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mastodon.ar.al is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
This is my personal fediverse server.

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Eyal 🦉

@aral Congrats! my only issue is google photos and drive, tried to replace it with syncthing, but it's not there yet

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Aemon Targaryen

@Eyal @aral

We should tag our privacy (aka freedom) with a little higher price, don't you think?

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Eyal 🦉

@aemon @aral how high? Sometimes I prefer to wear an hat and sunglasses and give up some data, user experience is not on our side you know, it’s dam hard to avoid data sharing

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Aemon Targaryen

@Eyal @aral

I don't think Google Photos and Drive serve such crucial and particularly irreplaceable services, at least not to the extent of not being able to leave Google.

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TheGnuMaster 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪

@Eyal @aral
I have the same issue with Google Photos. I have terabytes of videos.

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Christian :psyduck:

@aral
>I deleted my whole freaking Google account

Holy crap. You are a braver person than I

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Marko Saric

@aral wow nice! what a start to the new year!

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Aral Balkan

@amirrajan I haven’t been using Google’s products for a long time now (except, rarely, to peek at their search results on a private browser session to see how they compare to my main engine, DuckDuckGo). Nothing they make is irreplaceable.

I use a variety of different products and services. E.g., Fastmail for email, Wire/Signal for private communication, native calendaring apps across Linux and iOS/Mac via the iCal standard via iCloud (also see NextCloud), etc.

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Infected Moomin
@aral follow me back, I converted my site from gnu social to Pleroma using voodoo magic, but lost all my followers
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aab
@moonman @aral I'm following you from GS and I still can see all your posts :)
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Aral Balkan

@moonman Looks like I’m still following you :)

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noorul
@aral @amirrajan

I join you, it's over a few years I've moved out from Google except hosting android app on Play store,
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Amir Rajan

@aral cool. I’ll check out fast mail thanks 🎉

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noorul
Amir,

You can check out Riseup.net and ProtonMail.

Free and secure.

Feeling adventure ? Setup your own Email server on a VPS

@amirrajan @aral
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njoseph :fbx:

@aral Congrats!
I've taken a full backup and stopped using my Google account like 6 months ago but didn't delete it.

In case of Facebook, I kept my account unused for 4 long years before I finally deleted it.

I think I'll let at least a whole year pass for my Google account too to really make sure that I don't need it for anything. I've deactivated everything except Gmail already. Letting go of all the purchased Android apps was a bit painful though.

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SKANARCHO-SYNDICALISM

@aral dont you need a google account for android to work? its been a while but i thought it did

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Shit
@frickhaditcoming @aral only to use the google play store. but theire are other store apps
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Sir Garbagetruck

@frickhaditcoming @aral Not if you never install the google application underpinnings.

When you install one of the various android opensource replacements (which, admittedly, is not the easiest thing to do with some phones/tablets) you have the option to never install the google cruft.

fdroid provides a decent number of applications which don't need it.

And the devices run faster.

I am NOT sure you can get away from the overall tracking of the device/where you are. That is external data.

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spelk

@aral Well done Sir!

I've been retreating from Google for over a year now, but my issue is that I have a fair amount of content (films, books mainly) tied up in their systems & require an account to access it.

I suppose it will come to a point where the costs & my impulse to use the content over time, will weigh against my ethical & privacy/security concerns enough to force me to leave the content behind and move on.

Theres not a viable way to salvage the content from the invasive DRM sadly.

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Tykayn

@aral short amount of time might be forever :D

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Reda Lemeden

@aral Lovely. The only reason I’m keeping my Google account around is YouTube.

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TheGnuMaster 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪

@kaishin @aral
Wish more people were switching to PeerTube and Dtube.

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