I created a 5-week degoogling plan PDF based on the steps in my book DISENGAGE: Escape the Leash of Big Tech, Scams and Surveillance—Everyday Resistance for the Digital Underdog.
Before I finalize and post it to my site, I’d love some feedback from people who have degoogled or are in the process of doing so.
The final package will be a single PDF, and I’ve pasted images of the pages below. The final infographic has a link for each product. Please don’t worry about formatting issues, I’ll get those fixed. But in general, I’m wondering.
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Does this seem motivational/doable?
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Are the tips clear?
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Is there anything that is now incorrect? I wrote the book originally two years ago and updated it in February, so some of my suggestions may already be out of date.
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At the bottom I mention that full instructions for each step are available in DISENGAGE, which is a free book. Is that enough? Or should I instead either note which chapter/page to look at for each step, or directly include links to instructions/tools online?
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The infographic at the end…is it weird to be sideways? I created it a while ago and don’t want to have to redo it to fit the orientation. I could offer that separately, OR I could redo the whole PDF to be landscape instead of portrait (which I don’t love).
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I’m thinking of turning this into a group challenge (also no cost). If there’s enough interest, it could be the checklist, the book, and a Signal group (maybe with a weekly call). I don’t know nearly everything about the topic, but I did degoogle myself, and everyone in the group/on the call can share questions and suggestions. What do you think of this idea?
Thanks!
There will be tougher usecases to migrate. Which, depends on how you use Google.
For example, I’ve never read Google News but am having trouble replacing Keep for synced, widgeted notes (groceries etc) on phone, as well as GSheets for synced, collaborative excel-like sheets with good mobile UX.
Also, I would bundle mail and calendar in one (it’s a single button to import both in Proton and those services are tightly coupled) and check your duplicate browser/chrome mentions
Thanks for the tips! Yeah, it’s hard to know where to draw the line, but since I’m focused on beginners, I figured these tools/platforms were the basics.
Good idea to bundle mail and calendar. I can do that with a few tweaks. And will fix the extra mention of uninstalling Chrome.
Thanks again!
Super minor but there’s also a missing ‘A’ in the “add paper maps” line
Fixed, thanks!
First time I’ve ever heard of simple search, looks like a widget app and not an actual search engine. I’d recommended switching that out for something like Mojeek or Brave Search.