Gmail is an email service. Like the fediverse, email is federated.
By changing your email provider, do you really lose anything? You can still contact your friends, contacts and even various customer suports. You also can recieve emails from popular social media apps. If you degoogle from atleast one Google app, maybe Gmail could be the easiest and least life changing one.
While, Youtube could easilly be one of the most difficult to degoogle from. Not like literally but emotionally. Like deep down you know you can find mostly all you might need on something like Peertube but not all the entertainment media like on Youtube. You will also become a social outcast if peertube is the only app you use. You might not understand channels people mention in day to day talk from youtube or references.
If you use exclusively fediverse apps and sites, Chrome could be almost just as easy to replace as gmail, longterm. However If you use Youtube it won’t surprise me that Youtube downgrades your performance and user experience in what ever means neccesary on competing browsers.
Completely disagree.
I’ve had my Gmail for so long, I literally would not be able to dump it. Records, logins, accounts etc., all tied to my Gmail.
My phone, government accounts, lawyers, medical and tax are all tied to that account. It’s more than just sending a new email address for friends to contact you with.
On the other hand, YouTube is…social media? You don’t have to watch videos on line. I think I’ve used my YouTube account 5 times in my life, and I’m not a social pariah.
To be honest, it’s probably a generational thing. No one I know really uses YouTube, and they all have their life tied to their Gmail account.
If you have a deep history with gmail then that could make it harder to to replace. It’s very true especially if from important positions you participated in, along with multiple accounts on it which I like to call leaving eggs all in one basket since they are all reliant on that account.
For people who arent quiet as invested in that, and just use it casually which is a pretty big percent could easily replace gmail with nothing to lose and those are the type of users I was thinking about when writing up this post. But I can agree with what you are saying here and that you have a good point.
I’ve been using fastmail for a few months now. Besides being a really top-notch replacement for gmail and even adding a few features, it also onboards you by giving you a couple quick fields to fill out and then immediately imports everything you had in gmail. And then it keeps importing it, continuously, as long as you want.
It’s not like i’m paying for gmail, so I’ll keep the account alive as long as I need while I switch all the same accounts and records that you are (validly) mentioning as a barrier. I could actually do most of it in one sweep, if I just searched for my old email address in 1password, but it’s not really that time-sensitive to switch, and in the meantime I get to use fastmail.
YouTube is probably the website I spend most of my time on, but I only use Firefox. I have some 4 extensions to make it usable, not because google intentionally makes it worse, but because unmodded YouTube sucks. They’re ublock origin, dearrow, yt enhancer and sponsorblock.
Gmail’s easiest to replace if you have your own domain. I moved mine a couple years ago with no issues at all.
There are still various ways to watch YT ad-free and tracking-free. (And you can pay the creators directly on Patreon or through another service, and watch the videos ad-free on Patron. I pay a little more on Patreon than I was paying for YT Premium, but not much more, and I’m happier the creators are getting bigger cut and Google is getting no cut.)
I use FF basically exclusively except for the rare time a site doesn’t work with it. It was also an easy change. Google does degrade their stuff (whether or purpose or through ineptitude) but there are other options for the other main Google services, as well.
The only things I have left on there are photos, contacts, and calendars. Photos will probably be the next to go.
I mean- I dont have a domain, been using proton mail and mail.com for the pass 6 years atleast with no noticable issues on multiple popular sites. Maybe you can explain that further maybe i’m not quiet understanding.
I know that ad free apps exist for Youtube however they probally won’t last long term. Ad blockers right now are the main target of google to rid of. Peertube being its own thing from Youtube and also federated will last longer then most sites trying to compete with Youtube as there are multiple hosts for different smaller sections of the service.
One look at my spam folder in gmail makes me realize why I wouldn’t leave. I’ve felt Google nailed spam detection.
Eh- I mean maybee that could be a reason, but Google has too much power and influence and takes advantage idk if that would be enough for me personally to stay but at the same time I can aknowledge that it could be a good reason to not leave.
You might not understand channels people mention in day to day talk from youtube or references.
Hahaha jesus nah, the only time I ever hear people mention streamers or youtubers is to go “Who the hell is THAT? they did WHAT to their underage fans?” And then I immediately stop caring about them.
In that case I absolutely would recommend Peertub to you.
The problem that I had by changing my email to another provider is that most websites wont allow other emails other than the big dogs: Gmail and outlook and its so fucking annoying.
Oh yeah I meant to say alias like Firefox Relay that uses mozmail.com at the end. I don’t have the websites on top of my head right now but yeah they are a few of them.
I do remember one app specifically called Aminoapps that did blocked tatanota emails but not proton mail. So maybe it’s just hit or miss on whether alternative email providers get banned.
