I am a phone scroller and social media reader and a YouTube watcher. My phone and by extension my Google account are my mobile office. I regret having to buy an Apple Mac Mini but I am not giving up Logic as my DAW. I got away from overpriced Samsung devices a few years ago and have a fairly bloat-free Motorola. Now I want to dump the Google ecosystem. I intend to download all of my pics and files from Drive and the Google cloud. I am not so tech savvy that I can install APKs or switch to Linux, and I’d like to watch video streamers that aren’t saturated in developer links (seriously, why do y’all do this?..just put one simple link to “Developer Info” or something and put all the other links there). I want to use and enjoy the net like any idiot would but without being The Product. I am Lemmy over Reddit (though you both ban me from subs with equal ferver); MeWe over Facebook (though MeWe is moving towards an unprivate model now); Mastodon over Xittstain. I have a ProtonMail account, but mainly for registrations…I have had a Gmail account since Earthlink took a nosedive.

What/who else is out there for me to frequent and replace all the corporatist models?in the past I tried Minds (all Nazis all the time!) and Ello (socmed for creative types, yet still looks like a shitty 1970’s mimeographed zine). I also spent a couple of years at one called MyBetzCo that started out okay but died because none of the members would make public posts for interacting with others.

What do you recommend for private/decentralizwd clouds, socmeds or media sites?

  • casualhippo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    28·
    1 year ago

    For a Google drive alternative I’ve heard of nextcloud but haven’t looked into it. For staying in touch with news articles, etc you could look into RSS readers and subscribe to RSS feeds from publications online. For a Google alternative, duckduckgo can handle your search needs. I opted to sail the high seas rather than subscribe to multiple streaming services, but I haven’t found a YouTube replacement

    I know you mentioned you weren’t super tech savvy, but check out some of the stuff on the https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ list. Not everything there actually needs to be self hosted or set up in any complex way.