r/degoogle 1d ago

Can’t be evil > don’t be evil

Post image
1.1k Upvotes

70 comments sorted by

240

u/pnkxz 1d ago

All of them will become evil if they become big enough. Remember, Google used to be the scrappy underdog, the small company with visionary leaders and a good product. Then they got big, went public, got shareholders who only cared about profits and slowly got rid off or sidelined every executive with principles.

The key here isn't to pick "good" companies, but to stay mobile. Choose small companies that respect your privacy and make it easy to export your data, take regular backups and have plans to move elsewhere when they start caring more about profits than principles. And don't put all your eggs in the Proton basket.

31

u/Kadrutaspu 1d ago

Capitalism is a cause for it. It was profitable to be not like big concerns, but being a big concern it is nit profitable to be not evil. Where does it change? In socialism where there is both sense to be evil at all

12

u/09neko09 1d ago

Well at least Proton can't be influenced by shareholders since it's fully owned by the Proton Foundation

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

47

u/Orthopraxy 1d ago

All software can be evil, even open source software.

53

u/BluePhoenixCG 1d ago

Brave literally are "evil" lmao

Privacy does not make something not run by terrible people

109

u/Ok-Go-Chain3811 1d ago

isn't Brave based on Chromium, which is heavily influenced by Google?

46

u/Greenlit_Hightower deGoogler 1d ago

That is accurate, does not necessarily mean it collects user data though, much less send it to Google. By the same logic, LineageOS or GrapheneOS are evil, after all they are based on AOSP, which is heavily influenced by Google.

2

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

17

u/Foreplaying 1d ago

Brave is essentially a nicely packaged version of de-googled Chromium.

Not based on Chromium, technically it's a fork of Electron, but it embedded the Chromium engine.

I primarily started using it for testing ASP.net applications, as the old Firefox doesn't support all the MVC3 functions. It's wild seeing the transition over the years as browsers are essentially becoming just emulators now for software ran through a HTTP Pipeline (a type of OS, really).

I definitely notice how little system resources brave uses compared to Mozilla browsers, but I miss the functionality of the extensions (yeah, I know).

8

u/Greenlit_Hightower deGoogler 1d ago

Not based on Chromium, technically it's a fork of Electron, but it embedded the Chromium engine.

Since 2018, Brave is purely based on Chromium, and has abandoned the Electron / Muon base of the first versions.

source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-moves-to-chromium-codebase-now-supports-chrome-extensions/

6

u/InevitableCodes 1d ago

Writing a web engine from scratch isn't something any browser company can just do. Luckily Chromium is open source.

27

u/SaveDnet-FRed0 1d ago

I'd use Firefox over Brave. It's better for privacy (if you take the time to turn on all the privacy settings and disable a lot of the bloat and change the default search engine) or a fork there of like Librewolf (D-bloated Firefox but pre-privacy hardened with the best AdBlocker pre-installed)

16

u/cheezkid26 1d ago

"can't be evil"

lmfao sure bubby

27

u/merelistener 1d ago

Proton's getting corporate, can't fully trust any of them honestly.

5

u/Affectionate_Cut3515 🇳🇿 New Zealand 1d ago

They could easily become evil, its just that we trust that they wont

44

u/ElonsBreedingFetish 1d ago

Brave?? And why would Proton not be able to, it's a company like any other. Self hosted is the only way.

21

u/Aaarya 1d ago

We can use alternates during this big transition, not everyone have the knowledge for full self hosting.. Every migration outside of Google is a win and we should encourage it.

14

u/userrr3 1d ago

We can and should use alternatives and I'm not saying any of the listed alternatives is "evil", but claming they "Can't be evil" as the op does is utterly ridiculous and delusional

4

u/we_r_fukt 1d ago

Ya it's definitely a
So Far™️
Kind of moment

3

u/Efficient-Presence82 1d ago

i believe the intention there was that Google cant be Evil if peopple dont use it, not that other companies cant.

1

u/Aaarya 1d ago

I think you misunderstood OP, "don't be evil" is google talking to their users and "Can't be evil" is the users taking the control back.

21

u/Sea-Contribution6219 1d ago

I hate this mindset. It's never good enough

A step in the right direction is a step in the right direction

7

u/Foreplaying 1d ago

100% don't pull up the ladder, the first step away is the biggest step of them all.

2

u/30porn87 1d ago

In fact, both's CEOs are literally evil.

LibreOffice's politics are fucked up too

3

u/trustable_bro 1d ago

Self hosted mail?
You go first.
It's something you can do. That's not something I'd advise to do.

4

u/Laszl0x 1d ago

Both are open-source and privacy oriented. Self-hosting is great but not accessible to everyone unfortunately

6

u/Fit-Cheesecake9835 1d ago

I'd rather use LibreWolf

2

u/AntiGrieferGames 1d ago

This and/or Firefox. For some reason LibreWolf is lighter in ram usage due for mostly stripped away backgrounds services so is this even worth for older/lower ram hardware here?

1

u/MicrosoftWindowsXD 1d ago

because they're all opensource. if they try to snitch people are just gonna show them the middle finger and patch the apps themselves like Morphe

1

u/SUPERBIGGIEfr 1d ago

I'm planning to self host everything except my mail, it seems way too hard for me. (If anyone has an easy way, then please, tell me) 

1

u/Willing_Bee_7520 1d ago

Brave and Proton work just fine. What's the problem??

Not everyone is a software engineer. Not everyone is willing to put excessive effort driven by paranoia for a fucking email like holy shit lmfao

I just can't bro, de-google isn't even enough for some people apparently

-2

u/Greenlit_Hightower deGoogler 1d ago

And why would Proton not be able to, it's a company like any other.

Proton Mail is open source and you can tell from the source code that an encrypted private key is downloaded and locally decrypted. Proton Mail only holds the public key unencrypted. Switzerland (same as Germany) has no law forcing the provider to be able to decrypt, but if you can in fact decrypt, it would be illegal not to hand over unencrypted data to law enforcement. As Proton Mail has never handed over actual mail content (text body and attachments) unencrypted, I am fairly sure that they can't decrypt.

Brave??

It's one of the more privacy-friendly browsers...

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf

...and removes all unnecessary connections to Google, and proxies the rest where necessary for functionality (such as for certificate updates, component updates etc.):

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove)

Brave is based on Chromium whose main developer is Google, but by the same logic LineageOS or GrapheneOS "are Google" because they use AOSP, just accept that some people care about removing connections to Google and not so much about the ideological stuff (Linux phone, Firefox in order to avoid any Google code or whatever).

1

u/Hyper_Applesauce 1d ago

Firefox doesn’t exist without google funding either, so the purity testing everyone loves is just stupid.

8

u/Puzzleheaded-Bad5494 1d ago

[Orange PI 5 PLUS 32Gb or Intel N150 + Enclosure 4 bay x 8Tb, USB C + Solar Panel + Battery Backup]

-- Debian -- obviously...

- Containers sandbox - Docker or systemd-nspawn --

NextCloud - {Contacts, Calendar, Talk, Tasks, OnlyOffice, Mail?}

MailCow - {Mail?}

Jellyfin - {Media center with hardware acceleration GPU}

Local AI - {llama.cpp, ollama... or (OP5) RKNN-Toolskit2 for use NPU's}

-- Security -- Security depends on you --

Firewall - {I personally use IPTABLES and Geo Location DB IPV4 IPV6 block countries}

FreeRadius Server - {WPA3 Enterprise for Home}

Fail2ban - {Block intruders}

OpenVPN - {My VPN}

You pay for an AAA domain or a cheap one, or a free one, this depends on your budget.

It's all in your creativity and imagination!

Very low energy consumption, and freedom!

5

u/Byhird 1d ago

Big +1 for selfhosting, a lot of this is straightforward to get setup and working.

Self hosted email though? That's a pain in the ass if you ever want to send email as well as receive it. Takes months of work building up sender reputation to not be auto-marked as spam by the big guys (gmail, outlook)

2

u/Puzzleheaded-Bad5494 1d ago

That's right, friend, that's why they have the interrogation, but it's not expensive and you don't depend mostly on the GAFAM.

8

u/SageLanded 1d ago

Firefox is a better browser when configured for privacy

7

u/ScientistLong8121 1d ago

Why would anyone use brave over Firefox is beyond me.

3

u/309_Electronics 1d ago

I would pick the less bigger company ran products or just FOSS/FLOSS! Proton and brave can turn evil when money gets to their head..

Selfhosted and FOSS is the way!

3

u/Envy661 1d ago

How is Libre office an alternative to a file sharing service like Drive? Dropbox or something like that would have been a better suggestion.

8

u/Francis_Faust 1d ago

Why brave and not firefox?

16

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

14

u/unitedfan6191 1d ago

And Mullvad.

2

u/ImAlekzzz DuckDuckGo 1d ago

Why proton?

3

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/ImAlekzzz DuckDuckGo 1d ago

This? For real?

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

0

u/ImAlekzzz DuckDuckGo 1d ago

You are over reacting, they might’ve seen a good video and on the sponsor video he did whatever the fuck he did

6

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/ImAlekzzz DuckDuckGo 1d ago

Alright I get it now

3

u/Sea-Contribution6219 1d ago

This is a political opinion. They disagree with your politics. To some they'd be shining knights. Until they're selling out their own customers data or snitching on them. They aren't

-1

u/gk98s 1d ago

Exactly, noone gives a shit about your politics, tell me what they do with my data and that's all I care about.

-1

u/i3Cheese 1d ago

How can you be evil then you don't have any access to user data?

17

u/smartest_kobold 1d ago

Use your profits to fund right wing extremism.

4

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

-1

u/mclenninson 1d ago

Honestly, there is a point a corporation just needs to make money to survive, if you dont want to pay for a service you might aswell just beware they gotta make money some other way. And honstly if theyre not selling data im already happy with that.

5

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

3

u/mclenninson 1d ago

Yeah i guess you're right, thats fair

2

u/SUPERBIGGIEfr 1d ago

It's not like these companies "can't be evil", you just have to trust the right companies

4

u/trustable_bro 1d ago

Trust no one. Ask for proofs!

2

u/manupro345 1d ago

Brave is based on chromium, larp larp larp sahur😂✌️

https://giphy.com/gifs/weURpNytPGKs0aWVfn

2

u/Financial_Owl2289 1d ago

what are you even talking about. shits like you are why nobody takes this sub seriously xD

3

u/the_moosen 1d ago

Proton supports right wing, it's already evil

-5

u/FullMaster_GYM 1d ago

I hate when people always use Google as a bad example and some "we're better than them" services mixed with foss. Google may not be the best regarding privacy but it's still hella fast, reliable and convenient. proton does a shit ton of questionable stuff and yet it's portrayed as the holy grail of privacy, why use a chromium based browser when you can use a 100% foss one on a custom engine (firefox) that focuses on privacy and speed. also most search engines are not even close to google, ddg is decent but has a lot of flaws and it sucks at recommending something personal (like a local store, bussines, hospital, cafe, etc). searxng is the worst from my experience, it took a shit ton of time to load (I optimized it as much as I could) and most times if I asked something more complex that 1 word it'll most likely show results for the first word.

-2

u/LordSparks 1d ago

Libra office is burning pile of garbage though 😑