Everything Open 2026 – Day 2 – Afternoon

My degoogled life by Joshua Hesketh

  • Part personal journey, part reflection, part advice
  • Why?
    • Applies to any SaaS software where you are giving up data
    • If you are not paying for it you are the product
    • Different threat levels for different people
    • Privacy vs Secrecy
    • Situations can change. You share information now with a good company but their policy could change, they could have leaks or the law could change
  • Almost impossible to completely cut yourself off from Google
  • Tradeoffs
    • Self hosted software is often worse than the SaaS equivs
    • A lot more effort
    • SaaS services have full time staff looking after it, patching it etc
    • SaaS services are bigger targets than the personal setup
  • GraphereOS replacing Android
    • Ironically available mostly for Pixels
    • Many Apps worked via the website, just bookmark
    • Installed some Apps from Apps Store.
  • Youtube
    • Subscribe to channels via RSS
    • Watch in incognito and regularly close and reopen window
    • Few recommendations “Fantastic if you want to avoid doomscrooling”
  • Email Hosting
    • Have important stuff going to a SaaS provider email
    • Switched everything to a provider (fastmail)
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