cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/11226460
This post is going to be a bit personal (and maybe a little bit out of context, it’s not just Google software I want to remove) but I’m tired of not knowing what to do about it. I want and have wanted to get rid of a bunch of proprietary software in my life, including but not limited to Google’s software, for quite a while now, and I even got a Pixel 7A with hopes of installing GrapheneOS. But there are a few problems. First, my parents are understandably concerned and need me to use Google Maps’ location sharing whenever I go to school. All my classmates use Instagram and we have that as our only messaging platform. I currently use DFInstagram, but I feel that it is not free from spyware. Finally, I also own a DJI Mini 3 Pro, and the associated DJI Fly app just refuses to work under GrapheneOS (I tested). Is there anything I can do to replace or limit the access of these aforementioned proprietary apps?
There’s nothing reasonable in you having to share your location with them constantly.
If you cut off all such apps, prepare to be isolated from your peers who most likely don’t care about privacy (which is most people and in your age group perhaps close to everyone).
If you’re not ready to go out of the mainstream, try to minimise your usage of such apps to only what you need - if you need Instagram for communication with peers, use it for that, but don’t feed Meta the data of what you look at. I was on Messenger for ~2 years after I quit Facebook and even that made me feel better.
Use some privacy protection tools, I personally recommend Adguard, but feel free to choose other popular options.
Beware that no matter what you do, big tech will still know about you more than you’d like.