Re-Focusing on Privacy-Focused Applications - Where to Begin?
Now, I am hoping I am not the only one in this community who has realized that privacy should be one of the top considerations when choosing what software to use on any device.
Leaving Reddit has been the catalyst for me to realize this, as silly as that might sound, and now I have to re-evaluate my list of "convenient" apps that are in NO WAY secure or private.
I want to ask everyone here if they have any recommendations for essentially replacement applications for all of the major categories of software that we use on our computers and mobile devices.
For example, here are some of the switches I made today: Chrome Mobile > Opera Mobile Chrome Desktop > Opera Desktop Facebook Messenger > Signal Facebook Social Media > No alternative just deleted it.
My hope with this post is that we can have a discussion on privacy apps in general as trying to track down information for each sector one by one and test each out can be arduous.
To kick off the discussion here are some other categories that I have not figured out an answer for yet:
Search Engines (duckduckgo is mentioned a lot, why?) Operating Systems Cloud Storage Email Providers Podcasts Video/Music Services (Youtube, Paid services, etc) Environment Specific advice for Android, iOS, and any others.
Also if it makes sense, should we consider privacy when choosing, say, a news website to frequent? Or would browser choice ultimately be the decider there.
privacyguides.org has been s great resource for years now. They also have a community on lemmy.one
I've been using kagi as a search engine for a while. Imo they show pretty strong understanding of why you shouldn't rely on ad-supported search engines. My experience with searx is that it's incredibly slow and I feel that search engines are things that should be constantly maintained, so self hosting it feels like a bit of a hassle.
Also please realize, that the Threadiverse is not so much about privacy. Pretty much everything we do here is public. Moving to the threadiverse is more about avoiding the "shitification" movement at R$, and the other sorts of user manipulation, and walled gardening that are happening or may happen.
There are many resources across depending on what you are looking for: https://switching.software https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io https://www.btw.so/open-source-alternatives https://gitea.it/devol/Awesome-Privacy-servizi-web-open-source https://github.com/lissy93/awesome-privacy
Please note that these list may not be completely up-to-date, but you find and a lot of useful tools there imho.
Some useful links also:
This is in addition to the great Privacy Guides link another commenter mentioned.
+1 for alternativeto. Searching for alternatives to popular apps using the filters like "Open Source" as well as operating system, privacy, etc.. is a game changer. There's also comment sections where people sometimes elaborate on certain things like differences between the app you're comparing to.