A great resource that makes it quick and easy to find alternatives to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe and many more.
They promote Ubuntu-based distros, which cannot be trusted anymore, and they forget to mention Fedora as a better alternative.
Here is why you shouldn’t use Ubuntu:
Canonical’s Ubuntu is not recommended because it contains Amazon ads and data leaks by default. GNU/Linux distributions based on Ubuntu are also currently not recommended due to several other reasons.
Source: https://prism-break.org/en/subcategories/gnu-linux-operating-systems/
Is that still true? The article/github thread cited on Prism Break are from 2012 and 2013 respectively. It seems only to be true of Ubuntu 12.10. The only thing I can from from current Ubuntu versions is the ad in the command line when doing an apt upgrade, and that is from 2022. It does not appear to exist in other Ubuntu based distros since it is an ad for Ubuntu Pro. Not saying it is great, but it seems like non-Canonical distros should be OK.
Adobe {product name} -> Cracked Adobe {product name}
Lemmy isn’t listed as a Reddit alternative. I wonder why that is.
They are also recommending PrivacyTools.io, which had a nasty takeover and started selling ad space. Privacy Guides is the better site.
privacytools.io always was shit show even before the infighting. They put their own endorsement site on Cloudflare. Despite a collossal pile of dirt emerging on #Signal:
https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/issues/779
PTIO continued endorsing Signal non-stop, refusing to disclose the issues. That was also before the breakup. Dirt was routinely exposed on PTIO endorsements and it never changed their endorsement nor did they reveal the findings on their website.
Now both factions are hypocrits just as they were when they were united. The original PTIO site is back to being Cloudflared (nothing like tossing people coming to you for privacy advice into the walled garden of one of the most harmful privacy offenders), and Privacy Guides has setup on a CF’d Lemmy node. The hypocrisy has no end with these people.
While this seems like a decent starting point I’ve got a few issues with this list. As others have mentioned there is little in the way of justification for these suggestions, and while I happen to agree with plenty of them, I’d personally like to see more reasoning, if not to appease people that already have opinions then to help newer users understand their options.
On the topic of newer users I think an aggregate list like this should include a basic rundown on what adoption/migration/onboarding looks like for these services. Demystifying that process can lift a lot of the perceived weight non-“power users” might feel when faced with the leap from corporate platforms.
Overall I think this is a good resource, and at least gives people some starting points, but it’s not without its flaws.
For political issues, you should petition governments directly on issues.
Not sure if this is a great alternative. This is a thing that is totally dependent from country to country. In my country, there is no such platform that I’m aware of (on the local or national level at least. Ok, I may petition the EU, but they may just have no responsibility into my matters).
Many institutions do have email addresses though, and if, for example, you have a website, you can write an email template and point to an institution where people could send that email. Even that I don’t know how feasible it could be, but it could be more doable in more parts of the world, I think.
Otherwise, for Romania there is declic.ro, a platform owned by an NGO who relies solely on donations to run it, and also runs its own campaigns.
