Can you? I’m not the original commenter, but in my country (South Korea) every person is expected to have a gmail account :-( I have a google account, but it’s not gmail and people always get confused... We have to use Google Classroom for submitting homework, Google Docs for collaboration of team projects (sometimes MS Teams), Google Blah for something else... heck we even need a Google/FB account for upvoting a president e-petition! Do you have any tips for living without trusting Google/FB?

Could it be an issue local to your school / university? Frankly, I can understand many institutions using those services simply because they actually do provide convenience.

I live in Korea and haven't really noticed anything like the "have a gmail account or be excluded from life" dichotomy you have described. Not sure what "upvoting a president e-petition" is, but you don't need neither FB nor Google for voting in elections.

While the Google Classroom thing is local to our school, the general expectation that everyone has an gmail account is present and real, as far as I experienced. For example, the reason why I made a Google account was because one of my academies was only willing to share videos with Google Drive. Also, most of my friends (even ones that are aware of this kind of problems) have a Google account for similar reasons :-( I think it’s partially due to the fast spread of Android smartphones (and it’s high market share) circa 2010 ~ 2012 when you were mandated to make a Gmail account to download apps from the Play store.

While off topic, the e-petition I said about is actually pretty popular, after the new government came in in 2017. (I’m talking about “국민청원”, if you read Korean.) To express your opinion, you need a Google/FB account.

Disclaimer: Since we're from different countries (I'm from the US), I realize that I am necessarily speaking from a position of privilege. If I tell an employer here that I deleted my Facebook account, they'll usually understand because we're all seen the drama in our local news. Still, if you want to cut ties with Google/FB, I think it's best to start small.

Basically, you can start by coming up with a list of those Google/FB services that you use, and then figure out what alternatives (ideally open source, or self hosted) might be able to replace them. Don't feel pressured to do this all at once, just keep an eye out for alternatives and give them a try as time permits. The idea is not to keep all your eggs in one basket: what happens if Google decides one day to delete your account? You should ideally be able to brush that off and keep going.

If you're technically minded, a lot of those services can be self hosted on a cheap VPS. Granted means you're now trusting your VPS provider, but there are ways to mitigate much of that risk and since you're in greater control, it's easy to spread out. This is a good place to start:

https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted

For email, I personally use a privacy-conscious provider, because I find self-hosting email is more complicated than I care to keep up with. I'm using Fastmail and have been pretty happy with them so far. It helps that they're not ad-supported, and their entire pitch is built on that trust, so I feel that they're a bit less likely to violate it; the PR backlash would ruin them. To each their own though.

And of course... some of the big services are genuinely useful! Even though I've reduced my reliance on Google, I still have that old account for the small handful of places where it's needed (rare) or where I personally find that it's the best choice on the market (Maps and Docs) which makes the risk worth it for some of my tasks. Just because I use their services sometimes though doesn't mean they're the only option; by this point I've got an alternative lined up for everything on my list.

Each task is independent, and each risk its own. Take the time, do the research, and learn to make your own informed decisions. You'll be glad you did.

> Since we're from different countries (I'm from the US), I realize that I am necessarily speaking from a position of privilege.

The implicit value judgment of the US as necessarily superior has the opposite effect of what you probably intended.

When it comes to being accepting of people who distrust and/or don't use mainstream things (like Google/FB) for reasons that sound tinfoil related to laymen the US is definitely in a position of privilege.

... you're right. I chose my words poorly there; I was meaning to call out a potential difference in culture (not knowing anything about South Korea) but it came out wrong. Apologies!

Thanks, I’ll try :-) I guess that the problem is that we generally don’t understand deleting accounts for privacy/data? Everyone is concerned, but nobody would ever delete it :-(

Trusting something goes beyond using it. You can use a product you don’t trust if you have to. It just means you’ll have to be a lot more careful with how you use it and have no expectations of privacy.

It means you don’t let your guard down and don’t give that service anything more than you need to make it work.

What I’m saying is to never give Google or FB something and assume they would always be on your side. Assume the worst even if you continue to use their services.