Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Finally ditched all Google apps/services on my phone (startrek.website)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello I use GOS have for almost a year and finally removed sandboxed play services in my main profile and only use Aurora for my bank app and Apple Music in my main profile still have Google Voice in private space but seperated from my main profile all my apps are only FOSS other than the 2 apps from aurora and it feels so good to finally say that. I just wanted to share my big news with you and hope you can all ditch Google apps/services as I have its amazing how my spam calls/texts have stopped or become less the more I degoogled.

I hope everyone has a great Degoogle/privacy enchancing experience

Any better replacements for Google Voice welcome in the comments if there is any.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (6 children)

hope you can all ditch Google apps/services

Sadly, I can't ditch WhatsApp since everyone I know uses it + work and without sandboxed play services, WhatsApp eats my battery like crazy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully one day they'll all use Signal

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For the lng run there needs to be a solution for the WhatsApp Monopoly we all live on. I mean, this argument is several years old and what can we do to change that? You could start by trying to convince some og your contacts to switch zo signal. In terms of co convinience their app is the closest to WhatsApp.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Saying "Signal is more secure and private"? No one gives a shit apparently

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You can still use Google Push notifications with microG.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I had it but I don't know how to connect the 2 together

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You could use Beeper, which connects with Whatsapp without needing the app installed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Is Automattic a good company tho? Heard some not so good stories about them recently.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

They use open source solutions for this, so you can spin up your own version if you want. It's just Matrix with bridges.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

They went crying about WPEngine having found a good business model around Wordpress support, and started sabotaging for them.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/2/24260158/automattic-demand-wp-engine-revenue-wordpress-battle

Looks like they lost in court a few days ago!

https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/10/24318350/automattic-restore-wp-engine-access-wordpress

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's weird. I use WhatsApp daily without Google play services and it doesn't do that. I have a pixel 7a

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I have installed WhatsApp without GServices and got delayed/no notifications and ~50% of my battery was WhatsApp in background. Brand new battery (?) on a refurbished Pixel 8. With minimum use, I used to get around 2PM with ~30% battery while now, I can get to 15% to 9PM with roughly more usage than before.

No idea why