I never imagined the original post would go so viral and be seen by +6M people. But I guess it shows there’s real momentum — and the perfect time to finally escape big tech’s grip.
I went through hundreds of reposts of the image and took in feedback from community comments. I’ve replaced USA-centralized apps like Brave and Bluesky with more open alternatives, and added self-hosting indicators.
As many of you recommended, I’ve also created an online version with descriptions that we can constantly update and improve.
Drop a comment if you have suggestions for a better alternative, improved description, or a feature for the site. Let’s break free together!
As with all impromptu lists, this one is pretty flawed. For example, as much as I love it, lineageOS is not useful for “digital independence” in any meaningful sense, since it’s just a more cleaned up version of android. Or PeerTube, which can’t really be considered a realistic alternative to yt. It’s fine in itself, but it’s so small and so hard to scale that you might just be better off giving up the yt format altogether. And then there’s Thunderbird. I love it but it’s a CLIENT, you’ll still need a mail provider.
LineageOS is worse than that. You can’t have it and also have local security as you cannot lock your phone bootloader with an unsigned image. You can’t protect yourself from anyone with physical access to the phone.
So the moment you get lineage anyone with physical access can install bootloader things in your phone? Eg cerberus?
Can install any software
Not to mention the fact that a bunch of banking apps won’t work on LineageOS. You can try magisk as a workaround for some, but others just won’t.
If you search about it you can lock your bootloader with LineageOS.
It’s a start, but the goal should be to have multiple options. Any monopoly can either be bought or abused and we should work towards making those as hard as possible.
While I’d generally agree, I don’t think fediverse platforms having a monopoly is as dangerous.
Social media requires a sort of monopoly to work well, I think federation is a good approach here.
Perhaps. It’s still early to tell.
IMO Gmail -> Thunderbird is a bit flawed since you’d still need a service provider. It could be Thunderbird + Posteo / others (please no ProtonMail).
Ever tried Tutanota or Disroot ?
No, I haven’t tried Tutanota because I can’t use a client I want. I decided PGP encryption is something I can do client side anyway on the rare case I want it.
What is wrong with Protonmail?
They support ✨nazis✨
They do?
Let me give you a more precise info; The CEO is a Trump supporter & the Compsny doubled-down
Of course it didn’t impact the product, but still why would Trump “Stand up for the little guys”
My answer was precise, yours just added fluff.
Trump is a Nazi and proton did express support. Therefore they support nazis. This isn’t complex math.
Yes
No they don’t. Their CEO is an idiot and said that Republicans are the party of small business and did so on the official Proton social media channels. But it clearly is their opinion and they never said they support Republicans and Trump on anything else.
“CEO” is the company, we are still in a capitalist society. The board would also count but we can very safely assume they’re agreeing.
Ok Nazi apologist
👍
Droidify is just a bloated wrapper for F-Droid
- Session
- Signal
- GPG2
- VLC
- Tuta
- OpenKeychain
- KeePassXC
- NetGuard
- Mullvad
- Ironfox
- BLE Radar
- Transmission
- Obfuscate
- Monero/Haveno
I mean WhatsApp is already E2E encrypted. Meta doesn’t make money off WhatsApp (only WhatsApp business). Any IM service that’s big in MAU (monthly active users) costs big money in server traffic. Me using WhatsApp costs Zuck money. In return the only data he can sell is about my metadata (i.e. how often I contact someone etc). For normal usage I think WhatsApp is more than ok. However if you’re worried about govt snooping cuz you’re a journalist or some such then yeah, switch to Session.
I ain’t touching anything MZ. I don’t really care about money beyond what it says about the subject in hand but either way…
I’m paranoid by practice. I do not and should not need a reason. I personally engage in paranoia for the development of the skill. I did this way back in the day when everyone thought the act generating “fear” of “spying” was undoable anyway by “them.” Now, today, you’re either entirely ignorant or you know it’s probably doing “observation” you don’t even know about yet.
So control what they can see best or else you’re just an NPC.
I don’t think piracy is a proper alternative to paying for commercial content.
Free content is.
So it shouldn’t be on this chart IMO. It’s a separate topic. It’s not a good look to lump piracy in with open/free software ideology.
Hello, very nice guide:)
I’d just like to bring to your attention, a very thorough comparison of messengers you might want to check😄
OpenSUSE Linux from Nuremberg!
Where can I find the best Android alternative for my old-ass devices that don’t support Lineage OS?
For most of those devices, it depends what your goals are, but many privacy minded folks consider them unsalvageable.
If you can root the device, you could install the latest compatible version of the Android Open Source Project, and then use your newfound root powers to disable components you don’t want, to the extent that the older versions of Android support doing so.
Technically, that’s all LineageOS is doing for you. So if you’re willing to put the effort in, the device can be salvaged. For most of us, it makes more sense to get a newer device, researching what OS-es are supported.
Total noob here, can stremio be used to escape big tech legally?
Not really, but big tech breaks the laws all the time so why shouldn’t you?
It’s not a moral thing, I just don’t have the luxury of evading the law like big tech
VPNs make it easy and affordable but yeah, if the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for you that’s understandable. There is a bit of setup/maintenance as well that can get sort of complicated.
Nice, but highlighting a particular Linux distro might not be great. I see the point in minimizing amount of choices, but many people may not like default Mint experience.
I agree. At least suggest both Mint and Ubuntu. I recently started using Linux just a couple of weeks ago. Started with Mint and I hated it! Then I moved on to Ubuntu and it’s way better for my taste.
For me it was Manjaro that helped me switch over, and now I’m on Fedora. Didn’t like Mint either.
Ok Zorin then
Also controversial. Just leave Linux, and it would be useful to have a page outlining major newbie distros
Zorin, LinuxMint & PopOS are newbie-distros
Or would you rather have OpenSUSE ?
All are fine. Also, Manjaro if you’re feeling adventurous.
It’s debatable, there’s no perfect answer. As a dev I am always on arch and never tried once mint. Every opinions I read the last 5 years says that mint is solid and very friendly to windows users. I can live with such a recommendation in a cheat sheet for unaware people.
Any European email provider who provides free tier and allows more than one personal account, just like Gmail? No problem for me if the amount of free storage is low.
Its a bit odd to suggest Nextcloud for Google Drive but then leave it off the replacement list for photos and Docs. Use the Memories App in Nextcloud ans add Collabora and you have those features in Nextcloud too. News app = Google Reader, RePod+AntennaPod = Google Podcasts, Nextcloud Talk instead of Google Meet and Zoom. (just add cloud hosted stun/tun server for performance video chat when hosting from home.)
I didn’t want to mention this on Reddit because there’s many more people there, but are you guys aware of P-Stream?
It actually replaces Netflix. The legality of the service is… Questionable, at best, however.
What was the original post? I could not find anything on your profile.
