1w ago

I had enough of big tech and their actions, so created this guide to make switching as easy as possible

I shared a version of this guide earlier this year, but felt a website was needed to unpack the different options fully. So after an unreasonable number of hours, I put together the necessary data and website.

I hope this is digestible enough for the average person to help those looking to take that first step, or for people who are equally passionate and want to get their friends or family involved.

Details:

Site - https://purchasewithpurpose.io/
Code - https://codeberg.org/purchase-with-purpose/pwp-website
Community - https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose

Every time I post these guides, there is always feedback on things that can improve, or I got wrong. Please do share, as it is the best way for these to evolve!

126 comments

Nice guide! Lemmy is missing though 🐭. Also, what's the point of moving from Twitter to BlueSky? They are no different. Mastodon is a great option.
- I haven't been too focused on Social Media given that it is less about features and more about community. But will look at adding a Reddit replacement.

KDE is friendlier to Windows users than GNOME, but Mint is still a good option.
- And KDE is predominately German.

I see Qobuz on there. IMHO, Bandcamp should be your first stop when buying music. If it's not on bandcamp, Qobuz seems to have just about everything else, more or less, that someone might want. I've complained about them in the past for making me download my purchases one track at a time, which can be pretty annoying if you're buying a super-duper-deluxe version of an album, but, I am pleased to say, they no longer do this; you can download the complete albums you've purchased in a zip file. But only once. Stuff can disappear for annoying rights reasons, and I think they even say, once you buy your music download it immediately, because it may not be there on a subsequent visit.
- I’m not so sure. Last time I looked for an album it was cheaper on Qobuz than Bandcamp - also Qobuz had a Hi-Res version. Bandcamp I think takes 15% + payment handling which seems a lot for being a shopfront. I went to record label to get it in the end as I thought that was probably the best way of getting the money to the artist.

I am very bothered by the OS section. Bazzite should be the go-to for gaming, period. Ubuntu should never be recommended to anyone. Fedora is far more stable and reliable as a starter distro than either Mint or Ubuntu. Fedora Workstation for Mac expats and Fedora KDE for Windows expats.
I won’t fault anyone for putting Mint in there, but I loathe Cinnamon and would never recommend a distro that excludes KDE by design.
- agreed, bazzite, nobara, and cachyOS would all have been better alternatives to popOS
- I'd normally have Pop as as more of a starter distro, although I haven't been recommending it lately just because it's in a bit of an awkward spot in crossing over from GNOME to COSMIC. Not that I dislike COSMIC, I just wouldn't want a newbie to install the GNOME version and then have to go through switching their whole DE right off the bat.
  
  COSMIC is supposed to hit 1.0 in the next few days and I’m looking forward to it. I wouldn’t recommend it right now only because the beta still has too many rough edges. Once it’s more polished, Pop_OS it could be an excellent starter distro.

I think a lot of these guides could use more in-depth companion guides to go along with it. Changing your email provider for one is not a simple thing and there are concerns like loss of functionality (Gmail is a good product run by a shit company) and also how to make the process less overwhelming. Some services will give you the option to migrate all your emails from Gmail but maybe you want to start fresh, etc. Then there's going to all of your providers and updating your contact email. Again, not as simple as signing up for another service.
- I have started on that with a small intro section for most sections (still adding). An example is email https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/category/email, but I understand that an even more in-depth guide is warranted.
  
  Thanks for making these! The mix of thorough structured data and qualitative disclaimers is so useful.
  I’ve been curious about Infomaniak because I haven’t seen much about it until recently. Is “Open Source” the main reason Tuta and Proton are on the infographic instead?
- Proton Sheets will save us all... Right?
- You can always forward emails? All email providers (yes even the shit ones) offer this for free while you migrate from one email account to another

LibreWolf browser
- Agreed! It is an excellent choice and is part of the recommended list on the website. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/browser/

I just tries Lemmy now instead of Reddit 👍

Where are the password managers? When changing your accounts to another email provider, this is a really good time to also make sure all the accounts have a strong, unique password or phrase.
- That is true; I am planning to do Password Managers next, but can see now why it would have made sense to include them sooner.
- Well, a short guide to make your own unique passwords that are strong, and that you are able to memorize, would be enough there... Otherwise, Firefox has a build in password manager.
  
  For frequently accessed sites that will work but what about a site that is only needed once a year? Password managers secure a lot more than passwords.

Reddit -> Lemmy is a recent switch that I'm happy with

I don't know where this would fit in on the website but one company that is really important to boycott is Oracle. Larry Ellison is a mega right-wing donor and his son is buying up media companies for the purposes of turning them into right-wing propaganda machines.
One way everyone can make a difference is by uninstalling any Oracle software on your computer. You might have the Oracle JRE installed or if you're into virtualization you may be using Virtualbox. It's especially important to avoid Oracle software in a corporate setting because their lawyers may come after you. If you work for a company and you're either involved in purchasing software or a software developer I would strongly recommend avoiding Oracle not just because of ethical reasons but also because typically they have their products are not as good from a technical standpoint as well.
For the Oracle JRE or JDK you can replace it with Adoptium. Adoptium is run by the Eclipse Foundation which is based in the EU.
For Virtualbox you can replace it with QEMU or Xen. For QEMU there are a lot of good GUI or CLI front-ends that make using it easy. See this article: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/QEMU/Front-ends note that some of the front-ends listing in that article also support Xen.
For Oracle's database some say that PostgreSQL is a good competitor. For this one I acknowledge the topic is more complex. I'm just going to leave it at for new designs please consider avoiding Oracle's database if you can. Oracle has a bad reputation among programmers for a reason.
- Oracle definitely fits under the tech giants to boycott.... and also fuck Larry Ellison. Will keep this in mind for future tools, but feel free to post this on https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose in the meantime.
  
  I posted it there! Before I was worried to post there because I didn't see any recent posts.
  I was just thinking, one way to start adding Oracle might be to create a Database section and mention Oracle's database and perhaps other closed source/bad solutions like Access and suggest open source alternatives like PostgreSQL and MariaDB.
- I use the VirtualBox stuff all the time! Time to look for a replacement..
- If someone uses Oracle DB I can only pray for their soul 🙏

Correction: Ente is also self-hostable.
- Sorry, I did include that on the website https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/software/49nBOpWnyCdLNGVJ71k6SJ/ - but forgot to update the guide.

This is me, but i did it in reverse. Once windows was behind me it kind of opened up the door to more change. Took me less than a year to arrive at not using my google account at all.

Thanks for putting this together. Stuff like this is good for making it more approachable. I definitely have relatives that would benefit from this.
One note though, it would be good if the key included all of the icons and not just the three causes.
As the other commented pointed out, it would also be good to differentiate decentralized services, for example in the category with Mastodon and Bluesky.
- Agreed, I'll look to update the main guide infographic with all the causes. The website itself has these listed, though, if you prefer to share that.

In your guide, Proton's services have the EU flag, but the company is Swiss.
- It is supposed to represent a European company. But will update it as it is confusing.
  
  I'm not Swiss, but I've understood that Switzerland adopts many EU laws, but not all of them. I've also heard that a right-wing party, which wants the country to be more independent from the EU is pretty popular there.
  As this is just based on things that I've heard, I don't have any sources to link.
  What I mean is, Switzerland is an European country, but as I've understood, any specific EU law or regulation may or may not apply.

Here is my set up:
Browser: Helium
Email: My own domain thru Spacemail
Search: DDG
Music: Deezer
Office suite: Jotta
Files: Jotta
Photos: Jotta
- My set up:
  Browser: Librewolf on PC and Duckduckgo on phone
  Email: Protonmail
  Search: Ecosia on PC and Duckduckgo on phone
  Music: Locally stored music and VLC (on PC) and Musicolet (phone) as music player
  Office suite: Libreoffice

Great guide! Very useful for people discovering a world outside of the GAFAM’s.
I’ve done everything, but leaving Whatsapp is the most difficult one. I use Threema and Signal with my close friends, but I can’t get rid of Whatsapp because of many groups I have to follow but I’m not close enough to people to ask them to switch.
I’d love it if these two chat services proposed a separate app which would be interoperable with Whatsapp.
Yes Meta would still get some of my data, but less than if I had Whatsapp directly.
Also getting Whatsapp business and setting an automatic answer asking people to contact me through mail, sms or other chats is useful.
Leaving youtube is also difficult as Peertube is lacking non tech content like basketball..
- Thanks! Social media is by far the hardest and will be the last hurdle to tackle. Right now, I am focusing more on getting people to move tools. Btw, if you didn't already see, the website is even more helpful than the guide itself - in case you ever want to get others to make the switch. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/

Original reddit post, because I didn't trust this guy to be telling the truth
https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1jcqvu0/your_guide_to_move_away_from_big_tech_and_support/
- A more recent one on lemmy.word as well :) I've been at this for a long time. https://lemmy.world/post/28524939
  
  Thank you! Fuck Google!!!

I personally enjoy marginalia search and duckduckgo lite. I never enjoyed/appreciated the current search engine market with all generative AI enshitification. Marginalia search is similar to a database, where you have a limited number of keywords to get a decent search, they also offers filters if you dont want websites with JS and much more. duckduckgo lite is similar to this, but instead of having a specific tab to find website domains, it has it built in the search engine functionality.
- Someone posted Narrow32 on lemmy then when I was trying it out I discovered Duckduckgo lite. Now it's my default search. Brings me back to when Google was a search engine.
- I can use marginalia as default search for Firefox!
  
  Yea that's what I've done as well, I do enjoy it.
- marginalia
  Hadn't heard of Marginalia search. Will look to include that on the website :)
  
  Pretty small development team. I'm hoping over my break I can contribute.

Anyone have an alternative for Google Keep? I just want shared notes and checklists across all my devices
- Joplin maybe?
- On the list, will get there maybe in 2-3 weeks time! But if you want something sooner, maybe post on the community https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose
- Upnote or check out a new one called Lockbook
- If you need markdown and other formatting you can use notion.so, but I can't expect that company will be good in the future even though they're good now. They've already added AI. I use it for a note-taking because I can create hyperlinks between notes.
- I recommend notesnook

I stopped looking at it after initial glance, seeing the top line, the browsers.
Vivaldi?
Really.
No.
- what's wrong with vivaldi? they're european. they have zero ai in their browser. and they're one of the few browser with a build in ad/tracker blocker that supports adblock filters.
  
  what’s wrong with vivaldi
  it's proprietary/closed-source
  
  Probably because it's another browser based on Chromium.

What stumped me is that YouTube music and apple music are the starting point, and not Spotify.
Also isn't using your own Mailserver with your own domain on any webhoster plus Thunderbird a viable alternative? I've been doing this for like 20 years. That's the beauty of email imo
- The website has the space to cover these topics far better. Spotify has a big red disclaimer against it to educate people on why not to use it - https://purchasewithpurpose.io/software/D5JUoM1dZysf7JJgTAWXy/ Email category tries to explain how you can use email clients fit into the picture and lists Thunderbird - https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/email

leaving big tech
Firefox is big tech
- ... weeeell... It's big tech in some ways, but not really...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech

I think waterfox was sold to an ad agency.
- In 2020 System1 bought Waterfox, the same company with a controlling interesting in Startpage.
  In 2023 Waterfox became independent from System1.
  According to their Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1
- Not anymore, it is mentioned on their profile. They are now owned by the founder again. https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/software/5RBGtGMEiI5J7DDaaMrfuZ/

Replace Ubuntu with Zorin OS

I also like OnlyOffice as an alternative to MSOffice/Google Office Suite, has free tiers and real-time sessions
- Yup, an excellent option and it is listed on the site. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/office-suite/
  It is worth noting the potential ties to Russia as that has been a deal breaker for some.

Why does every search engine look exactly the same, and push the exact same AI chat feature, and have identical options for filtering arranged in out in the exact same order in the exact same location.
I think there's only one search engine.
- Probably because it's the same use case?
  That's like asking why all keyboards have the same letters in the same arrangement, with mostly the same options.
  If you want something different, try Kagi. It has other controls you don't see elsewhere
- People are all copying what they are familiar with, and that is Google. I list the providers that have AI Summaries as part of their offering; you can find one that doesn't. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/

Why Tidal? I get the part against apple, but why tidal?
- Tidal
  It is hard for me to be the arbiter of what tools are ethical enough, so I try to make these facts as easy as possible to find for people. In the end, it educates and ultimately most decide against using such tools (for example, Spotify). There is a note on Tidal's profile about Jack Dorsey's and Jay-Z's involvement. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/software/34R8h9DOVPhaJ7CZMmKW48/
  
  That's kinda why I was asking I remember something about Dorsey a while a go
  
  Spotify often gets bad press, some probably promoted by competitors. Its payouts look lower mainly because it offers a free ad-supported tier and serves markets with lower subscription fees - if it were subscription-only in high-fee markets, payouts would be similar to Apple, Tidal, or Qobuz. Also, I haven’t seen Spotify play me any AI-generated tracks, unlike some other platforms.

Gotta love promoting Electron slop like Element right next to stuff claiming sustainability

y no searxng?
- They are on the website :) Just too many options to include them all on the infographic. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/

how do I take multiple emails and consolidate them into one ? thats the biggest thing preventing me from degoogling gmail
- Thunderbird can do something like this! It's called 'Unified folders' on desktop and 'Unified Inbox' on mobile I think? But essentially it takes all your inboxes and makes them into a single folder.
- you should never use "just one" email. I would find a service that you can have one main account and have a a few aliases.
  
  That's cool and all but that doesn't solve my issue of not wanting to use 6+ Gmail accounts, I need to consolidate their inboxes or I can't move away from Gmail

i thought you had stopped recommending protonmail and spotify but i see now both are back (spotify not in this image, but (with caveats) on your website).
i see you've been making these images for many years and obviously put a lot of time in to it - i assume that like most other ethical consumerism campaigns you must have some funding for it? (from who?)
- The guide has had many iterations, and you are right that at one point, they were entirely removed. I've ended up informing rather than hiding, as most of these names are already known, whereas not many people are aware of Spotify's actions (for example). Proton is a little more complicated - I personally won't use them, but I can see the nuance where some people might.
  I don't get any funding. I am a developer myself, so I do 80% of the work. The rest is self-funded and will continue for the foreseeable future.
  
  i don't understand what motivates you to do so much unpaid labor to market/advertise/recommend commercial products and services which you yourself would not even use.

What about https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ ?
Doesn't that already serve the same purpose? ... without also recommending to use a closed source browser as Vivaldi like you are doing instead?
- Privacyguides is an excellent resource, and in fact, it is often linked on the website. You might be interested in https://privacy.purchasewithpurpose.io/, which prioritises tools validated by them.
  However, it isn't meant to serve the same audience. PurchaseWithPurpose is there to make moving more digestible for the average user, while educating them on more advanced topics.

I was gonna object to having the OS be on week 9 but then I noticed almost all of these are just webapps. Weird times

Why avoid Safari if it’s one of the browsers with best privacy rating?
- While privacy may be fine, I think Apple as a company is pretty deplorable.
- It technically isn't. There are better browsers for that. That said, the ultimate goal of these guides is to move away from big tech, so it won't help going from one to the other.
  If that isn't a concern of yours, then no need to more.
  
  But I don’t get Beave that is selling user data is being recommended instead of Safari https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
- Safari isn't open source. They could in theory add a backdoor anytime and it would be more difficult to audit.
  
  WebKit is open source, Safari is just a front end for it.

What’s wrong with Safari?
- Big Tech
  Missed that part?

Bazzite is the go-to OS for Linux gaming for most new systems now. Even tech brands are promoting it.
Never heard of PopOS as a gaming distro.
- Sorry I really could have researched that category better. You aren't the first one to point it out. Will look to update.
  
  The choice of Linux distro is a major battlefield. You couldn't have gotten to any answer that wouldn't invite complaints.
  
  Just wanna say thanks for updating it, my 2c is also to add Spotify in the music section as the starting point to move away from
  
  2c
  Personally, I agree and have in the past put it in the left column. Right now I have settled for having a disclaimer against its name and might make that more prominent in the overview pages as well. https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/software/D5JUoM1dZysf7JJgTAWXy/

126 comments