"Oh, you want any of the conveniences of modern smartphones? Cool, choose which of two global megacorps get access to all your most personal info."

We live in the worst cyberpunk future.

Like, at this point, it's about all we can do to staunch the flow. Move off Gmail? Use DuckDuckGo?

Okay, fine, google still knows everywhere you go, and amazon knows everything you read.

My Big Tech Goal of the Year™️ is to migrate off Gmail.

But I'm still reading a bunch of subversive ebooks (and taking notes about them) on an Amazon device. And searching for places and resources with Google and Google Maps. And sharing documents on Drive and Dropbox (although less than before, thanks to Nextcloud). 😪

@Zuph you might have to have an android phone (for now) but that doesn't mean it's pointless to make any small changes you can!

stop using drive and docs! get a proton mail! get on duckduckgo! do everything you can do, and do it right now

@applebaps My Big Problem is that I go quickly into over-analyze mode.

Sure, Protonmail is better than Gmail, but I still have stuff like ( and ( to worry about.

I could get off drive and docs by installing Collabora on my nextcloud instance, but that's a non-trivial technical hurdle.

Yeah yeah, it's all excuses. But this stuff isn't easy! Even for someone with decent technical chops!

@Zuph solution: get out of your head and just get off Gmail lol. stop putting barriers in your own way

@Zuph Nextcloud has a calendar and contacts app you can integrate into your phone. Not the Best, but keeps some more stuff out of the googleverse ;)

@mapet I've actually switched to using a paper planner for everything but work stuff 😂

@Alonealastalovedalongthe That's really fair.

A good compromise is probably to use something like to launder your google results.


Altho, using an equivalently evil service as google that is run by a smaller company is still arguably an improvement as it fights centralization.

@Zuph FWIW any small hit to their data about you is quickly worthwhile, since the more up-to-date and in-depth they are the more valuable to advertisiers they are

If someone knows a targeting factor seconds before another they can outbid them in the ad auctions


I fear the way forward is to learn to do with less.

@Zuph it's not just a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape, it's a boring dystopian cyberpunk hellscape

@Zuph god I've been screaming about this for weeks, haha

hope and pray that the Purity Librem turns out good

@Zuph If you have an android you can look into switching to LineageOS with microG. I've been using it for a month and it's been great, works just like proprietary android

@Zuph cyberpunk but with only the most mild body modification and even that's gate-kept by the medical community and without a clear way of improving the bad parts

@Zuph, aren’t all cyberpunk futures dystopian? I thought that was the main trope of cyberpunk.

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