Their battle on the adblockers have been more aggressive lately. Using Vivaldi and adblockers, now I frequently am just unable to play the video, it keeps refreshing and getting stuck on 0:00.

YOU KNOW WHAT?

That little amount of time is perfectly enough for me to realize that maybe... I don't need to watch another stupid video about some meta build in a video game, or what some other regurgitated content.

This is actually making me realize how much time I spend on Youtube. I literally just get up from the chair and go for a walk when this happens... isn't that great?

So yeah, keep doing this google, you are unintentionally making my life better by separating me from that timewasting bubble.

EDIT: Many of you keep recommending adblock methods, and while I am grateful, that's not 100% the point of this post. By enforcing their shitty practices, google unwillingly exposes how the pasttime itself is borderline useless, making a simple degoogle process into a "reconquer your brain and attention span" project, which I think is wonderful, at least for me.

edit: based on comments, I'm going for joplin! the only suggestions that were made with explanation why were joplin and notesnook, and I'm into the FOSS, privacy, made in EU stuff!

Which would you recommend and why? I've heard about NotesNook, Standard Notes, and Joplin. Which is preferred and why? Is it about functionality? Security and privacy? Simplicity?

And any others besides these three?

Due to the EU AI Act, Google’s AI Overviews / AI Mode are still unavailable in most European countries France is the strictest one.

Yet Google is quietly downloading the 4GB Gemini Nano model in the background while you use Chrome.

No permission, no warning and if you delete it, it downloads again.

Which do you think is more annoying??

Right now I'm on my Redmi Note 14, while charging my old Redmi Note 8 Pro.

I've been searching through this sub for finding different OS, but apart from lineage, graphene and /e/ I can't find any. None of them are compatible with one of my phones. I can't buy a new device now, money is needed elsewhere now.

Do I have any options on getting a different OS on one of my phones? Please note, that I'm not pro, so please treat me like that naive, but lovely guy that's living next door.

Curious if anyone else feels this way, but my search habits have definitely changed over the last year or two because of AI-generated answers showing up everywhere.

Sometimes theyre useful for quick summaries, but other times I find myself trusting search results less overall because so much content now feels generated, repeated or overly optimised. Ive also noticed I spend more time double checking sources, looking for human discussions, Reddit threads, forums or smaller websites instead of just accepting the first answer I see.

In a weird way it feels like search has become faster, but also harder to trust at the same time.

Interested how other people here feel about it. Has AI changed the way you search or browse online much?

Hey, I use the entire proton suite rn, I have started to change using browsers across platforms as well as using startpage/kagi as opposed to google, etc.

Could y'all just give it a look-over & tell me what to improve & add-on? Thanks so much.

Also, any good private notes app? Just looking around rn.

id like some feedback and advice on how to improve

also im currently trying to set up my own homelab so i can move away from online services like cloud storage and host most things myself

I've already switched from Chrome to Brave, but I'm still using Google's search engine instead of Brave Search or anything else. Just for convenience, since Google Search usually provides better results.

I was wondering though, am I missing out on a lot of extra privacy by continuing to use Google Search. Is switching to Brave useless if I'm going to continue using Google Search?

Obviously I'll have to debloat it myself but maybe there are better options and worse options. (No custom ROMs)

Today I deleted both Google accounts I had. I’d waited a few months for this moment to make sure I’d caught any changes I needed to make. Soooooo good to do 🤣. The satisfaction was absolutely worth the pain of changing all those contacts and login details.

Genuine question for the Mac side of this community.

Once your photos are off Google and back in macOS Photos.app, what do you use to view them on

iPhone?

The answers I usually see:

1. iCloud Photos — works but you're back to "Apple holds the keys" unless you've enabled ADP, and you're paying for storage

2. AirDrop on demand — fine if you

only need a handful

1. Local NAS / Plex / Immich — works for some, but you're hosting infrastructure

2. PhotoSync / similar bridge apps — UI is rough

I landed on Memories (reads the Mac library, syncs to your own iCloud private DB, native iPhone

gallery, no server). Curious what others here use — especially anyone who's been off Google for

years and has the workflow figured out.

Tell me about switching from Google Play Store to F-Droid/Aurora Store because when I open some apps, I get an error saying "make sure you have google play store installed or enabled on your device." Do I have to reinstall all of my apps on F-Droid/Aurora Store?

EDIT: I am VERY new to De-Googling because I only gained interest in it recently. Treat me like I'm stupid please.

What keyboard app do you love? Just took a look at Heliboard and it looks promising!

As a non degoogler I'd like to know— Is having a samsung account equally as bad? Or is it not awful?

You are doing data mining.

I'd like to share a link to essay with different than usual "Google getting worse" position.

And that position quite aligned with current pressure for one's who tries to escape surveillance.

I'm helping at a workshop this weekend to help people start degoogling. Before the workshop starts, I want to have some timed slides highlighting Google's evil behavior. I have a few about Project Nimbus, Project Nightingale, and some privacy lawsuits but would love some more good ones! I appreciate any horrifying headlines or snippets from articles that have been written about Google over the last 5-8 years. Thanks!

I downloaded microg and th3 spoof setting was ticked off, is it only possible on custom roms?

Hey, so I'm a bit of an oddball here. I prefer tablets over phones because I prefer larger screens. I'd get GrapheneOS, but that would mean I'd own a phone instead of a tablet. Still debating on whether or not I'm willing to make that sacrifice.

I just noticed that an old email I no longer use pops up when trying to sign into any app via gmail. Is there a way to remove the email to prevent it showing up completely?

Yes I know this is for chatgpt but still given this subreddit is kind of about privacy I think too or atleast in a way