This is a text automatically translated from Italian. If you appreciate our work and if you like reading it in your language, consider a donation to allow us to continue doing it and improving it.
The articles of Cassandra Crossing I'm under license CC BY-SA 4.0 | Cassandra Crossing is a column created by Marco Calamari with the “nom de plume” of Cassandra, born in 2005.
Today Cassandra talks to us about a new project called Pillole di /e/ OS, a video column with advice and tutorials to finally switch to one smartphone /e/!
This article was written on January 19, 2022 from Cassandra
Cassandra's loose change/ Cassandra's new, old and double laptop
A series of short videos to help you "degoogle" your smartphone
As Cassandra's 24 graying readers know well, years ago even our prophetess had to admit that the fight for the defense of privacy and digital rights could no longer be fought only "head-on"; this happens mainly because most people have assumed, explicitly or implicitly, a completely acquiescent attitude towards the capture of their personal data.
The alternative is to move on to a tactic that produces immediate benefits, which obviously cannot be the informative and "educational" activities, which are now proven to be ineffective.
Aiming for a “reduction of the harm” that individuals suffer was the best response; for this reason Cassandra starts publishing in the video column from today "A chat with Cassandra” (Piped links) the publication of a series of short videos on the topic of the "degoogling" of smartphones; The column is called “/e/ OS pills” (Piped links), and is made by Leandro Botter with the collaboration of Anecdotica Magazine And Marco Calamari.
What does it mean to "degoogize" a phone and what advantages does it offer to those who undertake this path?
Phones that use the Android operating system are the vast majority of "Smartphones" existing in the world, and smartphones are without fear of contradiction the devices that intercept the most personal data, both at an individual and collective level.
Android, in itself, is “just” an operating system Open source for smartphones derived from GNU/Linux and owned by Google, which natively does not have particularly invasive or harmful features for privacy.
However, it acquires them to the highest possible degree in its implementations, because Google installs services and applications from its "software ecosystem", which offer undeniable advantages to users, but which, being free, exist and function only to extract as much personal data as possible, which Google and its partners then monetize in all possible ways.
“Degoogling” a smartphone means installing on it an alternative operating system (in jargon “a ROM”) also based on “clean” Android, which is then equipped with services as equivalent as possible to those offered by Google, but provided via applications that do not intercept personal data and in general behave in an "ethical" manner towards users.
The good news is that this work has already been done, for example (but not only) with the creation of Lineage OS and its packaging in the distribution /e/ OS made by /e/ Foundation.
Without any intention of doing injustice to the many other similar initiatives carried out by other organizations, we have decided, for reasons of efficiency, to focus on /e/ OS, having identified it as the best operating system in terms of low effort for its adoption and good quality of services that arrive already installed.
But it is useless either to repeat themes that have already been discussed many times in these pages, or to duplicate things that are exposed and explained in "/e/ OS pills” (Piped links).
Instead, look at the first 4 "Pills" which are already ready.
We ask your forgiveness in advance for the sometimes decidedly questionable quality of the audio and video, which we promise to improve in the future.
The information contained in the Pills is certainly of an excellent level, and we hope it will be very useful to you if you embrace the path of de-googling your mobile phone, saving you a lot of time, and accompanying you quickly and without unnecessary waste of time towards your goal. of reducing the personal data that is stolen from you on a daily basis, and of reducing the damage that your privacy suffers on a daily basis.
Enjoy!
Marco Calamari
Video column “A chat with Cassandra”
Cassandra's Slog (Static Blog).
Cassandra's archive: school, training and thought
Join communities
If you have found errors in the article you can report them by clicking here, Thank you!