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> You don't need them, you might even enjoy life more without them. So I should probably lower the quality of my life to make a statement that will have no imp

• throwawayboise 6y ago
  I don't think it lowers quality of life. YMMV of course. Petition the government if you like. It doesn't matter. You don't have millions to donate to the next campaign or their personal enrichment. You're not who they care about.
• illustriousbear 6y ago
  It's sad that your quality of life depends on Google or Facebook services. I quit Facebook along with most Google services, I feel much happier and more well adjusted than when I was using them. Meeting with family and friends is also much more interesting because I don't have a constant stream detailing their life. Good luck petitioning the government to act on it... this goes double for US businesses and people who live outside the US.
  • marcinzm 6y ago
    >It's sad that your quality of life depends on Google or Facebook services. Offhand the parent post would require me to give up Google Search (including via DDG), Gmail, Google Cloud, AWS, Amazon, Zappos, Audible, Comixology and Woot Shirts. I barely use Facebook or Twitter but the rest would lower my quality of life (and not just due to the large drop in employment opportunities I could take).
    • illustriousbear 6y ago
      Sure but there are plenty of perfectly acceptable alternatives to those services.
      • marcinzm 6y ago
        Which are, to me, of lower quality. Thus lower quality of life. Not zero quality of life. Just lower.
        • illustriousbear 6y ago
          To me they are close enough to not mind. Especially when considering the unethical nature of these businesses and how they abuse their power. That ties into the quality of the platform and it is alarming that some people will tolerate it for some comfort.
        • chrisco255 6y ago
          It's really not. Google.com is still there. You can use the alternatives 99% of the time and get what you're looking for. Google itself is not a perfect algorithm. It's exploitable, censorable, etc. It doesn't always find what you're looking for. You shouldn't ever limit yourself to a single search engine, honestly. I think YouTube is a far stickier service than Google Search, just because it's acted as an informal video archive of the past 15 years of internet video history. But I fully recognize the risks with this monopoly structure in place and have started to embrace alternatives like https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/ and https://rumble.com/ https://rumble.com/. It's time to disentangle from monopolies. Take your digital sovereignty back.
    • crumbshot 6y ago
      > Google Search (including via DDG) DuckDuckGo doesn't use Google Search, so you'd be okay there.
      • marcinzm 6y ago
        It does if you do '!g' which most people do a lot as the Bing results are often crap.
        • crumbshot 6y ago
          No that just ends up redirecting your browser to google.com with the search query, it's equivalent to going there and typing it in yourself. Which if you were to give up Google Search, is something you wouldn't be doing (or would have blocked).
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    > It's sad that your quality of life depends on Google or Facebook services. Quality of life is not a binary, where you either 'have' it or not, so I don't think it makes sense to say "your quality of life DEPENDS on google or Facebook" Many things make your quality of life a bit better, and some things make it a bit worse, but no one says they can't have a quality life without Facebook or google. The person is saying that stopping using Facebook and google will slightly decrease their overall quality of life, but will have zero impact on Facebook and google.
    • illustriousbear 6y ago
      I understand that. I still maintain it's sad that removing Facebook/Google can have any significant drop in your quality of life. And by significant, I mean one where you're willing to debate about it. I like to keep my happiness as far as possible from the services that some soulless multinational provides.
      • design-material 6y ago
        Maybe their quality of life is increased by not having to spend part of their life (and possibly money - I can't think of a free Gmail alternative that's not as bad as Gmail's practices) searching for services that are at least as good as what they currently use?
        • nobody9999 6y ago
          > I can't think of a free Gmail alternative that's not as bad as Gmail's practices Protonmail comes to mind: https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/
          • vhanda 6y ago
            I like the company, but their email service is nowhere close to being a GMail alternative. A few things that are lacking - 1. Using standard IMAP/POP is only available for Paid users and only on the desktop. Not Mobile. 2. Conversation view is not implemented on their mobile clients. It has been over 5 years - https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-feedback/suggestions/13041477-conversation-view-for-mobile-apps https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-feedback/sugg... 3. Their conversation view on the desktop groups messages based on the sender and not always the subject. It results in old conversations being grouped together. They are working on all these issues, but till then, my productivity was impacted a lot by switching.
• mastazi 6y ago
  I quit Reddit, Amazon, Twitter, Google, Instagram and Facebook. My life has never been better. Minor inconvenience does not outweigh major improvements in my mental wellness. (Edit: I mention mental wellness because those products, and the ads they carry, are designed to be addictive.)
  • thebladerunner 6y ago
    Are you saying that not using Google search has improved your quality of life?
    • pleeb 6y ago
      Google search has gone significantly down in quality over the last year or so. Even just searching for simple things only seems to yield articles from the same 20 or so major websites, and it’s worse if you’re looking for niche items. DuckDuckGo on the other hand is starting to give relatively better and more diverse results these days.
      • narrator 6y ago
        I agree Google has gone downhill. DuckDuckGo is much better now.
      • bdefore 6y ago
        The alternatives do not have better quality. I periodically go with DDG and realize I'm !g'ing everything.
        • Shorel 6y ago
          It totally depends on how do you write your search query: If you write "teen movie about vampires" or something equally vague, Google is king. If you write a direct quote or the exact error message, without typos, DDG gives better results. I can also put sentences in quotes to force an exact match. DDG is just an older school search engine, so old school tricks work better.
    • 6y ago
• adventured 6y ago
  > Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws and so on. Ask the government to do something about it? They're allies, they're in it together. There is no scenario where they don't take out encryption this decade. It's a top priority and big tech is going to very happily assist them. Big tech will give them what they want, they will act as an arm of tyranny assisting the government in smashing human rights, and in return they'll get to continue to expand (they'll get a light touch regulatory treatment). It now has a lot in common with how China handles their giant corporations (so long as you do what we tell you to, you get to exist and thrive), and big tech in the US looks more like a CCP apparatus by the passing day. All forms of expression and speech will continue to be restricted more by the passing year. The government won't need to do it themselves, big tech will do the dirty work with a wink and nod. That includes all app stores, all online content and forums, all software. So, when you can't petition your government any longer because it's hell bent on taking your liberty away, what does that leave? The War on Domestic Terrorism of course. They'll create it, spur it, and then have an excuse to crack down on their own invention (not terribly different from how they ran the war on drugs). The US will be a horrible place to live in the near future. The foreign war on terrorism, in which the US did such unbelievable vicious things to other nations, will now turn inward, and the monster will come home, rolling over human rights as it goes.
  • nobody9999 6y ago
    >Ask the government to do something about it? They're allies, they're in it together. If that's how it is where you live, and you live in a democracy, you can change that.
    • bordercases 6y ago
      A democracy isn't a democracy categorically, it's a democracy only if it behaves as a democracy. If elected representatives are behaving in the way they are with respect to encryption and tech anti-trust, then either it is an ineffectual, degenerate case of a democracy – and if the representatives are failing now, as they have been for at least a decade on this issue, when would throwing new ones be as effective as it needs to be? – or it is not fully a democracy. If you want to reason from labels as if they are tautologies, here's a word for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anocracy The alternative interpretation to what you propose is running for office. That's not out of the question but it's a decades-long pipeline with a lot of protections built in by convention. Outsiders are going to have difficulty until the current gen of representatives fades with age, and making headway is feasible only with the hope that the growing sphere of elite replacements are less competent behind the reigns if they decide to maintain their predecessors' policies.
• falcolas 6y ago
  Do you expect these companies to stand still and wring their hands while you convince the government to stomp on their cash cows, or are they going to take some of the money you and your data have earned for them and lobby government more effectively than you ever could? My bet’s on the latter. And so long as we all continue to support them (while claiming “but my boycott won’t do any good”), they’ll continue to use that financial support to ensure the continued non-involvement of the government in their affairs. Doing nothing costs nothing, but it also changes nothing.
• na85 6y ago
  >lower the quality of my life Quitting Facebook will objectively increase your quality of life.
  • marcinzm 6y ago
    I use Facebook for my Etsy shop and finding funny FFXIV memes. Pretty much a ghost town of a feed beyond that. Both of which I feel increase my quality of life.
• bordercases 6y ago
  You gotta be a man with principles. And why do you think your petitioning the government would make as much of an impact in this case, when opting out of using their services deprives them of revenue and data almost immediately?
• coldtea 6y ago
  >So I should probably lower the quality of my life to make a statement that will have no impact on them at all? God forbid we "lower the quality of our lives" for such lowly things as principles! >Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws and so on. Else what, you'll vote for another party? Both parties (in the US) take money from Big Tech, and they vote the same shit anyway. That will "show them" nothing. Especially since their stance on such laws is 1/100 of the things you vote a party/candidate about (so you will still vote for them if you agree on other matters).
  • throwaway3699 6y ago
    America is hopeless here, much better to try and fight them elsewhere.
    • cheph 6y ago
      EU gave us GDPR popups, so, not sure there is hope there.
• zeeone 6y ago
  If your quality of life depends on big tech then I suspect your life is of low quality in the first place.
  • hyperdimension 6y ago
    Different people fall into different lives for all sorts of reasons, not all intentional. Consider having a bit more compassion for others. -- "'It ate his head. Another loser.' She said to the two of them, 'It's easy to win. Anybody can win.'" -- A Scanner Darkly
    • zeeone 6y ago
      So, your definition of “different” is someone who uses Big Tech social networks?