Mobile Phones

[Defaultmp3]

So, at the end of the day, Samsung makes really nice hardware, but Google is shady as shit, so I will never go back to Android. Apple, for all their faults, is at least an order of magnitude more trustworthy than Google in protecting user's data privacy.

If you're that concerned about data protection, have you considered going with something like GrapheneOS, LineageOS, or CalyxOS?

[themonk]

Yeah, this is true. The actual performance hit was small, but Apple wasn't up front about it. I kinda think the outcry would have been bigger if a bunch of users phones just starting shutting down three or four times a day because their janky old battery couldn't supply peak power, but whatever.

So, at the end of the day, Samsung makes really nice hardware, but Google is shady as shit, so I will never go back to Android. Apple, for all their faults, is at least an order of magnitude more trustworthy than Google in protecting user's data privacy.

Why is Google shady?

[kerplode]

Why is Google shady?

Because you are their product. Their services largely serve as a way for them to harvest your information to sell to advertisers, etc.

Now, having said that, I do my best to avoid them, but I do have a old Gmail address that became my primary over the years...It has a lot of inertia now, to the point that changing is difficult. I'd love to move that somewhere else. I'll have to start working on it...

[Todd.K]

Why is Google shady?

Google search bias, gmail political bias, and YouTube censorship are even bigger issues to ME, than the privacy concerns.

You know every movie about a dystopian future where some mega corporation controls the people? That corporation is Google.

[themonk]

Because you are their product. Their services largely serve as a way for them to harvest your information to sell to advertisers, etc.

Now, having said that, I do my best to avoid them, but I do have a old Gmail address that became my primary over the years...It has a lot of inertia now, to the point that changing is difficult. I'd love to move that somewhere else. I'll have to start working on it...

They index the web and then sell ads on top of that search index. They do keep all that data and create a profiles for those users that use their services including search. They don't sell that data to anyone and have an excellent track record of keeping your data private. Having done work with both companies I am agnostic but dont fool yourself that apple is a saint and does not collect data from their users. The amount of telemetry data along with services data they collect is second to none. And they sell it to 3rd parties and governments.

I am fine if someone wants to say they all suck but dont try to tell me one of big 5 is better than the other. The only current technology that is Solid, private, and safe is Signal.

[themonk]

Google search bias, gmail political bias, and YouTube censorship are even bigger issues to ME, than the privacy concerns.

You know every movie about a dystopian future where some mega corporation controls the people? That corporation is Google.

I dont necessarily disagree with you. That being said, all search will have bias, it has to, just the nature of the game.

[czgunner]

I run a degoogled phone with lineage.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

[Todd.K]

Who controls over 90 percent of searches WORLDWIDE?

[Todd.K]

I run a degoogled phone with lineage.

How do we know how much security is in an open source OS? How well do they find and patch security issues? How long will it be supported?

I am not an Apple fan, they are the lesser evil than Google for now. I could see myself moving in that direction at some point but have a lot of questions first.

[Defaultmp3]

How do we know how much security is in an open source OS? How well do they find and patch security issues? How long will it be supported?

Uh... what? All the questions you pose are inherently more problematic for something closed source. With open source, the transparency makes the security much more obvious. Finding issues and patching now becomes much more predictable because everything is out in the open. With closed source, you are at the mercy of the developers, and they don't necessarily have users' best interests at heart. Closed source software certainly has some advantages in terms of security, but open source will have a much higher ceiling when it comes to security.