Comment by 🍀 gritty
Re: "My son is the only person I know in real life -- other than…"
I'd say Pixel with graphene
I don't personally know other de-googlers
Mar 12 · 8 weeks ago
15 Later Comments ↓
I had been running PostmarketOS on OnePlus 6T but there was no VoLTE support when it became a hard network requirement in the UK. Switched to a Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS which has been less break-y but also less Linux in your pocket-y. I think the only other person I know IRL with a deGoogled phone is my workplace underling.
People look at me funny when I tell them I don't use Gmail or Facebook. I don't think anyone I know has ever considered degoogling.
Even the smartest person I know (who writes code) just sighs and says 'aj, whatever, too late' when I express my opinion on the subject
☕️ protoc0l · Mar 12 at 23:33:
I've actually be doing research on feature phones, and I think if any local providers support it, I'm going to go with a Nokia 2780.
At this point, I just want something I can make calls on, sometimes texts, and pull the battery out of when I'm not using it. I don't need a telescreen listening to me and my family.
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 13 at 08:13:
Thank you to all who responded.
It's as I feared, but expected -- few people are interested in de-Googling, and most don't even understand what it means.
Oh, well.
in so far as you can install and configure an OS you are a mechanic
(and in so far as you can write code you are a machinist)
everyone can't be mechanics, is you and your son's job to start a local family business providing this service and options to everyone at a price they can afford and with some sort of warranty, but you ain't got the ballz, so it is what it is
even me, le software zealot of the highest order, would pay someone local (instead of randomly impulse donoing projects across the globe) to sysadmin all my stuff, whatever OS they use i don't care, but i can't pay the corpo salary, so is up to them to have some real life business skillz to make it profitable, cause, you know, if the OS is worth a dime, then sysadmining personal devices should mostly be sitting on your ass doing nothing, so you can parallelize, but aint no nerd got none of that, nerd wanna sit in high tower far away from unwashed masses and corpo provides that
(i would also half my rate as a machinist for any such local business that would need some custom parts made, as long as it's copyleft, bless)
maaahn i was ready, once graduated to go door do door asking people if they need help with their computers, for half of what the guy took to fix ours years prior, to make minimum wage, i was sooo ready, but i was told to apply for a job instead and i did, and it has been smooth sailing for my puny nerd ass ever since, but my balls shrunk so bad, maaahn
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 14 at 08:37:
@namark : "...but you ain't got the ballz, so it is what it is." I may not have the balls, but I can at least _spell_ "balls".
It's not a matter of balls, anyway. There are plenty of places around my way you can buy a de-Googled phone and, yes, with warranty. The problem is that most people don't even know that this is a service they might want. I've offered to de-Google people's phones but, when they realize what the implications are, the response is usually "uh... no thanks."
didn't read the last paragraph i suppose, wateva ima rant sum more
warranty on software not hardware, it doesn't exist anywhere in case you didn't notice, best you get even as an enterprise or a government is "extended support" which mean we only kinda sorta mitigate critical failures and otherwise endlessly gaslight you
you shouldn't offer to de-google, a mechanic doesn't ask clients what tools or materials to use, and explain ups and down, he asks em what the problem is then tells em how he's gonna solve it and does it, and then he tells em that their engine is also fucked and they need cylinder replacement rn with confidence, not timid reservations like some sort of a wimp
sysadmin - system administration
this means you tell me what you do with your device, and I don't ask any questions, i install and configure all software, then show you how you use it and then guarantee if you use it that way it's going to work, for say a year (+X$ for more extra year, or whateva, market it somehow, idk), and if it doesn't ima ssh in and fix it same day, or same hour if it's an emergency, and if it not working at any point causes any real damage I compensate in full, and if you suddenly need to do something new, you ask me and I provide your new software and workflow, dependent on complexity this might literally mean ask me, or it might mean something like use my curated app store i installed for ya, and if some stupid bank doesn't respect my work i go talk it over with em and see what's what, and maybe fix all their stuff as well while i'm at it, basically I'm the iOS on this block and everyone is my iphone, except i hustle for people and it's free software, cause my plan is not to sit on my ass do nothing and sell thin air, my plan is to keep hustling all my life
sum actual hard real world work, that people in all other engineering industries do, so yeah i maintain ain't got no ballzes
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 14 at 13:03:
namark : "you shouldn't offer to de-google, a mechanic doesn't ask clients what tools or materials to use, and explain ups and down,..."
If I bring my car to a mechanic, I already know I have a problem with my car. But Google doesn't _appear_ to be a problem to people with smartphones. "Hi Mr Phone Mechanic -- my phone seems to be having too much Google." Nope. Doesn't happen.
There's no point offering to solve problems that people don't know they have. They first have to be convinced there's actually a problem. Then they have to be convinced that the fix will be better than the problem.
they come to you with other problems, like annoying ads or notofication or bad keyboard or whathaveyou, the OS change is the engine problem you tell them they gotta fix, they don't need to understand how engines work this is something you have to impose on them as a pro, and current fads is not the only reason to use a free OS, you might need it to provide the warranty, so that there are no black boxes that you can't audit, and that you can ssh and get root in a secure and controlled manner for example to do your work properly, and you can spew this tech jargon at them to upease them but at the end of the day it's your descision and responsibility as the pro with balls
and theeeen if you are successful your local community suddenly can haz it's own consentual botnet faciliated by your sysadmin, can haz it's own compute, it's own cloud, it's own p2p, it's own mini onion, it's own mesh, all super decentalized, and gonna be able to go "you mess with one of us you mess with all of us" in digital space like they can do in physical space, but that's sci-fi already
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 14 at 15:39:
@namark : "...they come to you with other problems, like annoying ads or notofication or bad keyboard or whathaveyou, "
But they don't -- that's my point. Most privacy problems are invisible, and most people don't care about ads.
This matches my experience, but there's a spectrum. I think people need to have first- or at most second-hand experience with a "catastrophic event", like Google deleting all personal data because of a falsely triggered abuse protection or something. Many of us simply haven't _been_ in such situations. This might explain why de-Googling is not an industry yet
One way to get people to deGoogle is to make Google useless. It would take a massive effort and funding by FOSS and Privacy advocates though. Don't bog down AI training crawlers with tarpits etc... actively feed them as much random garbage as possible. Retard their models if they try to crawl your site despite your robots.txt. Setup mass systems of bots to pointlessly navigate the web and fuck up their analytics data. Poison the beasts and if possible do it using their own platforms!
@lars_the_brear you are starting to wiggle and word game here, so brace yourself ima start quoting you
But they don't -- that's my point.
you are going to argue people don't have problems with their software? really?
Most privacy problems are invisible, and most people don't care about ads.
ah no, I see, you just started by pretending that you have a point, but then realized how absurd it is, and backpedaled to your last point which I already addressed. Again, you don't solve invisible problems, you solve visible problems, then you use your authority to tell them they need to solve invisible problems. That's how it works, the mechanic tells you to fix the engine, and you trust them.
🥜 smallpatatas · Mar 24 at 01:04:
@drh3xx poisoning is the way to go, i totally agree. however i'm of the opinion that "random" poison might be less effective than something a little more ... directional, perhaps?
(i wrote this around a year ago but I think it still probably holds up ok)
— gemini.patatas.ca/posts/poison-as-praxis.gmi
Original Post
My son is the only person I know in real life -- other than me -- who insists on using a de-Googled phone. Other members of my family won't do it, even being fully aware of the privacy hazards or regular Android. Most people I talk to don't even realize it's an option. So I wondered : how many de-Googled phone users know other de-Googled phone users in real life? Of course there are plenty online. But personally?