Hi all, I acquired moderator to recover this sub. I was dreading helping to build the community only for it to get spammed out of existence. This is our sub and we need to figure out the best way of going about it, what it should contain and what it shouldn’t contain.
I have no desire of being sole mod, and perhaps not at all long term, and I would like people to join us.
I’m reluctant to dive into promoting people and regret it, and don’t want to hold off too long and leave that all to me, so I’m open to feedback or challenge on how we do this. Maybe it’s not my call at all. A few people may shine through as good people to take this forward and help build this community.
Please feel free to give your views on what this community should or shouldn’t be. I will link to privacy and relevant communities so we can keep this one focussed.
A big shout out to comcreator@lemmy.world at https://lemm.ee/post/704704 for helping to avoid fragmentation. They probably have a claim for mod if there is no objections.
While Degoogling yourself generally is related to privacy and caring about privacy, some of the privacy-respecting options are off the table for some folks as too complicated or not enough functionality.
So while privacy is a good focus, I would put it second to actual Degoogling, with an understanding that Google has deep roots in the android operating system, and that it’s pretty difficult to fully disconnect without having replacement services ready to go.
I would personally try to make the focus Google alternatives for search (DuckDuckGo?), for email, for calendars (ProtonMail and Calendar?), for document creation (LibreOffice?), for web brower (Firefox/Librewolf/etc) maybe how to block their ads (uBlock Origin) and so on.
Degoogling android phones would take a mild backseat, because a lot of “degoogled” options are still going to feature Google pretty heavily. Either on LineageOS where you still need Google Play Services for most of it to function properly, or GrapheneOS where you can cut out Google Play and apps, but you literally have to buy a Google branded phone from Google to achieve it. Both situations mean you’re still using Google, technically.
Anyway, since Google is mostly a service-based company, I would err on focusing on how to get people off of Google services and onto alternatives, while keeping Degoogling phones as an aspect of the sub, but with an understanding that it’s for the more technically inclined and you’re still tied at the hip with Google in most scenarios.