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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 a

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.

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.