Published on March 21st, 2025
Hello to our old and new readers. In previous entries in this series we outlined a few steps we can take to resist dictators and authoritarians. Many of us willingly give data to those that would imprison us. In this piece, we outline some common services you can use instead of Big Tech.
Search: Use Brave Browser
I found out about the Brave Browser two weeks ago. I’ve used it to replace Google and Bing for most of my searches. It’s much faster, and great at blocking cookies and trackers. You can’t use DuckDuckGo, as Google bought them.
Website: https://brave.com/
Email: Use Protonmail
Protonmail was designed by the physicists at CERN for secure email communication. We only have a few gmail accounts left we are winding down. It seems there is way to export your emails in bulk, but Google makes it difficult. Proton has a calendar, drive storage, and vpn too.
Website: https://proton.me/mail
Maps: Use Mapquest
Mapquest was a big deal before Google Maps and Apple Maps. Both of those companies bent the knee to Mar A Lago, by changing the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Mapquest released a tool allowing you to rename the Gulf of Mexico to whatever you want. Hilarity ensued.
Website: https://www.mapquest.com/
Shopping: Shop direct at the retailers
Amazon makes things easy to shop for. They have a wide selection. They charge you through the nose for many items. Cancel your subscriptions and cancel Prime. Stop supporting the oligarchs like Jeff Bezos. You can shop directly in many cases for the product you want. For example, we bought Wüsthof knives directly from the company. We are very close to cancelling our Prime account and have reduced Amazon shopping by 95%.
Need to get books? Support your local library. Need to buy a book? Bookshop.org supports independent bookstores instead of Amazon.
Social media: Use Bluesky and Substack
Meta owns Facebook, Threads, Instagram, and Whatsapp. They are the primary source of communication for many people. Mark Zuckerburg was at Trump’s inauguration. You know who he supports.
Instead, you can use Bluesky or Substack. We joined Substack last month and love getting information from a variety of sources.
Website: https://bsky.app/
Website: https://substack.com/home
LinkedIn is creepy on the profile data it uses to send you ads. Turn all those ads off.
If you have an Apple phone, turn off Apple AI, which takes up space and is annoying.
Don’t forget WordPress is a decent place to communicate for longer form posts.
Electric Vehicles: Use anyone except Tesla
The hate from Elon’s open Nazi support and immense government destruction by an unelected civilian has spilled into the Tesla Takedown movement. Protests are growing at Tesla stores and service centers. As readers know, we have owned a Tesla for 6 years. Ditch your Tesla if you can afford to do so, sell your Tesla shares, join Tesla Takedown if you are able.
What electric vehicle can you buy instead of Tesla in the US? There are loads of options. Hyundai, Kia, Lucid, Rivian, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan and Toyota all have EV’s. On the luxury side BMW, Audi, Porsche, and Mercedes Benz are expanding their EV offerings. We’ll share a story of how it went trading in our Tesla in our next post. We were surprised by the level of Tesla depreciation on our Model 3.
How are you resisting and fighting back against Big Tech and the oligarchs that own them? I have heard LibreOffice is a very good MS Office suite replacement.
Sincerely yours,
smilingdad
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