I Cut the 'Big Five' Tech Giants from My Life by Blocking Their IP Addresses (opens in new tab)

(gizmodo.com)

43 pointsnonprofiteer7y ago8 comments

8 comments

This was a great read! I think allowing aws/gcp hosted sites/apps and then also allowing apple would make this reasonably achievable for the average person. Apple is a tech giant, but they are very far from a monopoly. Allowing microsoft and google hosting might be a necessary evil at this point - too many valuable services rely on them.

That being said I would love to read this same article written by an average joe and not a wealthy san francisco techie. SF/Cali often forgets how the rest of the country/world lives - most of us don't casually get airbnbs, use encrypted chat apps, send large files, or chat with 5+ experts. Her <5 year old daughter has been on twice as many flights as I have.

mikestew7y ago

That being said I would love to read this same article written by an average joe

I assumed that it was written by your "average Joe", given the difficulty with sending a large file. The user is on a Linux laptop, and none of the half dozen ways to pull that off come to mind? Okay, fair enough, some people's necks can't even grow a beard. But if you're saying that's not the case, I'm a little disappointed in the author.

mrgreenfur7y ago

Yeah, I liked this piece too.

It's a bit of an overreaction to block AWS and GCP, since in those cases google and amazon are not actively tracking you and you're blocking core infrastructure.

siedes7y ago

>since in those cases google and amazon are not actively tracking you

For now :-)

jammygit7y ago

It was interesting however that it showed how centralized things have gotten. It shouldn't be so hard to disconnect from a mere 5 companies!

Edit: AWS in particular was interesting because it shows how much infrastructure has come under such centralized control.

rolph7y ago

ive basically done this, myself some time ago. quite a few places on the web are cut off but i make do fine without them. the problem with AWS is the infiltration into the backbone that has been progressing. the whole cloud thing was exactly what i did not want to participate in, it was just 3rd party hosting in a fancy zoot suit looking me right in the face. ive been selfhosting for sometime, and had little need for a machine in the middle except to make normal hops from node to node. i guess ya could call it fossil net, its the way ive done it since the 70's and its never given me any grief.

there is this on github:

https://github.com/GMG-Special-Projects-Desk/GoodbyeBigFive

found in the middle of this article :

https://gizmodo.com/want-to-really-block-the-tech-giants-her...

washadjeffmad7y ago

I did this on my mobile devices originally just to block Facebook, but when it ended up showing me how pervasive and obsessive the attention grabs were, I tried it for others.

It's kind of amazing how much better an experience surfing the web is without them, from load times to quality of content. Highly recommended.

8bitsrule7y ago

"I record an interview ... we talk by phone and I record my end with a handheld Zoom recorder. That works fine, but when it comes time to send the 386 MB audio file..."

That's got to be uncompressed (H6 options are WAV or 128k MP3), Opus will fix that filesize with little noticeable loss.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse