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The end of an era

While many have been predicting it for a while, America's slow downfall comes as a fairly hard shock to most of the world. In it's wake, we have to consider one thing: can I still check my email? Most of the tech industry resides in the states, and while some companies are very clearly not aligned with the current administration - notably Alphabet (Google/Gmail) - others, such as Meta (Facebook/Instagram/Messenger/Whatsapp), X (ie. twitter) and Amazon, have been all too eager to kowtow to the powers that be. What does that mean for the average consumer? Are you safe using those services? And if America descends into chaos, what does that mean for your cat pictures? Are there alternatives?

Well, it's the internet, so there are always alternatives. While there may be few people willing to switch away entirely from Windows and Mac, Linux is ownerless and maintained by an international community, as are other open-source projects such as Firefox (a web browser), Thunderbird (an email client) and LibreOffice (a Microsoft Office equivalent). In terms of twitter, Bluesky (made by one of the original twitter founders) has picked up traction and is in my view a far more enjoyable experience than the renamed 'X'. There is unfortunately no reasonable alternative to Facebook, but with all the fake AI stuff on there nowadays you're better off without it to be honest. NZ's 'Neighbourly' isn't too bad for similar community stuff, though it's pretty dead. Messenger/Whatsapp are easily replaced with Signal (made by the original Whatsapp founder).

Google search is generally a safe harbour - for the moment at least - but it's search results are deteriorating, with more AI rubbish frontloaded, and an increasing number of ads. Ecosia, Frontpage and DuckDuckGo are reasonable alternatives that're less annoying. Google's Gmail is only one of the myriad free email services on the net. Protonmail has been on my purview for a while now, though their free account has quite a small capacity limit - fine if you're downloading your messages and deleting them off the server (POP email), not so fine if you're viewing them online ie. via IMAP. But there are others. Google Drive is easily replaced by NZ's own Mega.nz. Though unfortunately founded by USA-born pro-piracy dirtbag and human whale lookalike Kim Dotcom, he stopped having anything to do with the company in 2013. It is currently the fastest, most flexible and most secure of the cloud storage systems. But above the free 20GB tier it is not always the least expensive.

Asides from that, there're tons of non-US-centric services to switch to for whatever you do. You're still tied to the USA for your phone, and there's few ways around that asides from buying a Nokia. But otherwise where there's a will, there's a way. Personally, having friends and family in the states I'm not entirely comfortable with deriding it, but at the end of the day you need to call a spade a spade, and bury that dead bald eagle. And in the words of Leonard Cohen, "you're not going to like what comes after America".

- Matt Bentley, computer expert at Bentley Home PC Support.
Email info@homepcsupport.co.nz or phone 0211348576.

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