I started a 5-week degoogle challenge Signal group.
The group is free…and already has 45 members ready to go next week when we officially start! We’ll follow the checklist here. It will be a casual group for accountability and support.
I can help based on my experiences, we can all support each other, and we have at least 1-2 advanced techie people who can answer more complicated questions.
Please join, and tell your friends! Next week I’ll post an official welcome and resources…and we’ll get started.
If it goes well, I can either start another one and/move to de-Amazon, Meta, Apple, whatever.
(Also, if anyone wants to repost this in r/privacy on Reddit, please do! I apparently don’t have enough karma to post there.)
The only irreplaceable thing Google has is YouTube.
Already degoogled but nice thing you guys got going on. Consider making this a megathread or something
Thank you! You think I should create a degoogling megathread in /privacy? (Sorry, I’m new.)
Sounds like a great idea. It will be publicly indexible if people search it online. They’ll see lemmy results instead of reddit. And, you can link comments to your Signal group. I don’t see a downside
Hmm, the order of those steps is a little weird. I would expect disabling ad tracking and such to be first. I also think it’s odd that SMS wasn’t mentioned, is this an iPhone guide?
Agreed. Week 2, switching browser and search is a couple steps and seems like a good on-ramp to build momentum. Week 1, switching email and calendar is several steps per step and requires some consideration and even paying into a new service.
I can’t remember, but I think I wanted to be sure anti-tracker extensions was after installing a new browser…otherwise you’d double your work. This is not an iPhone guide; later in the course we talk about getting a privacy-forward phone OS.
I’ve already left most of that. But I still have an Android phone that can’t survive without most of that.
NFC payments, wearables.
Getting rid of my custom domain workspace OAuth is a freaking nightmare.
Sounds like you are a lot more advanved than me!
I already joined it, maybe I will help someone or learn something new
Thank you!
You should switch Organic Maps for CoMaps in the checklist.
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Thanks for your comment! I’m fairly new at this myself…I started degoogling, etc. maybe 2-3 years ago.
If it helps, this article has info on a service that lets you buy throwaway numbers for verifying accounts. I used it once and it worked, and cost only a couple bucks: How to Verify an Account Without Using Your Real Phone Number
I think you only need your number to verify Signal, right? If that’s the case, this could work. (Or can you use your MySudo number?) I hope it helps, and hope to see you in the group!
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I closed it yesterday so we’re all starting in the same place. If you give me your signal handle I can add you manually!
Think im ahead of the curve on this one, but I applaud you! keep doing it.
Appreciate it! If this goes well I might do a de-Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, or something else…or run this one again.
I’m late to this party so can’t play, but thank you for posting this!
I suggest to explain what " 5-week degoogle challenge" actually mean.
Does it mean people who join have 5 weeks to remove Google from their lives? If so how?
Hi there! We’ll be following the checklist I linked to in the main post. It will be very casual, and we’ll all just do the best we can!
