Do We Really Need To Replace Tech Giants?
Privacy Alternatives Need To Be More User-Friendly To Replace Tech Giants
We’ve seen a surge in privacy concerns in the last decade. It’s always been a topic of interest, but more so in recent years, after multiple global scandals. We can observe, for instance, that the privacy subreddit had around 63k members back in 2016, before that number exploded the next year, and the sub now has over 1.3 million members today. And in between 2020 and 2021, the messaging app Signal saw a massive user increase, even though the app had been around since 2014.
In parallel to that newfound interest, guides proposing alternatives and privacy solutions have began popping up en masse. The second thing a user will encounter, after arguments in favour of privacy, are guides detailing steps to take to be more private. Among those steps are proposed apps and services a user can switch to.
Problem is, these guides all have the same flaw. They showed what was at the time the only available alternatives that existed in the market. And because the online privacy world was in need of a good dusting, the apps available back then were few and far between, hadn’t been updated in a long time, and weren’t exhaustive. It’s far easier nowadays to find services that come with a no-knowledge policy than it…
