I shared a version of this guide earlier this year, but felt a website was needed to unpack the different options fully. So after an unreasonable number of hours, I put together the necessary data and website.
I hope this is digestible enough for the average person to help those looking to take that first step, or for people who are equally passionate and want to get their friends or family involved.
Details:
- Site - https://purchasewithpurpose.io/
- Code - https://codeberg.org/purchase-with-purpose/pwp-website
- Community - https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose
Every time I post these guides, there is always feedback on things that can improve, or I got wrong. Please do share, as it is the best way for these to evolve!
Good choice! But for search engines, you missed SearX, Startpage, and Brave Search. SearX is a search engine where you can choose your favorite search engines to get results from various search engines privately, and you can also host it. Startpage is a search engine where you can search Google anonymously and without being spied on, and Brave Search is Brave’s private search engine that uses its own search results. Stop trusting DuckDuckGo, it depends on Bing, and if you click on one of its ads, you will be exposed to Microsoft tracking. For messaging, it’s fine, but you missed Session, which is a messaging app that doesn’t require a phone number and is anonymous.
Thanks for the feedback! The website goes into this level of detail and includes some of those suggestions you had: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/
Hard to include all of this in the graphic alone, but will consider how it can be improved.
I see Qobuz on there. IMHO, Bandcamp should be your first stop when buying music. If it’s not on bandcamp, Qobuz seems to have just about everything else, more or less, that someone might want. I’ve complained about them in the past for making me download my purchases one track at a time, which can be pretty annoying if you’re buying a super-duper-deluxe version of an album, but, I am pleased to say, they no longer do this; you can download the complete albums you’ve purchased in a zip file. But only once. Stuff can disappear for annoying rights reasons, and I think they even say, once you buy your music download it immediately, because it may not be there on a subsequent visit.
I’m not so sure. Last time I looked for an album it was cheaper on Qobuz than Bandcamp - also Qobuz had a Hi-Res version. Bandcamp I think takes 15% + payment handling which seems a lot for being a shopfront. I went to record label to get it in the end as I thought that was probably the best way of getting the money to the artist.
LibreWolf browser
Agreed! It is an excellent choice and is part of the recommended list on the website. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/browser/
I am very bothered by the OS section. Bazzite should be the go-to for gaming, period. Ubuntu should never be recommended to anyone. Fedora is far more stable and reliable as a starter distro than either Mint or Ubuntu. Fedora Workstation for Mac expats and Fedora KDE for Windows expats.
I won’t fault anyone for putting Mint in there, but I loathe Cinnamon and would never recommend a distro that excludes KDE by design.
agreed, bazzite, nobara, and cachyOS would all have been better alternatives to popOS
I’d normally have Pop as as more of a starter distro, although I haven’t been recommending it lately just because it’s in a bit of an awkward spot in crossing over from GNOME to COSMIC. Not that I dislike COSMIC, I just wouldn’t want a newbie to install the GNOME version and then have to go through switching their whole DE right off the bat.
COSMIC is supposed to hit 1.0 in the next few days and I’m looking forward to it. I wouldn’t recommend it right now only because the beta still has too many rough edges. Once it’s more polished, Pop_OS it could be an excellent starter distro.
I think a lot of these guides could use more in-depth companion guides to go along with it. Changing your email provider for one is not a simple thing and there are concerns like loss of functionality (Gmail is a good product run by a shit company) and also how to make the process less overwhelming. Some services will give you the option to migrate all your emails from Gmail but maybe you want to start fresh, etc. Then there’s going to all of your providers and updating your contact email. Again, not as simple as signing up for another service.
I have started on that with a small intro section for most sections (still adding). An example is email https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/category/email, but I understand that an even more in-depth guide is warranted.
Reddit -> Lemmy is a recent switch that I’m happy with
This is me, but i did it in reverse. Once windows was behind me it kind of opened up the door to more change. Took me less than a year to arrive at not using my google account at all.
Replace Ubuntu with Zorin OS
In your guide, Proton’s services have the EU flag, but the company is Swiss.
It is supposed to represent a European company. But will update it as it is confusing.
I’m not Swiss, but I’ve understood that Switzerland adopts many EU laws, but not all of them. I’ve also heard that a right-wing party, which wants the country to be more independent from the EU is pretty popular there.
As this is just based on things that I’ve heard, I don’t have any sources to link.
What I mean is, Switzerland is an European country, but as I’ve understood, any specific EU law or regulation may or may not apply.
i thought you had stopped recommending protonmail and spotify but i see now both are back (spotify not in this image, but (with caveats) on your website).
i see you’ve been making these images for many years and obviously put a lot of time in to it - i assume that like most other ethical consumerism campaigns you must have some funding for it? (from who?)
The guide has had many iterations, and you are right that at one point, they were entirely removed. I’ve ended up informing rather than hiding, as most of these names are already known, whereas not many people are aware of Spotify’s actions (for example). Proton is a little more complicated - I personally won’t use them, but I can see the nuance where some people might.
I don’t get any funding. I am a developer myself, so I do 80% of the work. The rest is self-funded and will continue for the foreseeable future.
i don’t understand what motivates you to do so much unpaid labor to market/advertise/recommend commercial products and services which you yourself would not even use.
I think waterfox was sold to an ad agency.
Not anymore, it is mentioned on their profile. They are now owned by the founder again. https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/software/5RBGtGMEiI5J7DDaaMrfuZ/
What about https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ ?
Doesn’t that already serve the same purpose? … without also recommending to use a closed source browser as Vivaldi like you are doing instead?
Privacyguides is an excellent resource, and in fact, it is often linked on the website. You might be interested in https://privacy.purchasewithpurpose.io/, which prioritises tools validated by them.
However, it isn’t meant to serve the same audience. PurchaseWithPurpose is there to make moving more digestible for the average user, while educating them on more advanced topics.
I also like OnlyOffice as an alternative to MSOffice/Google Office Suite, has free tiers and real-time sessions
Yup, an excellent option and it is listed on the site. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/office-suite/
It is worth noting the potential ties to Russia as that has been a deal breaker for some.
Why Tidal? I get the part against apple, but why tidal?
Tidal
It is hard for me to be the arbiter of what tools are ethical enough, so I try to make these facts as easy as possible to find for people. In the end, it educates and ultimately most decide against using such tools (for example, Spotify). There is a note on Tidal’s profile about Jack Dorsey’s and Jay-Z’s involvement. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/software/34R8h9DOVPhaJ7CZMmKW48/
That’s kinda why I was asking I remember something about Dorsey a while a go
Spotify often gets bad press, some probably promoted by competitors. Its payouts look lower mainly because it offers a free ad-supported tier and serves markets with lower subscription fees - if it were subscription-only in high-fee markets, payouts would be similar to Apple, Tidal, or Qobuz. Also, I haven’t seen Spotify play me any AI-generated tracks, unlike some other platforms.
I was gonna object to having the OS be on week 9 but then I noticed almost all of these are just webapps. Weird times
