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#demeta
Wow! I think what I thought was previously impossible seems to have the best chance of success in a long time - getting my family and friends from Whatsapp to Signal! Up until now things are looking great!
The free PR for Signal by the White House 
, compared with an upsurge in antipathy toward any company associating themselves with the crazies there (and I feel generally rising anti-Americanism, I am sorry to say my US friends, hold on over there 
) has opened a real window of opportunity here.
If you are looking to get people in your life away from Meta, this might be the chance.
De-Google and De-Meta yourself. Free yourself from the algorithm.
For those looking for alternatives to the Big Tech services they are used to, these are two resources I often consult:
https://european-alternatives.eu/
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
and they are both on Mastodon!
@european_alternatives @privacyguides
@bitboxer Don't think that they have the same goal but still. I don't want to be on their lists anymore. #degoogle #demeta #deamazone #deusa for what it is worth.
@Helga_Jannelle I'm working on it... Just too many friends and family on Facebook. Although, I have deleted it from my phone for quite a while now, and it turns out that I really don't check it very often on my computer. So maybe I just need to bite the bullet, write a "ask me for contact info in the next 30 days, before I delete my account" post, and call it good.
I am—and have been for a while—going through the process of #demeta and #degoogle my life as much as I can. For reasons too numerous to mention, but you‘ll be able to think of the main ones. An appraisal, so far…
Stopped using #Facebook years ago but have finally deleted all posts, photos, likes, follows, and interactions I ever had on there (going back to 2007). Batch delete was hardly “batch” so this was laborious (and I know delete isn't really delete but it felt good to see stuff disappear!)
Deleted all of my photos from #Instagram. Now I just use #Pixelfed. On my phone, I use the @impressia app. The next step is to run my own, single-user instance on a #RaspberryPi at home (as I do with Mastodon) and get off pixelfed.social
#WhatsApp is tricky. I'm in groups where I know I have no chance of converting everyone to an alternative platform. Cutting myself off from the herd (of IRL friends) isn't an option. Will reluctantly live with this for the time being.
Don’t use Messenger; never used Threads.
Switched from Google to #DuckDuckGo for search on all devices. Deleted search history in Google account.
Migrated mail and calendar from Google to @fastmail. I was briefly considering either self-hosting with #Citadel or using #iCloud Mail, but Fastmail was the better option for me. Very pleased so far; thanks to @tekphloyd for sending me in the right direction!
Switched from Google Authenticator to @ente Auth for #2FA
Switched from Google Maps to Apple Maps.
No longer using Google Analytics on any personal sites; currently trialling @Matomo which is #FOSS and self-hosted.
No longer using Google Fonts on any personal sites.
Removed Google’s Gboard as the software keyboard on iPhone; now using the Grammarly keyboard.
Deleted a bunch of old Gmail accounts that hadn't been used in ages. Now using masked email addresses, so don't need these kinds of accounts now.
Don’t use Chrome, only Safari.
iOS since the beginning of smartphones; never used Android.
Already using iCloud+ for photo library sync and any file cloud storage/mirroring; no need for Google Photos or Drive.
Still old school MS Word/Excel for me, so don't use Google Docs.
I don't upload video but I do watch a lot on #YouTube and—as with WhatsApp—I‘m not willing to cut myself off; no current viable alternative.
My #SmartHome setup has quite a lot of Google: home wifi mesh and voice assistant, plus #Nest cameras, doorbell, and thermostat. Hmm. TBD.
…
And of course I left the bird site in the great migration of Nov ‘22 and came here. As of 2024, I’m self-hosted so my data physically lives in my home office on a #RPi with full and incremental backups running to an external disk. Planning to upgrade from SD card to SSD in 2025.
Happy with my progress so far! 
N.B. I have my reasons for not completely deleting some of the above accounts; they will remain dormant.
First a share from one of my favorite cameras of all time. The Lumix g9 , a micro four thirds camera! It takes great photos of film cameras!
#demeta #lumix #photography #helloworld