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Show HN: Ethical Resources – 300 ethical alternatives to mainstream stuff
- dgellow 8y agoHow is ethical defined here? I cannot see a definition and I don't see what is the common denominator between all those tools. For example why isn't Telegram considered ethical but Signal and Wire are? What is unethical about Word or Excel (given that OpenOffice is mentioned as an alternative), is it the ownership by Microsoft? Or the use of proprietary format in the past? What is more ethical about Steemit or Mastodon than Twitter? I would understand if the focus was on privacy and taking back some control/ownership, but that's not really something I would consider to be an ethical argument.
- nkozyra 8y ago> How is ethical defined here? Yeah, I'm not sure I follow this at all. Is it just being open source or not (directly) run by a huge company?
- prolikewhoa 8y agoWage slavery and closed source code while companies invest in surveillance technology to work with an over-reaching government while also buying out US government to form an oligarchy is what isn't ethical about closed source products from large corporatioms.
- jmull 8y agoIf that's the criteria it should be included fairly prominently on the site -- so visitors can understand and choose whether or not to use and contribute to the site.
- mcv 8y agoI assume it's a mix of: open source > proprietary based in jurisdiction that respects freedom and privacy > based in authoritarian country empowering users > empowering corporations and governments privacy > no or compromised privacy powered by green energy > powered by coal recycling > no recycling paid by users > paid by targeted ads based on analysis of your behaviour
- UncleMeat 8y agoBut what if I don't want those things? I have never once personally edited the code in libreoffice. Open source isn't necessarily better than closed. Monetization models are even less clear. What if I'd prefer to not pay with cash?
- m12k 8y agoThen this page is not for you. If you think a lot of people would prefer your definition of ethical products over the one OP linked, then feel free to make a competing page.
- sbuk 8y agoHow exactly does this kind of snark help change opinion? Open Source is wonderful. I’m not a developer, but I use it and contribute in ways that I can. These sorts of replies fill me with rage! Replies like this categorically do not help further the cause. The GP of the whole thread has a point; whose ethics? The post is about a website declaring that some software is more “ethical” than others. They offer no real criterion as to what constitutes “ethical”. The burden of proof lies with the publishers and those that fully support the notion. “Go away” neither helps or positively affects others views.
- mcv 8y ago> whose ethics? But is that not clear? The ethics of the person who made that list. You may not agree with it, and that's fine, but it's still useful to people who do agree with these ethics, or even with just some of them. I do agree it'd be better if they offered some explanation about the basis of their selection, which would make it easier for people to determine if they agree with it or not, and it would certainly form a better starting point to discuss these ethics and suggest improvements. That they didn't include that explanation is absolutely very valid criticism. But ultimately, if you don't agree with it, then this selection is not going to be relevant for you, is it?
- jmkd 8y agoWhile we should certainly take care about the definition of ethical here, this remains a great list of 'alternatives to mainstream stuff' that mainstream users should be made more aware of. I'm interested in this topic and still only aware of about 15% of this list.
- Thomashuet 8y agoFrom their home page: > What do we mean by ethical? > We know that “ethical” isn’t an objective word — it can mean different things to different people. > But for us, ethical means moving in the direction of least possible harm against other people, animals and the planet.
- thecopy 8y agoThis just moves the definition into the definition of "harm against other people, animals and the planet"
- cblades 8y agoThat's a useless definition when it comes to software and software services. It's easy to think of good arguments for Twitter being ethical and unethical.
- ekianjo 8y ago> But for us, ethical means moving in the direction of least possible harm against other people, animals and the planet. Something that benefits humans is usually not good for the planet or for animals :-) It basically means nothing and everything.
- mancuso5 8y agoThe most basic ethical thing to do is simply being nice. Is that a popular thing on HN? :)
- mancuso5 8y agoGreat points! Short answer: it's an imperfect mix of open source, privacy centered, indie projects vs proprietary, mainstream corporations, VC funded etc. Hope that you and others interested in this topic will get involved with criticism ans suggestions here on on our forum in order to improve the list, devise a clearer "checklist" for listings, submit more stuff, etc: https://community.ethical.net/t/suggestions-for-our-ethical-resources-directory/105 https://community.ethical.net/t/suggestions-for-our-ethical-...
- cblades 8y agoYou shouldn't use the term "ethical" without very clearly defining your definition of ethical upfront. If someone proposes to me that murder isn't ethical, I can more-or-less get on board with that without a bunch of defining and qualifying. You're talking about software though. To suggest that Open Office is ethically superior to MS Office is not at all self-evident or the general consensus of most people. It comes off as you being oblivious or close-minded to competing ideas of ethics, which doesn't lend credibility to your use of the term.
- mancuso5 8y agoThanks for taking time to contribute to the cause :)
- cblades 8y agoAlso, taking a snarky, passive-agressive tone to people making legitimate criticisms makes me not trust the list at all. By saying "this is ethical, that is not", you are assuming a position that must be defended. edit: I am contributing to the cause. Ethics is necessarily a conversation. By minimizing and handwaving away the part of ethical decision making that actually matters, you're doing more harm than good. We don't need users to blindly use services somebody has slapped the "ethical" label on, we need to inspire users to bring ethics into their decision making process when choosing software services.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
- nothis 8y agoHow would you define "ethical" in a way that covers Word, Chrome, Twitter and Dropbox?
- veridies 8y agoCreating tools that allow for rapid, powerful global conversation and collaboration by people of all technological skill levels.
- rootusrootus 8y agoIt would certainly be a more useful list to me if each choice was accompanied by a quick rundown of what factors make it the 'ethical' choice.
- everdev 8y agoThere are short descriptions below each service that explain just that.
- everdev 8y ago> But for us, ethical means moving in the direction of least possible harm against other people, animals and the planet.
- trpc 8y agoMany projects like this one turned out to be paid by companies like DuckDuckGo and Brave to promote their products, look at their aggressive cheap way of advertising and you will understand
- rdiddly 8y agoIt's funny how your comment answers all your own questions. You seem to be extracting the ethics of this list just fine.
- alien1993 8y agoSome categories show a blank page, selecting the category all works fine though.
- neilv 8y ago`ethical.net` is running a few third-party trackers (which I can't find on its own list of purportedly ethical resources).
- kn8 8y agoBecause there's a barrier to entry with some of these "less ethical" tools, especially analytics, hard to compete with free or having to self host. We can/need to do better?
- chmod775 8y agoMatomo (formerly Piwik) is an Analytics solution under the GNU GPL. Website: https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/ GitHub: https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo Demo: https://demo.matomo.org/ https://demo.matomo.org/ You can both self-host or use their managed service. They are absolutely competitive with Google Analytics.
- chmod775 8y agoGoogle Analytics is not free. You are selling out the privacy of your users so you can save ten bucks on analytics.
- rkbhochalya 8y agoWe are using a self hosted analytics service which do not track any personal data and respects DNT signal from browser. Other than that we don't use any tracking script/method.
- cblades 8y agoCan you provide a justification for using any user-centric analytics at all past gross-request counts?
- jedimastert 8y agoUsing which page led you to another can tell you a lot about how well the UI works.
- mruts 8y agoI don't like this idea, just like I don't like the idea of ESG ETFs and whatnot. It presupposes what is ethical and what is not, despite the obvious personal nature of the problem. The 300 "ethical" alternatives are just things the OP thinks are ethical and it seems unlikely to me that such a personal list of stuff is applicable to really anyone else besides himself. Or maybe it is, but just not to me. Or maybe it should be renamed to "Progressive alternatives to mainstream stuff."
- toastking 8y agoYeah it would be more apt to say the list is "open source, environmentally conscious software".
- imode 8y agoBlank page with uBlock Origin.
- rkbhochalya 8y agoIt should be working now.
- carnagii 8y agoBlank page with ad-block plus.
- mancuso5 8y agoOn it. I am on Chrome with ABP and I don't get this issue. Which browser are you using?
- smbullet 8y agoHmm, Chrome doesn't appear to be on the list of ethically approved browsers :P
- rkbhochalya 8y agoHey, I can replicate it in Firefox with Adblock Plus extension. Looks like there is a bug in the extension as we do not serve ads and the page is working well in Chrome with both Adblock and Adblock Plus extensions enabled.
- return0 8y agoYou and whose ethics?
- mancuso5 8y agohttps://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-05/10/0/enhanced/webdr15/anigif_original-grid-image-15987-1462855332-1.gif https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-05/10/0...
- rkbhochalya 8y agoUpdate: Adblock Plus was hiding body element as it had "headersocial" class. I have fixed the issue and the site is accessible with Adblock Plus on Firefox now.
- fheld 8y agomastodon on list, twitter in footer
- mancuso5 8y agoAs others have mentioned here, there's a strong barrier to entry for most of things, including Mastodon :) We're still figuring things out, and that's totally OK: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- krupan 8y agoSome of these services claim no adds, chronological timeline, etc., but that was Facebook and Twitter in the early days too. How do we know these services will remain add free?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago*Ad free, and you don't; that's why thanks to EU legislation and GDPR protections, you as a consumer have the option to always request them to send you all your data, and to have your account removed when you no longer want to make use of their services. They are also required (I believe?) to inform you of any changes in the terms and conditions, privacy policy, etc that you have agreed to. So there is a lot of legal protection you are entitled to, however you have to do your own due diligence - read the privacy policy, read its updates, double check the data extraction once in a while.
- freehunter 8y ago"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". One part of a company being ethical is them letting you pick up and move out in the event that they do start showing negative behavior.
- mlcdf 8y agoThe answer is pretty simple: we must pay for those services.
- 7u8Cpa2B 8y agoI am not sure how ethics is defined here. In fact, I can totally see how some of these options can be considered unethical. Before we proceed, recall that Facebook is now a "morally bankrupt liars" because it "enabled genocide", "facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions", "allow the live streaming of suicides, rape, and murders", and "host and publish the mosque attack video". Let's compare this with one of the ethical browsers listed here -- Tor. Tor allowed Silk Road, which allowed dangerous drugs and fake IDs to be sold, and other sites that hosted child abuse and pornography content. But privacy! Well, how about PeerTube? Interestingly, PeerTube "viewers don't have privacy" as it exposes the IPs of all viewers. Imagine if YouTube or Facebook does this. So what gives?
- mancuso5 8y agoHey, thanks for stopping by. So better not bother even thinking about ethics at all? More on the topic of ethics here: https://ethical.net/ethical/future-ethics-with-cennydd-bowles-at-sustainableux/ https://ethical.net/ethical/future-ethics-with-cennydd-bowle... https://ethical.net/ethical/ethics-should-not-be-a-luxury/ https://ethical.net/ethical/ethics-should-not-be-a-luxury/
- cblades 8y agoNo, be upfront with your definition, engage in discussion, and don't patronize criticisms. You don't get to proclaim something ethical and then move along. That's close-minded and ripe for abuse.
- saalweachter 8y agoIs this a list of ethical software, carefully curated and thought about, or is this a list of non-main-stream software with the implicit assumption that contrarianism is implicitly ethical? When I look at your list, I just see a sentence of ad copy about each product and an outbound link. Why not an essay about each product and the criteria you used when deciding that product was ethical and its competitors were not?
- 7u8Cpa2B 8y agoDefinitely not. Precisely because I care about ethics that I bring these up. The reason is that I think we as a society (well, at least a subset of the tech community) romanticizes free (beer and speech), open-source, decentralized, and non-profit projects so much that we automatically equate them as being ethical. (Exhibit A: this website, ethical.net.) The truth is that ethics is hugely complex and nuanced. For example, what is your take on a super secure messaging app like Signal? Obviously, it is useful because it allows people to communicate privately (e.g., allows confidential sources to talk to journalists without being spied on). Now, what about the cliched scenario where it is being used by criminals to coordinate their bad deeds? Honestly, I don't know. I live in a democratic country whose government respects its citizen's privacy. As such, I am perfectly willing to give up a little bit of privacy (between myself and my government) if it means keeping the society safer. On the other hand, there are people (lots of em) who are not as fortunate as I am -- a wrong sneeze and you are dead. Ethics is complicated. Even if we fully understand a product (or policy or project), it doesn't mean we fully understand its ethical impact. And even if we do understand its ethical impact, it is almost impossible for us to say if its entirety ethical or not. Because of these complexities, any attempt to consider ethics as a yes/no label (like this site, ethical.net) is almost certainly wrong. In fact, it trivializes this very important issue.
- bubblewrap 8y agoWasn't there a YC company where you could buy CO2 neutralization for your website? Anybody remember the name? Is it still around?
- mancuso5 8y agohmm not sure which one you refer to but there are quite a few carbon offsetting projects like https://www.myclimate.org/ https://www.myclimate.org/
- bubblewrap 8y agoThanks - it was something specifically for web hosting, iirc. You could then add a little "CO2 neutral" banner to your web site.
- nukeop 8y agoThis resembles orthodox rabbis discussing what is considered kosher. I half expected to see my music player on the list, given it's popular, GPLv3 licensed and has no tracking, but I have no idea what the approval process is.
- NIL8 8y agoWhat music player?
- ekzy 8y agoThank you! There's a lot of negative feedback in here (which I mostly agree with) but I found a few gems on this page, and I wanted to thank the author and contributors.
- nothis 8y agoI was skeptical but there's actually a few things in there I might try. I'm very motivated to move away from Gmail, for example.
- mancuso5 8y agoThanks for sharing! I've been personally trying to move away from everything google and it's SO difficult. Gmail and Maps are the last things I'm using, but I am still hopeful. I feel it's more of an addiction than anything else really.
- kerkeslager 8y agoNot every tool on here fits everyone's ethics, but SOME tools fit SOME people's ethics. It's important to question what is ethical and what is not, but the question becomes moot if we never attempt to put the answer into action. Let's not hand-wring about "What is ethical?" so much that we never make any attempt to behave ethically. I don't agree that all the tools on the list are ethical, but there are a few I plan to start using, because I do believe they are ethical and I didn't know about them before.
- mancuso5 8y agoThanks for sharing, we've got this a lot, so kinda got used to it as the default reply, especially in the tech community :)
- fghtr 8y agoSee also: https://prism-break.org https://prism-break.org, but there are no "organizations" there.
- JshWright 8y agoWhen it comes to ethics, I care way more about stuff like "not exploiting workers or the environment". Most of the "ethics" here are pretty academic, and don't have a real impact on actual people. I'd love a version of this site that does the same thing for ethically produced goods (there are a number of sites like that out there, but none are this clean, and they tend to focus on specific niches (clothing, etc)).
- glaurung_ 8y agoThis is really cool. I (and I think some others around here) would like to move away from Google, etc, but sometimes it's hard to find other options. It's great having a semi-comprehensive list in one place! I'll definitely be looking into some of these.
- mancuso5 8y agoFeel free to share your journey on dm or on the forum https://community.ethical.net https://community.ethical.net
- minikites 8y agoI think one reason so many people in these comments are having issues with the definition of "ethical" is the partial realization that there isn't a way to ethically consume things, especially when capitalism is involved. You can use Firefox, but that still supports Google. You can recycle, but an ocean freighter burning bunker oil pukes out enough pollution in one voyage to invalidate your entire life's effort. You can make better or worse choices, but we live in a fundamentally unethical global economic system.
- ekianjo 8y agoEthical seems to be a very fuzzy expression here without any meaning whatsoever. Even most of the claims made next to the service are not supportable in any practical way (for online services owned by third parties).
- mikestew 8y agoJFC, I skimmed top comments for something that wasn’t “but, but...”, and as of this writing all I got it is either that, or the page won’t load with an ad blocker. To the page author, I for one appreciate the effort. No, your definition of “ethics” probably doesn’t fit mine. But having just skimmed it, I think it will give me something to chew on later. Like many, I’ll have my share of “but, but...”s, but it’s the thinking about it and not the curated list, that is important to me.
- hernan604 8y agoIts missing runbox from email services
- hernan604 8y agoRunbox.com is missing from the email services
- rezeroed 8y agobbc iplayer shouldn't be there. Great site though.
- nabeards 8y agoI'm surprised to not see keybase.io on here. Any ethical issues with their service I'm unaware of?
- asciimo 8y agoPLNKTN is a good carbon footprint calculator app. Great design (https://plnktn.life/ https://plnktn.life/).