this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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I trust this as much as I trust big American tech platforms.
Considering how much damage Google et al do, I legitimately wonder whether China could even do worse, and I’m not even a tankie.
Don't fall for the proximity bias, china is decades ahead on surveillance and stepping on personal rights. They act as a hive. They care more for what they believe that are they nationals and may look harmless to us non-chinese... but i do fear them.
In any case, I dont see them pressing a button to launch swarms of AI commanded drones to kill every person on a partially AI generated list that they probably already have in their hands, right now... i leave that dystopia to israel alone.
Flock is selling drones in the US.
The racial make-up of the prison population suggests that the lead is not that big.
Not terribly interested in this video platform as I also don’t use YouTube. I really hope Google gets broken up and I don’t like them harvesting my data and selling it to the US Government any more than I like companies like Bytedance selling my data to the Chinese Government. I am in the US and think we should have established data privacy and data protection laws long before things got to the point they have gotten too.
How do you do that? I would love to be able to avoid YouTube. I could go without the entertainment part of it, sure. But no more tutorials would already be a big pain. And then there are the news sites with embedded videos. Even the state uses it.
YouTube has single handedly almost nullified my degoogling project
At this point it should be claimed by the state and turned into a public utility...
If I have a project, I often prefer to read up on how to accomplish the task, such as going to blog posts or getting to the source documentation. If that is not possible, I use yewtu.be (it can be slow to load just FYI). There is also PeerTube, but it doesn’t have as much content. Lastly, there is FreeTube, which is built on YouTubes API and gives them revenue in some way, but doesn’t have ads. It doesn’t allow Google to learn your behavior or target you for ads. I also use a VPN (with DNS protection enabled) when loading anything. If you’re degoogling (as I and many have done), one other item I hear people say they have difficulty dropping is Google Maps. I know you didn’t ask about it, but just to add, other options exist, such as Open Street Maps (OSM), Organic Maps, CoMaps, Magic Earth (I think may be built on Google Maps API, but not entirely sure), and Kagi (I’m fairly sure it uses Apple Maps and Google Maps API). Also, I have just started looking into FlockHopper, but I’m not sure what it is built on, I think OSM and MapBox (not sure if I have that right), but I’m not sure. Also MapQuest still exists.
Youtube is about the last Alphabet service I knowingly use (except when someone shares a google doc).
I thought you meant no Youtube at all. I use Freetube and Newpipe almost exclusively.
Peertube too, when the instance I use to follow channels works (the two previous ones closed). It's a pain to subscribe to stuff. Maybe with RSS feeds...
edit: I've been subscribed to Kagi for a while too, maybe going two years. Love it. Wish it was cheaper
I really liked Qwant maps, a good use of OSM, but the idiots closed it...
I meant to say, not directly use their services for video and definitely aim to give them less identifiable information. Like Invidious’s Yewtu.be (https://yewtu.be/) scrapes YouTube and is not reliant on their API (but does give IP addresses to YouTube, hence the use of a VPN), but FreeTube uses YouTube’s API by default I think, but can use Invidious’s scrapping API (https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/privacy/). PeerTube is not reliant on YouTube at all and can be a good alternative even though it may have fewer videos (since you use that, then you’ve basically degoogled in that case). Maybe once a month or less I will watch a video from any of those services, so I don’t ever subscribe to any channels. I prefer to read documentation rather over watching videos when possible. To me that is in the spirit of degoogling. Same as I don’t avoid every website that has some script of Google under the hood. But I do block their trackers by activating “No Google” (https://github.com/nickspaargaren/no-google) from time to time if it doesn’t break a website (some website I need to access for work might not load if I have that on) and DuckDuckGo onionized on Tor mostly. I also need to use AlpaFold for work, but fortunately we have an instance that doesn’t go to Google’s servers. They created the protein folding technology and the instance and scripts had to be downloaded at some point from their servers. Degoogling is a fairly complex today. I have been reading more and more about digital cooperativism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative) and even though something may be open source, as expected, companies can still profit off of it. From the sounds of it, when it comes to cooperativism, no one person controls everything or profits. You may know more about this any how. All that said, giving people more digital privacy and protection is not a technological issue, but more of social issue. Hopefully people get more informed and interested in their digital rights in the future and society moves away from the likes of Google and Meta and Amazon and Apple (and OpenAI) at large.
Kagi switched Apple maps for Mapbox
China makes palantir look like freedom respecting software.
As far as I'm aware, google isn't enacting a genocide... as far as I'm aware
Maybe not technically "enacting" but certainly supporting/furthering: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/google-reportedly-signs-45-million-contract-with-netanyahu-to-promote-israeli-messaging/ar-AA1LX8Lm
Sure, but Google's just doing it because it's profitable, not because they're hell-bent on annihilating an ethnicity /s
Sure, if you remove the profit motive they wouldn't provide resources.
Certainly not morally defensible... but also not outright evil either. Just absent any ethical compass.
IBM supplied the computing machines for the Holocaust, I wouldn't be surprised if Google is giving cloud computing to ICE.
That means your awareness needs to be expanded my friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus
This is a good (but non-exhaustive) list to look through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Gaza_war
Or my definition of enacting.
okay. your awareness of how genocides work also need to be expanded.
I don't know why but "Google et al" made me laugh
Sure, but I'd rather have my info safely offshore in China than to give it right to big brother. I also bet far far fewer ads and more fun commercials because you have no idea what they are about. They are currently destoyjng the natural order in printer ink. I support that wholeheartedly. My Epson inks are 90 and the knockoffs are 20 and work just as well. It's always temporarily beneficial when player 2 enters the market.
*Edit it does not like vpns. That's a no for me.
Lmao
Ah yes, instead of US big brother you give it to offshore Big Brother.
But China isn't going to sell my data to Uncle Sam to help deport my family (who are legal citizens). So there's that.
Why would you think that?
Who is more of a direct threat to US citizens ? At the moment I would say there's way more chance ICE will come after you for posting or speaking out or protesting or hell just being you. I can't remember the last time I worried about China selling me something because that's what they will use the data for.
I'd say China is the greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty but that's a discussion no one here seems to want to have. No one seems to think TikTok is an issue apparently.
Edit: it's been an issue since musical.ly, just so we're clear
When you're here, you're family!
Big Boss
Weird, the few times I've used it I had no problem with my VPN.
I'll try again when I'm back on my own laptop.
the same as Tik Tok?
I've avoided that platform so yes if I'm understanding you correctly.
Political censorship is definitely worse so I‘m not going to bother.
This is one thing I noticed using Chinese social media. There are almost zero discussions of local politics. Foreign politics is fine though
There is no politics in Ba Sing Se.
You get nuked from orbit if you attempt to talk about local politics is why. Like hard.
Because YouTube doesn't engage in anything like that ofc.
Are you seriously insinuating that the level of censorship on YouTube is anywhere close to Chinese platforms? A quick look on both websites would give you that answer very quickly.
YouTube has rapidly censoring more and more by way of demonetization and language policing.
Depending on the politic