My advice would be to look into things one at a time while also avoiding taking the sledgehammer approach. Based on what you mentioned, some things you might want to look into:

Look into some encrypted cloud storage/backup options. Filein comes to mind but there’s plenty. I’d recommend against self hosting your own cloud in most cases (like nextcloud) in most cases it is both less secure and less private especially on a VPS - and if its on a home server it makes your backups less redundant.

Try doing more stuff in web browsers, web wrappers, or front ends. Unlike an app, there’s a lot less sneaky stuff a web browser can do, even if it’s the same platform. The Brave browser does cookie isolation and progressive web apps well, it might make a good second browser dedicated to progressive web apps. Apps like newpipe are great for YouTube and piped/invidious for yt or nitter for twitter are two good examples of front ends.

Installing apks is easier than you might think, and if you install FDroid it’s three clicks (download, allow installation, install) and worth checking out. Once it’s installed you can treat it like any other app store, and in combo with Aurora (on FDroid) you can get about any app without going through a Google account.

As for email, you can forward emails from a gmail account to a proton account. And as for content, consider trying to follow via RSS (you can follow just about anything with RSS one way or another).

For social media look into activity pub and nostr. Just about any alternative social media is going to have the crazies from one or both sides of politics kicked off of mainstream platforms, but federated and decentralized platforms allow you to pick and choose a lot more.

Last, as the phone goes, whenever possible try disabling background data and setting aside pre-installed apps you don’t want to use and going from there. A step up from that would be to uninstall/disable them (either in settings or adb bridge for those you can’t disable). Custom Roms would be the biggest leap, and the most technological. If you’re going to buy a phone with the intent of installing one, Graphene beats everything else hands down while still being one of the easiest to install.

Good luck

Rufus or registry editing during installation can both dodge the requirement if you need it.

Not sure you can, unless you’re using a Pi Hole. Vanadium doesn’t accept plugins to my knowledge.

Mozilla’s funding comes from Google (not all of it but enough that all their other finding source’s wouldn’t even cover the bulk of the CEO’s salery). I doubt Mozilla is going to do much.

We can hope it doesn’t bode well for their ongoing anti trust case though

Clients taking it into their own hands reminds me of delta chat. Basically the same thing but the client handles encryption and uses a generic email server as the chat server.

But any good client will handle encryption themselves (heck even “bad” clients will do that). As long as they’re not UK based and don’t neuter the clients for their UK users they’ll still retain proper encryption completely client side (outside of public key infrastructure which is a whole different topic).

Sounds like what you’re looking for is PGP/GPG. Been around for a while, but does the job well.

Also, I doubt most projects built outside of the UK (or Europe as the EU seems to be moving in a similar direction) will actually comply and backdoor their own software. As long as you have internet they’ll always be actually secure software to download.

Bringing back memories of my own. Mandrake in 2004 was a but before my time, but I’m sure I’ve still got my Ubuntu discs I downloaded at the local library and burned myself almost a decade after this Mandrake disk.

I don’t think there is any proven results, but I think the reason the EFF prefers Braves decision is the philosophy that there are so many data points that it could be possible to link you to it using the ones not standardized by anti fingerprinting.

Like ways to incorrectly describe someone. One describes a guy correctly but generically. One describes a guy with a lot of detail but the wrong race and two feet too short.

Yes. Brave focuses on providing random data points each time it’s asked (e.g. screen size). A hardened Firefox will try to provide a generic fingerprint.

Apples to oranges more or less, I’m unaware of any proof that one or the other is considerably better across the board. Though my gut does tell me that randomization is a lot better in the specific situation of regularly signing in and out of accounts.

What, social lives? Get outta here with that nonsense and be a hobbit like the rest of us :)

Seriously though, if you’re thinking on a phone I’d reccomend just creating a second profile instead of getting a whole new device. The apps won’t be running when the profile is running, and as a bonus you can usually restrict the profile’s permissions. Also consider checking out web wrappers (e.g. frost) or PWAs.

On a desktop you can always just use the web version, bonus points if you auto clear cookies or have a separate profile.

Edit: if you already have a spare then that might work better than profiles.

Maybe I didn’t word that right. Meant that they run out of the box, but if they break they can be repaired fairly easily.

DIY Edition Build it yourself and bring your OS, including Linux. Starting at $1,399.00

I hate to crap on a project like framework too much, but I fail to see the value it brings to the table compared to other options. 900$ for a Chromebook, 1.4k for a “DIY” laptop, 1.7k for the same laptop but assembled.

300-400$ used gaming laptops can be found on eBay, are repairable, and run Linux just as easily (minus maybe switching to official Nvidia drivers, but it’s still only a couple commands a way). For 1k I’m sure you can get a variety of very premium laptops.

Edit: by repairable meant they’re easy to repair if they break, not that they come pre-broken.

As much as I love making fun of Apple, isn’t it all Apple silicone made in house? If they’re not coming with Nvidia cards and Apple is not open to the idea of people modifying their computers it shouldn’t matter how easy it is to install Nvidia graphics (not to mention Nvidia Drivers are a pain on Linux sometimes too).

POSIX is just a set of Unix-like standards for software. Mac is based on BSD if I recall correctly, they had Xorg and stuff as an option to install and things aren’t 1 to 1 compatible but closely related.

robust networking

Dude you just gave me flashbacks to traumatic times trying to get Wifi to work on Linux

As weird as it sounds you can (with poor performance). With something like Limbo or Termux you can actually get Windows or any x86 OS running underneath Android on a phone.

Fun project maybe, but not really utilitarian though. Never used apple so can’t actually report on how well their emulation and/or translation layer is working on Arm.

I think the issue is that Netflix always had a lot of debt and thought they could grow a lot more. They had a really solid income, then suddenly their catalog was shrinking thanks to the million other streaming services while they simultaneously started declining in subscriptions right when the cost of debt skyrocketed (even if some of their debt is still at lower rates).

Not that I’m cheering on the price increase by any means, nor am I currently a subscriber. Still though in some way I can see why they’re doing it and have a feeling we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in how bad tech corporate services are going to get for a bit.

On an unrelated note, VPNs and/or I2P are cool things to check out.

Edit: One thing too to bring up is that password sharing may still be a breeze. If you set up a VPN - not a commercial one but you setup yourseld on either on a VPS or on your home network - as long as anybody is on it they’ll look like they’re from the same household.

I’m not on IOS, but I’ve heard Brave browser on IOS has adblock so that might be a way to avoid ads. Sites like various Invidious instances run in any browser would also be a way to dodge ads.

Any browser that accepts plugins would also work, but I’m not sure if they exsist or not.

Shh, nobody mention that half your apps are probably rendered in chromium.

Unfortunately there’s ads in Firefox too, and they’re opt out instead of opt in. I’m certainly not a fan of it, but outside of LibreWolf until servo becomes a thing I think should be right but we’re stuck choosing lesser of multiple evils.

I do find it a bit funny that their adblock-block is to my knowledge just client side JavaScript. Ya’ know, the kinda stuff adblock is built to cutout.

Unless they’re going to be splicing up videos to put the ads into the same file (which would be astronomically resource intensive) or only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers it’ll be impossible prevent a device from running or not running code as the user see’s fit.

YT isn’t going to drop premium any time soon. Subscriptions are astronomically more revenue generating then ads, and given YT was always operating at a loss until they stopped reporting revenue altogether premium will probably be the only route to scrape by.

Not to say they can’t enshittify it by raising prices and adding restrictions, but I can’t see them doing anything but trying to force more people to it.

I paid for it for a bit a while back, and it was decent. Of course free tools give considerably better features (adblock, sponsor block, DRM free downloads, better privacy). That and personally not wanting to financially support YT for a variety of reasons has kept me away from it for a long time.