💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~winter › gemlog › 2022-07-06_forced_google.gmi captured on 2023-06-14 at 14:27:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-07-16)
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(The title is only a very slight exaggeration)
Over the past $timeperiod I have been trying to rid myself of parasitic megacorps and online spyware. So far, I've stopped using:
This is good, but I still use a number of proprietary services, e.g. Discord (my non-techy friends either don't see the problem with it or can't be bothered to switch). For the most part, it should only be a matter of time before I can get rid of those as well.
Unfortunately (as you may have guessed from the title), there's one major exception: Google.
It seems to me that I have been force-fed Google's services by almost everyone in my life: friends, family, but most notably school. My school's tech department *really* loves Google and uses it for *everything* - Google Classroom for homework assignments, Gmail for all communications, Google Slides for lesson presentations, I could go on all day. What really bugs me is the fact that in order to see what homework I have, I have to log in to Google Classroom every day, using an account with my real name on it! As if just using their products wasn't enough, they made a G Suite for Education account for every student with no warning or prior notice, using real names! (Granted, when I joined in year 7, I was fairly indifferent towards Google, but still.)
The point is: unless I somehow find a local school that doesn't use online malware routinely (not likely) AND switch to that school (even less likely!), I'm stuck with having my life snooped on by megacorps until I leave school - and even then, if I go to uni, it could be even longer. What a world we live in!
(Sorry if this post came across a bit whiney. I wrote it in somewhat of a hurry and just wanted to get it out there.)
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Started 2022-07-05, published 2022-07-06