This List Sucks

So earlier, someone on Discord shared a list called Decentralize and Clean Uo Your Life! I had several problems with this list. To be clear, I don't have a problem with the person who shared this or even the person who posted this to Tumblr initially, I just don't think it's a great list. Each point that follows was copied and pasted from the Tumblr post exactly. I won't say who posted it, considering we're not even on Tumblr and I don't want this person to catch any flak from this if it somehow breaks containment. There were several links throughout the post, which I have not preserved. I've also deleted any lines that I didn't have anything to say about.

So first of all, Overdrive and Libby are basically the same thing, Libby is just, from what I can tell, the app you use to access the Overdrive service. Kanopy also seems to be under the Overdrive umbrella, which I didn't know before. I never used CloudLibrary because my library doesn't use it. Hoopla was used by my library previously, but they seem to have dropped that one in favor of Kanopy. I haven't used either all that much, but I can tell you Libby is an awesome service, and one of the reasons I chose Kobo as my ereader - Kobo and Overdrive/Libby are very tightly integrated.

There is one thing you should know. The reason Kobo and Overdrive/Libby are so intertwined is because they're owned by the same corporation, Rakuten. Overdrive/Libby being a private company and having control over what should be a public good isn't exactly desirable. I think this situation sucks and I wish it were better, but it is what it is, so for now, there's no point in missing out on this service because of that.

This one is mostly good advice, with the caveat that Mozilla's leadership is the fucking worst and are currently shoving AI into every one of Firefox's orifices. This is just the latest in a string of terrible decisions and mismanagements. If this bothers you, you can instead try forks such as Waterfox, Librewolf, or Floorp. Unfortunately, these forks are very dependent on Firefox, so if something happens to Firefox, these projects are kinda just screwed.

This point had a link for each word, one was to a site telling you what to install, one was to a bulk uninstall utility, and two were to debloat scripts on Github. If you know me, you know what I'm going to say next. Why go to the trouble of debloating Windows when Linux is right there? Look, I know you probably think that's an unreasonable ask for whatever reason, but this list is about decentralizing and cleaning up your life, and I'm assuming getting out from under the thumb of massive tech companies. Surely somebody interested in such a list would be willing to consider Linux. I'm sure others would have similar arguments for why they can't switch away from Chrome or Microsoft Office. Speaking of...

Hey, the author knew to use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice! Hell yeah!

Of course, I rarely use LibreOffice these days. Not a knock agaisnt it, it's excellent software, but I do all my writing in WordGrinder, which I highly recommend.

Two points for the cost of one! IMDB is awful these days, and Goodreads is owned by Amazon, but Trakt, Letterboxd, and Storygraph aren't exactly decentralized services. Idon't say this to discourage anybody from using them, but the fact is these sites are not immune to enshittification.

I never used Ground News, but I'm suspicious of YouTube sponsorships by default. They may not always be scams, but they're almost never worth it, in my opinion. Somebody replying to the person who shared this post said that Ground News doesn't aggregate from independent journalists or some of the other outlets she follows, but again, I never used it. One good resource I can point to is a site called Media Bias Fact Check. This site doesn't do all the same things Ground News does, it doesn't aggregate news stories for example, but it's a good source of info on whatever biases an outlet may have.

Now hold on, you just said to switch away from Chrome and Chromium-based browsers! To be clear, Microsoft Edge is also Chromium.

While I can't vouch for MTube or the Unhook extension, NewPipe is a great Android app that I personally use all the time. Fun fact, Firefox on Android can use extensions, so you can install uBlock Origin on Firefox for Android and it even works on the YouTube mobile site!

One other cool piece of software is yt-dlp, which can download videos not just from YouTube, but from most anywhere on the Web.

I'm not sure why you're telling people to use Ecosia, they use Google and Bing results. Search for a Cause uses Yahoo results.

Flashpoint is a great project (I highly recommend Mud and Blood 2), but why is it on this list?

I've never used PDF24, and maybe some of their features are useful, but there are plenty of FOSS document viewers out there if you just need a viewer.

Thunderbird and Edison are email clients, the rest are email providers. The difference is the client is what you use to read the email, and the provider provides the email service on the backend. While I am Gmail trash and so don't really use Thunderbird, I would choose it over Edison since it's FOSS. I can't speak to the quality of the providers. Point is, if you just downloaded Thunderbird, you'd still have to sign up for an account somewhere. You can even use Thunderbird with Gmail if you want.

I also mention Thunderbird has announced they would offer an email provider service, but that's not available yet.

I can't believe this person only mentioned Pixelfed. I could write an entire article on the Fediverse and how cool it is, but in short, the Fediverse is composed of a whole bunch of instances of various services that all use ActivityPub to talk to each other. One of the most prominent Fediverse services is MAstodon. Not only can anybody set up their own Mastodon instance and have it talk with other instances, a Mastodon instance can talk with other ActiityPub-based services, only one of which is Pixelfed! There's also a YouTube clone called PeerTube. You can follow a PeerTube account from a Mastodon instance, and when they post videos, the videos will show up in your feed. Something else really neat is that comments on that video will show up as a reply thread on Mastodon, and if you post in that reply thread on MAstodon, it'll show up as a comment on PeerTube!

It's sad that the author only mentions Pixelfed and not, well, all that, because this is the only truly decentralized thing on this list.

I don't know why this person is recommending NCH Software's products. When I checked, while they do have an option to download each program, you also have the option to pay for it? Not sure if the free downloads are trials or what. In addition, I actually found a Reddit thread detailing some shady practices from this company. I haven't verified these claims, but skimming through the list, I'm pretty sure there are way better alternatives for free, and a lot of those options are FOSS to boot. I don't want to say that this list was a cynical attempt at marketing for NCH Software, but this is really weird and I never heard of this company before this.

To conclude, list bad, use Linux and get on the Fedi.