Leaving Big Tech

I'm going to try and summarise some non-big-tech alternative platforms, and "methods" to your regular everyday Big Tech stuff. This isn't easy and you're going to end up with an experience that isn't the same, but maybe this is worth trying out for a while (depending on your circumstances!).

I fully acknowledge first of all that I'm very lucky to be able to afford to and know how to do this stuff. Some of it costs money, most of it costs your digital footprint, and all of it costs time. Having said that I think it's important now more than ever, for people to know that they can be emancipated from "Big Tech".

If you don't understand things in this guide, or need some help setting it up, don't hesitate to hit me up on Mastodon (link down the bottom).

What is Big Tech

For our purposes here we're going to define "Big Tech" as being any of the typical "Big Tech" companies including but not at all limited to the venerable FAANG definition. I'm also going to expand this definition a bit more to also include companies that have demonstrated potentially questionable morals like HEY.COM and (very sadly) proton.

Outside of the obvious candidates here like Facebook, Google et al. please use your best judgement when applying this definition to your own situation.

To add some complexity, I'm also going to say that I don't consider Apple to be entirely a "part of the problem". That's not to say I'm going to suggest using their services carte blanch but if you're short of options then they're nearly always the least-worst option out of the worst. If you have an iPhone, zero free time and a negative bank balance, I'm going to tell you to get stuff out of Gmail and onto iCloud.

What do we want Alternatives to?

We know, vaguely, who the "enemy" is here. Now we need to work out what we need to take out of their hands and put back into ours.

I'm going to pick a few broad categories such as "email", and "micro blogging" and try to slot solutions into those. But of course because people are amazing a lot of these solutions will fit into more than one category!

Here's a quick list to start with though;

  1. Email
  2. File Storage
  3. Micro Blogging
  4. Video Sharing
  5. Image Stuff
  6. Bonus Category Business Coordination

Criteria

If I'm going to criticize entire platforms made by thousands of talented engineers, and suggest alternatives, I feel like I need to outline why I'm making these suggestions. So I'll boil it down into some broad categories;

  1. Who is in control
    1. Which party (or parties) demonstrably have control over your data.
  2. Where does the data exist
    1. Does the country your data resides in comform with your legal expectations.
  3. Does the provider have a questionable history?
    1. I think this is self explanatory, but I'll be sure to not suggest companies where their CEO has performed multiple Nazi salutes on stage.
  4. Is it a traditional Big Tech company?
    1. This is the deny all at the end of your firewall config - I'm not going to suggest companies that are Big Tech in the normal sense of the term. As mentioned earlier Apple will be the "if you must" alternative here.

The Options

Domain Names: The Foundation

Owning your domain is crucial for digital independence. Here's why:

Benefit Example
Email Portability [email protected] vs [email protected]
Service Migration Keep addresses when changing providers
Professional Presence Custom email looks more professional

Email

This category is blissfully easy to compile. Email is essentially a solved problem at this point so you can pick whoever you like! BUT there is a very important caveat I'll talk about later.

  1. Tutanota
    1. German-based, fully encrypted mailboxes with slick (taking into account their constraints) web and mobile apps.
    2. Somewhat sluggish, and prone to extraneous notifications due to how their mailbox rules work.
    3. I genuinely cannot think of a better provider for the privacy-conscious.
  2. Fastmail
    1. Australian-based, so the government can browse your emails at their leisure if they ever feel the need to.
    2. If all you care about is using your own domain and the best possible feature-set outside of Google, this is your provider.
    3. In addition to mail you get calendar, notes, and general purpose cloud storage.
    4. Tight 1pass integration for creating "masked" email addresses.
  3. Mailfence
    1. Belgian-based, strong privacy protections.
    2. Apps and site all work very nicely.
    3. Very, very reasonably priced.

Now, for the big BUT from earlier. All of these providers will give you 100% of their beneifts if you have your own domain name for emails. I'll make a seperate post on how to do this, but for now just know that the worst part about email is that it's tied to a domain so if you're using someone elses domain like fastmail.com or tuta.com then you're at a disadvantage.

File Storage

This is an interesting category, because not only do some of our Email providers cover this for your, but also because there are many many DIY solutions. But our purposes here I'm going to assume what you want is a drop-in replacement for something like iCloud or Google Drive/Google Photos.

Micro Blogging

When I say Micro Blogging, I'm referring specifically to things that are like Twitter. Short text-first posts shared in a timeline-fashion.

  1. Mastodon
    1. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is almost certainly your best option.
    2. It's like Twitter, but imagine there's thousands of smaller Twitters that all talk to each other with a protocol called ActivityPub.
    3. aus.social is objectively the best
  2. Akkoma
    1. Arguably for the more technically inclined audience, this is a ActivityPub compatible alternative to Mastodon.

Video Sharing

When I say video sharing, I'm thinking platforms like YouTube where you can quickly and easily upload and subsequently share videos. This isn't for brainrot like TikTok, Reels etc.

  1. Peertube!
    1. The usefulness of a video-based social network relies on it having videos, and Peertube is the only reputable place that fits that definition.

Image Stuff

This is more broad, but I'm generally thinking about image-sharing platforms here so think Instagram and uhhh... I guess yeah just Instagram?

  1. pixelfed
    1. IMO this is a great, and feature-comparable alternative to IG.
    2. On top of that it's also ActivityPub-compatible so you're not stuck in the one single 'network'.

And thats about it, unless you want to start delving into somewhat questionable options (which I'm not going to do here).

Bonus Category Business Coordination

Oh this is my favourite category - we're talking about Slack, Teams etc alternatives and by golly there are some GREAT options.

  1. MatterMost
    1. Very, very Slack-like.
    2. You'll be in good company here alongside Samsung, DDG, and the US g-dang Airforce.
  2. rocket.chat
    1. Somewhat more modern than MM
    2. IMO easier integration with things like Dropbox, Gitlab etc.
    3. Neat controls around legal and general data retention/holds.
  3. And of course Matrix
    1. Feature complete when it comes to chat, video calls, and integrations (IMO).
    2. Self-hostable and interoperable out the wazzoo.
    3. Plenty of free options for personal-usage.