part, here are some tips:
The main thing you should be telling yourself through this is "I don't need it" because most of the value add from these tech companies adds surprisingly little real value and the actual good stuff can be found without them.
1) You don't need a smartphone if you live in the US. There is literally almost nothing that legitimately needs one. I discovered this after using a Pinephone running PMOS (essentially Alpine Linux) for multiple years. TOTP is an open standard, you don't need the banking app except to cash the 0.5 checks you cash annually which you can do just as well by walking in.
Not only that but the form factor adds surprisingly little, you think it does because of a number of clever psychological tricks but it's actually not very good and a net loss for most people. Just throw it out and make a clean break.
2) For phone calls there's a Canadian startup I use called "jmp.chat." It gives you all the carrier value add but over xmpp (or even email/SIP if you're willing to use their experimental email bridge.)
3) No matter what you should be self hosting as much as possible and possibly more importantly using handles you can control. I keep all of the data I create (experiments, bookmarks, PIM (contacts, appointments etc)) in git. You don't need any software beyond ssh to host git repos.
Services like easymail will host mail for you. They're well worth what they cost.
4) You should stay away from anything that does recommendations. That's mostly unhealthy.
5) If you do want a portable cellular connected computer there's a Chinese company "GPD" that makes some very good ones with optional built in cell modems. These work practically out of the box with Linux. I have the GPD Win Max 2. The modem is an Alcatel eg.(25?) similar to the one in the Pinephone. I have not gotten USB AC calls working on it but data is easy. Chatty can do SMS with modem manager if you're still ok with tying an IM account to a piece of hardware. If you really need MMS on it MMSD isn't *too* hard to set up but you'll be pulling things from obscure gitlabs and building them yourself.
Kmarble/marble-qt has come a long way and is very usable. I have both locally cached OSM maps for the state I live in and nautical charts (I do a lot of sailing as a hobby and part of the reason I have this laptop is because I was living and working from my sailboat for a while.) I bought acheap USB GPS receiver to survey some land I bought this year and that mostly "just works" as well (it's a little buggy but eventually you'll get a fix and marble will show your location, you may have to restart it.)
For driving I just keep road atlases in the car, for long road trips I take a few minutes with a highlighter to figure out where I'm going. I honestly don't think this is improved by using computers for anything other than geocoding.
I've also been experimenting with a small DIY pocket sized portable computer. I've managed to create a nice mindful "palm OS"-like experience (replacing hotsync with git and rsync) without giving up on most of the utility you get from modern Linux based systems. I'm currently working on a write up for that.
6) I'm writing an extension to time limit social media sites that you still might want to use (IMO substack notes is pretty good but you should be careful dwelling on it.) I'm talking with the artist who made the placeholder grpahics for it, as soon as I either have the rights to those or get a replacement I'll be publishing it.
7) I felt like this goes without saying but sometimes I forget how other people use computers. Avoid non-free (that is, not open source) software if you can. Richard Stallman is an open communist so of course I disagree with that but his advice on how to configure your computer is *extremely* solid. Listen to him.
8) Finally I'd recommend spooling things you're subscribed to locally via eg RSS and yt-dlp. I do this for videos, mail, and articles. It gets you out of the recommendation feedback loop without having to give up the useful information.
I think regardless of your political or other affiliations the computing model these tech companies built is unhealthy at best and probably very dangerous. Personally I got frustrated with how Apple and Google's moats constrained the use and development of the technology and eventually just got so fed up I decided I'm better off without it.
I believe the only country which developed a viable alternative tech stack is China. Everywhere else the underlying infrastructure is controlled by Silicon Valley (and the US control over the physical infrastructure). But come to think of it, China was saved by Stalin's freak advice to Mao of not replacing the Chinese script, thus giving China a keyboard and a language that work as a useful barrier to the US tech onslaught. I can't even find a good Amazon alternative in Britain (except Temu)!
The big thing China has going for it is the size of its market, but also because it rejected US pressure not to erect trade barriers on digital technology. The Great Firewall (while also a censorship tool) gave domestic firms the room to grow and improve before going international. Other countries had their competitors to Silicon Valley crushed or acquired before they could reach that stage.
Yes of course. I am from India and even though I heard one of the country's leading oligarchs speak of 'data colonialism' (first time I heard the expression), I believe the surrender of the country's tech industry was consensual. It was copy-and-catch-up innovation mostly, built around US ideas and infrastructure. I heard tech entrepreneurs complain about roman script keyboards exposing themselves to global competition and referring admiringly to China's own 'cultural firewall'. Of course, it must be one of the factors (and not the reason), but I hear the conversation in China about creating building a Tech stack chip-level upwards and I wish my Indian friends were speaking about that. But I believe the cost of switch is too much and it is impossible to achieve without public investment in Tech, but also in education and market creation.
I had the same reaction to the events in Jan and by Feb had moved all of my personal data back under my control. That experience, which has been nothing but positive, affirmed my position that most of the tech we think we need from MNCs and governments is actually already available, for free, in the public domain, it just needs to be pulled together and made easier to access by the general public. I've been working on a project since then to do just that. The vision: a million sovereign clouds run by individuals, organizations, and communities across civil society.
I checked out cryptpad, which claims it's headquarters are in France. But the French government's equivalent of a business registry turned up no results, for them.
My work requires that I maintain Canadian Data Residency for the software I use. This led me to leave Proton Mail for a Canadian alternative - Hushmail - https://secure.hushmail.com/ - which is a decent replacement. (Though perhaps Proton Mail can now offer Canadian Data Residence? I have not checked in a long time).
As mentioned by other users, I ditched google and Microsoft cloud offerings for Canadian hosted - https://www.sync.com/
and I have been using Canadian-based client management and booking software https://jane.app/ for scheduling, payment services (though I haven't checked if their partnership with their payment processor qualifies for data residency requirements yet), and video conferencing.
I am very interested to learn more of the Canadian options for my work life - as well as international options for my personal life.
Keenly interested in product and service recommendations; also trying to do this!
I have Proton Mail, and there are Sync and Rebel as Google Drive alternatives, but when you are in the Apple ecosystem, it is so hard; nothing works so seamlessly as iCloud. And of course we are both on Substack.
Yeah, I've been on Proton for years too. iCloud is the one Apple service I'll still be paying for after this, but I am looking at alternatives to its built-in applications.
+1 for proton mail, firefox/mozilla are decent browsers as well as opera and duckduckgo
I just discovered Ecosia. They plant trees and fund green tech. For some reason, despite their green mission, their browser has an AI chat feature. Other than that, no notes so far.
Why not try web3?
Bad news: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
Why bad news? The article goes in great detail and show that in fact the CEO and company are not supporting Trump.
I don't think it does, it looks very much like the CEO is on the trump train.
I left Gmail for ProtonMail (Swiss with distributed servers throughout the world and iCloud for ProtonDrive (see above). Freemium in both cases. When Substack refused to enforce its TOS with openly fascist and racist posters, I took my little newsletter to Ghost (UK and Ireland, I think). I see the attraction of Substack and admit Ghost is not a one for one alternative, but it is progressing well toward seamless integration with the Fediverse. I search on DuckDuckGo. Google broke itself anyway, so no real loss for me.
It ain’t just the oligarchs for me. Though they are certainly enough. US threats to Canada’s sovereignty pushed me over the edge.
I am trying to get off Adobe, but haven’t found an acceptable alternative. And now I need a new phone and… well!
https://european-alternatives.eu/ is great. Help start the revolution away from the way too powerful! Even if you can't get completely out of the US tech scene, maybe some lesser companies like Mozilla with Firefox and Thunderbird.
Agreed, but I’ve been looking beyond just European alternatives,
Well I'd say that being in Canada that you would start there. 😉 But did want to provide the link in case anyone else is interested in starting the search themselves.
Yes please! The AI slop being forced on us from every direction is doing my head in - like, it's lame, and patronising, and also have none of these goons watched Terminator??!! - so any way of lessening my dependence on all these US-based, fascism-enabling platforms would be most welcome!
Look at the open source projects that already exist. Proxmox instead of VMWare or AWS, HestiaPi instead of Nest, Nextcloud instead of GDrive/GCal, Jirsi instead of Zoom, the Fediverse or Nostr instead of Meta and X, Matrix instead of Slack/Discord, and when your ready a Linux distro (e.g. PopOS!) instead of Windows or macOS. These have all existed for years and we'd love to have your support at undermining big, for-profit tech companies. We won't rug pull you, force you to pay a subscription ot decide that we're going to discontinue that product because it's not profitable enough for us.
Hello. "Right wing extremist" and software engineer here.
I've been "off US tech" for many years now for the most part, here are some tips:
The main thing you should be telling yourself through this is "I don't need it" because most of the value add from these tech companies adds surprisingly little real value and the actual good stuff can be found without them.
1) You don't need a smartphone if you live in the US. There is literally almost nothing that legitimately needs one. I discovered this after using a Pinephone running PMOS (essentially Alpine Linux) for multiple years. TOTP is an open standard, you don't need the banking app except to cash the 0.5 checks you cash annually which you can do just as well by walking in.
Not only that but the form factor adds surprisingly little, you think it does because of a number of clever psychological tricks but it's actually not very good and a net loss for most people. Just throw it out and make a clean break.
2) For phone calls there's a Canadian startup I use called "jmp.chat." It gives you all the carrier value add but over xmpp (or even email/SIP if you're willing to use their experimental email bridge.)
3) No matter what you should be self hosting as much as possible and possibly more importantly using handles you can control. I keep all of the data I create (experiments, bookmarks, PIM (contacts, appointments etc)) in git. You don't need any software beyond ssh to host git repos.
Services like easymail will host mail for you. They're well worth what they cost.
4) You should stay away from anything that does recommendations. That's mostly unhealthy.
5) If you do want a portable cellular connected computer there's a Chinese company "GPD" that makes some very good ones with optional built in cell modems. These work practically out of the box with Linux. I have the GPD Win Max 2. The modem is an Alcatel eg.(25?) similar to the one in the Pinephone. I have not gotten USB AC calls working on it but data is easy. Chatty can do SMS with modem manager if you're still ok with tying an IM account to a piece of hardware. If you really need MMS on it MMSD isn't *too* hard to set up but you'll be pulling things from obscure gitlabs and building them yourself.
Kmarble/marble-qt has come a long way and is very usable. I have both locally cached OSM maps for the state I live in and nautical charts (I do a lot of sailing as a hobby and part of the reason I have this laptop is because I was living and working from my sailboat for a while.) I bought acheap USB GPS receiver to survey some land I bought this year and that mostly "just works" as well (it's a little buggy but eventually you'll get a fix and marble will show your location, you may have to restart it.)
For driving I just keep road atlases in the car, for long road trips I take a few minutes with a highlighter to figure out where I'm going. I honestly don't think this is improved by using computers for anything other than geocoding.
I've also been experimenting with a small DIY pocket sized portable computer. I've managed to create a nice mindful "palm OS"-like experience (replacing hotsync with git and rsync) without giving up on most of the utility you get from modern Linux based systems. I'm currently working on a write up for that.
6) I'm writing an extension to time limit social media sites that you still might want to use (IMO substack notes is pretty good but you should be careful dwelling on it.) I'm talking with the artist who made the placeholder grpahics for it, as soon as I either have the rights to those or get a replacement I'll be publishing it.
7) I felt like this goes without saying but sometimes I forget how other people use computers. Avoid non-free (that is, not open source) software if you can. Richard Stallman is an open communist so of course I disagree with that but his advice on how to configure your computer is *extremely* solid. Listen to him.
8) Finally I'd recommend spooling things you're subscribed to locally via eg RSS and yt-dlp. I do this for videos, mail, and articles. It gets you out of the recommendation feedback loop without having to give up the useful information.
I think regardless of your political or other affiliations the computing model these tech companies built is unhealthy at best and probably very dangerous. Personally I got frustrated with how Apple and Google's moats constrained the use and development of the technology and eventually just got so fed up I decided I'm better off without it.
System76 and Tuxedo are really solid replacements for when you are ready to abandon your MacBook, there are probably others too.
I believe the only country which developed a viable alternative tech stack is China. Everywhere else the underlying infrastructure is controlled by Silicon Valley (and the US control over the physical infrastructure). But come to think of it, China was saved by Stalin's freak advice to Mao of not replacing the Chinese script, thus giving China a keyboard and a language that work as a useful barrier to the US tech onslaught. I can't even find a good Amazon alternative in Britain (except Temu)!
The big thing China has going for it is the size of its market, but also because it rejected US pressure not to erect trade barriers on digital technology. The Great Firewall (while also a censorship tool) gave domestic firms the room to grow and improve before going international. Other countries had their competitors to Silicon Valley crushed or acquired before they could reach that stage.
Yes of course. I am from India and even though I heard one of the country's leading oligarchs speak of 'data colonialism' (first time I heard the expression), I believe the surrender of the country's tech industry was consensual. It was copy-and-catch-up innovation mostly, built around US ideas and infrastructure. I heard tech entrepreneurs complain about roman script keyboards exposing themselves to global competition and referring admiringly to China's own 'cultural firewall'. Of course, it must be one of the factors (and not the reason), but I hear the conversation in China about creating building a Tech stack chip-level upwards and I wish my Indian friends were speaking about that. But I believe the cost of switch is too much and it is impossible to achieve without public investment in Tech, but also in education and market creation.
Really looking forward to see what you have found. I would like to reduce my usage too even if I don’t get rid of everything either yet.
duckduckgo is definitely gaining on google post 'ai overview'
It doesn't fit my criteria though. It’s American.
Fuck. I'd just assumed it wasn't because it's less annoying and I'm a wide-eyed idiot. Opera it is then!
I had the same reaction to the events in Jan and by Feb had moved all of my personal data back under my control. That experience, which has been nothing but positive, affirmed my position that most of the tech we think we need from MNCs and governments is actually already available, for free, in the public domain, it just needs to be pulled together and made easier to access by the general public. I've been working on a project since then to do just that. The vision: a million sovereign clouds run by individuals, organizations, and communities across civil society.
I checked out cryptpad, which claims it's headquarters are in France. But the French government's equivalent of a business registry turned up no results, for them.
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/recherche?keyword=cryptpad
Does anyone use them?
Also: Qwant search engine quit working for me, once I posted online that I used it.
I find it useful so far. have no reason yet to think it's led from outside of France or Europe, but inquring further is reasonable.
So hilarious that the last name of this blogger is "Marx". So basically an extreme leftist complaining about right wing politics. Hardly innovative.
My work requires that I maintain Canadian Data Residency for the software I use. This led me to leave Proton Mail for a Canadian alternative - Hushmail - https://secure.hushmail.com/ - which is a decent replacement. (Though perhaps Proton Mail can now offer Canadian Data Residence? I have not checked in a long time).
As mentioned by other users, I ditched google and Microsoft cloud offerings for Canadian hosted - https://www.sync.com/
and I have been using Canadian-based client management and booking software https://jane.app/ for scheduling, payment services (though I haven't checked if their partnership with their payment processor qualifies for data residency requirements yet), and video conferencing.
I am very interested to learn more of the Canadian options for my work life - as well as international options for my personal life.
Looking forward to your recommendations. For me it's hard to finde *GOOD* alternatives to Apple Notes and Apple Photos.