Ditch Big Tech: A Guide to Privacy-First Alternatives

So since all this craziness have started with billionaires trying to take full control of the world. I guess it’s not really anything new. I’ve had this thought for a long time. I left Facebook several years ago. I left Twitter soon after that, even before Elon Musk took over.

Now, billionaires with the help from Trump, plan to control the narrative fully. They also aim for mass surveillance with suspicious AI projects. It’s clear that one way we can fight back is to stop using these billionaires’ products.

Meaning leaving social media sites like Instagram, X, and TikTok. The narrative on these platforms is controlled by the tech bros aka. the broligarchs. Stop using operating systems from companies like Microsoft, Apple, or Google. They plan to bundle AIs on these OS’s to track everything you do. Stop using services owned by these crocks, like Google Search, ChatGPT, iCloud, Office 365id, Starlink etc.

So what’s the plan? Well I already left the social media sites owned by these mafia guys. I’m going to try out Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows. I will keep the iPhone for now, but definitely have Apple Intelligence and Siri turned off. I will switch out the iCloud services to privacy oriented services instead and that is cross platform. Long term plan is to move over to a Degoogled Android phone.

I will avoid Google Search and use Brave search and browser instead.

I intend to avoid online AIs and use local LLMs as much as possible. However, sometimes an online AI is needed because they are more capable than local LLMs. When that happens, I will try to pick the least big tech AI service. Long term I will try to create a self-hosted open source AI.

Encrypted storage service or self-hosted. Proton Drive is what I will go with to start with and evaluate. I have been using Proton Mail and VPN for a few years now.

I’m going to replace Google Login for each service at the next login to that service. Instead, use the service default login option. Choose the most privacy-friendly option they have. In the worst case, stop using that service and find another.

So that’s the general plan. I might make more posts about this. These will contain more in-depth details about a particular part of the journey and update you on how it’s going. I also hope that this post will get you started on leaving big tech as well.

Ps. I don’t dream of getting a Tesla anymore.