Imagine there is no YT, no Twitter/X, no Facebook, no Netflix, no Amazon, no Apple, no Google to to search the Web, no chatGPT. Imagine there is no TikTok either (even though it’s not US). Just imagine there is no ‘giant’ tech from anywhere owning any app or service that millions if not billions of people are willing to use.
A world without any of those giant (US) tech companies and services that many of us take for granted.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for? How would you use it? And how much time do you think you would spend online, compared to now?
(my own answer in the comments)
porn? no change, furry porn sites aren’t run by big tech
gaming? very little change as all I seem to be interested in lately is Space Station 14 and that’s open source with a standalone launcher that doesn’t require Steam
social media? nearly all of that for me is just mastodon and lemmy.
youtube videos going away would suck for the lost knowledge and art and discussion, tho if it meant google died that’s a price I’m willing to pay
I already replaced quite a few of these sites and apps. I still waste lots of time here on the fediverse though 😅
Vivaldi for browser, Ecosia for search engine and AI, newspapers apps instead of Google news suggestions and Lemmy.
The same way we did it before those things existed or had taken over. Believe it or not, the internet used to be that way 👴
I feel like Zuckerfuck made this post for ideas on how to circumvent competition.
How did you manage to notice me?
deleted by creator
It’s one of the thing I would like to know: how many of us have had a taste of the old web and how many of the younger people have no idea anon corporate(US)-owned Web was even a thing.
Like I said in my answer, ‘my’ Web wouldn’t change much either: blogs and emails wouldn’t go away, just less blog/emails to and from he US, probably ;)
Funny, but for me very little would change. The only one of those I use even occasionally is YT, and the videos would start appearing elsewhere. Peertube, maybe?
You’d lose most of everything. If you think AWS and cloudflare and such arent U.S. owned, ignoring Microsoft, we are missing most of it.
Edit: your domain you are posting this on is cloudflare I believe, so U.S.
OP only listed consumer services, not the infrastructure side. I completely agree with you that if we would take that part into consideration then … Not a lot in the beginning. And in the end because the whole financial sector is also dependent on various US companies and their online services to process most payments … Shit. I don’t know which other critical infrastructures would break because stuff behind the curtain disappeared.
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That said if it’s really only “what I as consumer use” then things would look different - even though it all comes down to the details. I.e. no smartphone would be a nuisance … unless Linux phones count.
You know the internet was around before AWS and Cloudflare? People could go back to hosting their own websites on their own hardware. Sites would take longer to load without the cdns.
The same thing I use it for now, except it would be slower since I assume latency still matters.
Is wikipedia in or out? Because that affects my answer a lot.
Same for xkcd.comGood point. I would say we should consider Wikipedia as big-tech not “corporate owned” and since it’s also open source we should be able imagine it would not be tied to being US.
How would I use internet?
Pretty much the way I use it now?
For maps I use OSM, with eventual searchs in HEREwego in case I don’t find something.
I use proton and tuta as mail services.
I don’t have any social media account (that is xitter, fb and the likes).
I don’t use youtube at all (I prefer reading to watching a video):
For gaming I mostly play indies and they are rarely from the US, I could live without the US ones. Worst case, I love retrogaming, I can go for years with my chinese retro-handheld and the amount of roms and romhacks that exist right now
As for streaming? I’m all in stremio, and I despise usonian content (even more lately) so all I watch is European shows, korean shows and anime.
As I was writing this, I came to realize that I really don’t depend at all of usonian shit. They could go to hell and banish from this world for what I care.
I would use that corporate-free Web for email, like we used to in the 90s) and for the Fediverse (the little of it I’m using). I would use it to read… blogs, and to post more regularly on my own blog too.
I don’t use social media much (beside here) and would not miss not accessing Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter or whatever else. I have not used Google for search for quite a few years now, so that would not change much for me.
I would probably miss YT, though. I would try find alternatives to it and… to the majority of US content I’m subscribed to on YT.
I’m not much of a gamer and would not miss much there. I do play chess, mostly IRL and against people not machine, but I would probably still play from time to time online chess on Lichess (not US and not corporate owned, no tracking, no ads, free and open source).
I’ve quit using streaming services a few years ago, moving back to owning physical copies of the media I watch or listen to, and read.
Since, I use Free/Libre Software there is also no real dependency on any country of origin for them. Also, all those apps all work fully offline too. No need to even connect to the Internet to use them.
I don’t use Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Google search, TikTok, or ChatGPT.
I use Amazon to order N95 masks a couple times per year but that can be done with other sites.
Twitter = Mastodon or Bluesky
Netflix = Torrent
Apple/Google = GrapheneOS if we are talking phone OS. Perhaps Linux if both companies are gone.
Google search = DuckDuckGo, Esonia, Brave
ChatGPT = I don’t trust any “AI” to give a factual answer.
Youtube = Odyssey, Bitchute, there is a video site in the Fediverse but the name escapes me at the moment.
The video platform you’re talking about is called Peertube.
Also I say look into Kagi the search engine. It’s a paid one, but it has provided me so much value and they also take Bitcoin as a alternative currency in case the other ways to pay are gone.
Kagi is too expensive. It’s an ok search engine, not much better than anything else, but they need to lower the price to make it worthwhile.
Honestly for 5$ it is slightly better than other platforms. You get so much value if you use everything it offers and it’s better for privacy than other engines. But that’s just my opinion as a customer whose used it. They’re small and not as robust as the giants, but it’s sustainable compared to DuckDuckgo, and a fee others.
Peertube. Thanks for that.
No problemo! /ᐠ - ˕ -マ
Kagi (of which I was a happy paid customer) is US so it wouldn’t fit into that scenario
Oh I understand, I just wanted to share Kagi as also an alternative as well outside this scenario. I am curious, are you no longer a Kagi customer and if not why did you stop being a customer? Maybe we can send them the feedback and they can try to improve.
US tech is a big pile of garbage.
All of it is to make you addicted, to track you, to influence you, to collect all sort of intel about you, and then use that against you. And they will serve you ads as the cherry on top.
For me they can all disappear and be gone. There are plenty of activities (internet or otherwise) that can be done without that pile of shit.
I have Proton with custom domain as email service, I have my own encrypted backup in an European VPS, have my own private cloud also in European VPS.
Don’t need US garbage.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for?
Pretty much the same as before?
The only giant tech firm from your list I am actively engaged with is
GoogleAlphabet because of Android and YouTube. Apart from that, there is PayPal because of online payments and WhatsApp because of other people. But for both, I have 1:1 replacements already in place to be used wherever available.AOSP is opensource, MicroG, a Play Services alternative is developed by European guys. Huawei also has a similar alternative framework, as they are already banned from using Play. Obviously you would loose access to your paid apps, and some spy apps would stop working, but Android can totally work without the goog. I’ve been using it this way for ages [email protected]
Google is in fact Android. The AOSP is just a fig leaf.
Written from my phone running GrapheneOS and MicroG.
I would use the internet like I did back in 2005 I guess. Seriously… the necessity of these tech companies is a mixture of them sniffing their own farts too much, propaganda from them to ensure they are perceived as essential, and finally people being too lazy to find alternatives.
Happily.
:)
