Hey everyone,
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help my parents reduce their reliance on American Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.). They’re not tech-savvy, and I don’t want to overwhelm them or make them feel like I’m forcing a radical change. At the same time, I’m concerned about privacy, data collection, and the monopolistic practices of these companies.
Any ideas? First of all I thought about ecosia, I see that it returns more similar results to google than Qwant.
I want to buy them Threema licence.
I installed Le Chat as chatgpt replacement, moved some documents to Synology Nas
What’s next?
Had to look this up, but there is this saying that might help you:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Just tell them (the truth) that their emails are read, their keystrokes are sent, their messages are not safe either, tell them that they have no online privacy and America sees it all (that America that is currently shooting people for recording a video). Older generations, I found, expect privacy and they usually are shocked to find out that it is breached every moment they use their mail, os, phone, etc… It is the same with my parents. The change is not fast, we always talk about one particular area (like messaging) and then they ask me themselves what they can do to fix it (like installing signal).
You’re lucky there, my experience is the polar opposite and more aligned with “I got nothing to hide” It’s quite frustrating.
Let me give you the perspective of your parents - it’s frustrating being forced into changing everything I know and is working perfectly fine for no obvious negative consequences of keeping things as they are. The entire thing seems purely ideological. Why change everything and make things break and make me basically start from scratch learning all these new things?
Instead of wasting time changing people who do not want to change, why not focus the time and effort on people who are bit more modern, tech-sawy, aware of the situation and at worst, evaluating the switch but still unsure? Instead of walking through a creek, you are frustrated because you try to drill a tunnel through a mountain.
There is a great video from Naomi Brockwell who basically lays out all the arguments why “I have nohing to hide” is such a bs. I’d recommend watching it and arm yourself with good arguments. That said I partially agree with the other reply, if they don’t won’t, don’t force it. Usually its better to say your arguments for why it matters and then leave them to think about it. Often times they here it here and there and they come asking more later.
My dad is smart he doesn’t use Facebook or Google messages or have a social media account. He only uses sms and Hotmail. My mom is everywhere and when I talk to her about moving to signal she just finds any change too complicated. I love her but she’s spending 10 hours a day on Facebook. She is literally rotting her brain at 76.
My whole family is left leaning, 100+ people, but almost none of them use alternatives like Signal Lemmy and whatnot. They’re almost all on Facebook daily…
This is a tricky thing to do. I’d say start with yourself. On your journey you will find what could be interesting to which family member. All of them doesn’t have to migrate at the same time with the same product.
Small steps is always easier to take.
Switching to Signal for family group chat is an easy move, as it’s the same user experience than Whatsapp. Note: it’s american but not GAFAM (open source and non-profit).
You already have quite a good start. Wait for them to adjust and hear feedback before you switch all of it out. A major component might be mail but you might find more reluctance for them to change if they have specific contacts and accounts added. Whats nice about proton tho is you can add a gmail account to easyswitch and for the time being it will just like import/forward all the mails towards their proton account so the switch is easier.
You need to see and feel it out how far they’re willing to go/what they’re comfortable with. It would be nice to know what they rely on and like maybe a country so we can suggest alternatives (for example for amazon it highly depends on the country)
I say Linux first.
My mom relies on office documents. We wanted replace office with libreoffice and that was painful for her :(
I gave her laptop with libreoffice and she still prefered to use old laptop with old office license
Yeah that’s tough. Libreoffice is definitely not polished. Two solutions, 1) you can fiddle with the settings to make it look and act more like MS office . With the ribbon instead of the drop-down etc. 2) You can run old office versions for free using Wine. From what I hear, haven’t done it myself.
She could try out OnlyOffice. Maybe she’s happy with that. At least it looks very close to MS Office
☝🏼 this — with OnlyOffice I’ve had zero formatting differences sharing docx or xlsx files with M365 or Google Workspace. This was using the desktop version. No idea how real-time collaboration is with the OnlyOffice Workspace version, and would love to hear any experiences.
Thank you, I have never used it
Focus on the future, not the past.
Let your parents live like they used to, since they are probably not really impacted much anyway (until we are all impacted). Focus on teaching your kids who a) understand tech much more and b) will teach the next generations.
They are impacted more than you think. My mom uses chat gpt more often than I did.
Facebook, messenger, google as default browser and search engine. Even when she search for something she chooses „google” app instead of browser Google Chrome- so its harder to switch her to ecosia ;)
I see how much crap my dad and mom watch from facebook stories. Misinformation is on the other level there… (talking from Poland perspective, we have russian propaganda in our socials)
