My fellow pedes – with the treasonous theft of our election by big tech, fake news, corrupt corporations, and other enemies of the people, it is become clear that we are long past due for more Americans to escape the shackles of corporate spyware we’ve all been tricked into relying on.

Let me open with a warning: if you use a service that is 100% functional and 100% free, you are the product being sold. Big tech makes billions off of selling your personal information, your habits, your browsing history, and even the things you say online, to people looking to manipulate you, your family, and your friends like they did in the 2020 election cycle. As consumers, we need to break out of our “Free apps” habit and learn to value our privacy. Tech has developed so quickly its blindsinded many, and tech companies have absolutely terrifying amounts of information on people. Hell, they can even figure out your daughter is pregnant before you do.

While I know many people – both pedes and normies – that want to drop big tech, many are intimidated by the process and don’t know where to start. I’ve been free of tech sector evil for the last decade, and I’m ready to help. This is the first in a series of guides I’m going to compile that will help you dump big tech and regain at least some of your privacy online.

But first, a note:

I’m going to split this up into a few parts, starting with the easiest, fastest things you can do (like abandoning gmail), and eventually exploring the really complicated stuff, like installing a new operating system on your smartphone that blocks google’s spying.

Keep in mind that for many of these changes, you might give up a small convenience, or you may have to learn your way around a new piece of software. I may be inconvenient, but remember – this isn’t just a change for the heck of it. You are making this change to protect your privacy and freedom.

Lastly, the world of big tech is incredibly expansive. I am by no means the be-all, end-all authority, and since I’ve avoided most of big tech I may miss a popular app or service. Feel free to comment on any of this, and I’ll update this and future posts to reflect that. If people would like (and I have time), I’d be happy to do a run-down of HOW big tech spies on us as well.

So, without further ado:

PHASE 1: SCRAP OR SWAP SERVICES – DUMP GOOGLE

This will be the easiest way to at least partially get big tech out of your life – cutting out their consumer-facing services that are the primary method of data harvesting and spying on people. What will follow is a list of services, and alternatives that respect privacy and don’t sell your information – and an explanation of how they make their money.

Before I get into individual services, there is one thing you should adopt as a habit: Stop using google/facebook/twitter for signing in to other applications. Sure, tracking multiple passwords can be tougher, but when you sign in with a another company’s credential, that site will be sharing data with whichever tech company is looking to build a profile on you. Remember, nothing is free – when google provides your favorite website with a login option, they’re getting your information as payment.

• Gmail -- Protonmail https://protonmail.com/signup

Proton mail is a Switzerland-based email service whose servers are all in Switzerland, and protected by very strong privacy laws. Emails are fully encrypted, anonymous, and the entire service is open source – meaning that the code can be independently audited to ensure the company isn’t stealing your data. Best of all, protonmail has a free tier that does not spy on you, though it has some limited functionality. I pay for protonmail to use some more advanced features, but I absolutely love the service and have gotten exactly zero spam emails since starting to use it.

• Chrome Browser – Brave Browser https://brave.com/download/

If you like chrome, have no fear – brave is literally based on the open-source chromium, but strips out all of the google spyware, has an absolutely amazing built-in ad and tracking blocker, and even has built-in tor, a super-secure, 100% private way to access websites with no tracking – screwing over all the other big tech sites that love to snoop on you! What’s more, the company is run by Brendan Eich, the former firefox CEO that was booted from the company for supporting conservatives in California – so he knows exactly how important privacy is.

Instead of monetizing you with secret spyware that you can’t stop (like chrome does), Brave has a 100% voluntary, opt-in system called Brave Rewards, which serves advertisements without third-party tracking, and lets you choose which sites you send revenue to.

• Google Search – DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com/ or StartPage https://www.startpage.com/

Google search is another way google tracks everything you do, see, and think. Don’t give google your clicks, and choose one of these two search engines. DuckDuckGo’s search results are a little different than google’s, but the searches won’t censor hits for “democrats stole election” like google will. If you really like google results, use StartPage – its literally the same results, minus google’s tracking bullshit.

Both sites makemoney through ads, but they are only related to what you are searching at the moment – so they respect your privacy and don’t store a massive profile on your habits and behaviors.

• Youtube Android – Youtube Vanced https://vancedapp.com/, NewPipe https://newpipe.net/

Good news for you android users – there are TWO alternatives to youtube spying on your watching habits. YouTube vanced is just like the regular app with some major changes – tons of back-end spying is removed, and it automatically blocks video ads! Its supported by the trustworthy guys over at XDADevelopers, and I’ve been using it for years.

Newpipe takes youtube privacy to the extreme – it is a completely redesigned front-end app that lets you watch youtube videos without ads or any of google’s spying. Both apps are fully open source and extremely well made, and I highly recommend them.

• Youtube Desktop -- Freetube https://freetubeapp.io/, Bitchute https://www.bitchute.com/

Desktop youtube is a bit trickier. You have two options: the first is to install privacy-focused youtube client, Freetube. This standalone app gives you even more features than the website, without tracking and spyware from google. You can subscribe to feeds, watch videos, and the app basically acts as a wall between your habits and google’s tracking.

Alternatively, you can follow your favorite content makers on other sites, like Bitchute (another video uploading site). Bitchute currently makes money from donations, and is working with some content creators on advertising monetization. If your favorite creators aren’t on other sites, encourage them to spread out their hosting so you can watch without google!

• Google Maps – OsmAnd https://osmand.net/

Google maps are handy, but there are alternatives. The big feature you drop here is live traffic, unless you move to another big-tech product. However, OsmAnd is gorgeous, has downloadable maps for offline navigation, trip recording, taking notes for places of interest, and is completely open-source and community run. It makes money not by tracking every step you take (check out some horror stories about google/apple tracking people through maps), but through a subscription service for hourly map updates and donations. I HIGHLY recommend it, and absolutely love it – and its worth maybe losing ten minutes in traffic once a week.

• Google Drive – Portable Hard Drives, Sync https://www.sync.com/pricing-individual/, Nextcloud (Coming in the advanced writeup, this isn’t easy)

Google drive is a very hard thing to swap out of. Storage is expensive, and free options will always, always spy on you in some way. Even popular alternatives like dropbox edit your images with pixel tags to track them and promote their services.

There are three big alternatives. The first, for anyone that just needs to back up data, is a portable hard drive. There are tons of options from the WD My Passport to the LaCie RAID Shuttle across a dozen price points, but they all work the same way – you plug the device into your computer, and it copes the files you want to back up to itself. If your computer fails, the portable hard drive has a copy of your files.

The second option is using a (mostly) paid service, and Sync comes the most highly recommended. Their starter plan gives you just 5GB for free, but their paid plans are still cheap – just $5/month for 200gb or $8/month for 2 terabytes of storage. They have an extremely clear privacy policy that limits any sort of tracking to processing payments and making the service work. I’ve used sync before and absolutely recommend it!

Finally, the last option – and one that is too complex to cover in this starter guide -- is setting up your own server using nextcloud. Nextcloud is free, extremely powerful, and runs on your own hardware, but requires you to set up a home server. This process will be covered later, but if you’re curious check it out at https://nextcloud.com/. There are even some paid setups for nextcloud, if you’re interested, but I prefer the control self-hosting.

• Google Docs/MS Office: OnlyOffice https://www.onlyoffice.com/en/desktop.aspx

Another tough replacement is the office suite. OnlyOffice is an amazing, open-source document editor that is free to use on desktop or mobile, but requires effort or money to get running in the cloud. On the bright side, their cloud service is as cheap as $2/month (or free, if you set up nextcloud above!), so there are multiple options for getting this running. There is also a 180-day free trial of the online suite, so its worth checking out.

• Google Assistant: THIS IS A LITERAL WIRETAP.

Do not ever let one of these “virtual assistants” run in your home, they are actual wiretaps. No matter what promises are made, companies will use them to spy on you, and they literally pay thousands of people to listen to your private conversations.

Not commercial product in this product category has even been good, safe, or privacy respecting, and likely they never will be because the temptation of spying on you while you pay for it is just too juicy for the tech oligarchy.

• Nest: WIRETAP Part 2, dump it too.

If a company adds “smart” to the name of a normal device, odds are they’re trying to find dumb people to use is. Nest is owned by google, and surprise, its got a built-in secret wiretap that google promises they won’t use to spy on you. https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-says-secret-microphones-in-nest-home-products-an-error/

Do not trust smart devices, do not trust the companies that sell them. These are real-life spyware, and you should get rid of ALL of them. Speaking of which, Amazon owns Ring video doorbell, so toss that shit to the floor alongside your amazon prime subscription. More on this in a future segment.

Next up – non-google services including Twitter, Reddit, Twitch.tv, Discord, Facebook, all the image-sharing social media sites, Whatsapp, and Amazon. I'd add more here but I'm about to hit the word limit. Suggestions are welcome on everything from alternatives, to the formatting of the post, to anything I may have missed. I’ll edit as necessary.

I hope this helps all of you, keep the faith and keep fighting -- as long as we are able to resist, the battle continues.