Migrating to privacy-centric apps is simpler than you think

I don’t have anything to hide, but I don’t have anything to show you either.

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In my free time, I like to keep an eye on the world of online privacy. The social dilemma describes my reasoning quite well. I’ve been migrating towards privacy-centric apps, and I’m happy with what I’ve found. I’m sharing the following list so you can see how easy it is to switch these days.

Personal considerations

  • I have a strong preference for open-source software (OSS). I prefer to see the code than to trust someone’s word.
  • I prefer apps that have good support for Windows, Apple OSes and Linux.
  • I prefer a service that clearly specifies how data is encrypted.
  • Data migration is a big thing, so I’m going to grade it from 1 (horrible) to 5 (excellent).

The apps

Popular appPrivacy-centric alternativeComments
Goodreads (Amazon)BookWyrm (federated, OSS) or OpenLibrary (OSS)Migration score: 3 (not all books from GoodReads existed, I had to add them manually)
LastpassBitwarden (OSS)Migration score: 5
EvernoteJoplin (OSS)Migration score: 5
LinkedIn (Microsoft)nothingI keep an updated version of my resume on Google Drive
Whatsapp (Facebook/Meta), Telegram, etc.Signal (OSS)Quite a lot of people are on Signal these days
TwitterMastodon (federated, OSS)You can find me here
Microsoft OfficeOnlyOffice (OSS)
Apple Photos
Synology Photos (closed source, but has the most features compared to all the privacy-focused alternatives; it doesn’t have all the features of Apple Photos)Migration score: 3 (it’s not possible to migrate albums, just bulk photos)
In the end, this migration was just too painful and I was missing features, so I went back to Apple Photos
Google DriveSynology Drive (closed source)Migration score: 5

Still no reasonable alternative

  • Imdb (Amazon) -> Still looking for a replacement.

What do you use?

Do you have some better alternatives that you use? I’d enjoy hearing from you. My transition to privacy-centric required a decent amount of research and trying out options. I want to skip that, if possible.

References

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