Tech Freedom Series
There are many things you can do to be free of big tech while having very capable mobile devices and home computers. You should own your data and you should not have to share it with or trust large corporations to communicate with others and organize your life.
The guides I’ll be creating are for Android because Apple does not provide the same options to allow you to customize your devices to remove Apple or the other companies from your personal data.
The first thing every Android users can do is install F-Droid. This provides an app repository for installing apps that is a replacement for Google Play. Unlike Play, all the apps on it are free open source. This is effectively enforced because an app can only be listed on F-Droid if it can be built on F-Droid servers, which means F-Droid has to be able to download and compile the source code.
F-Droid also provides other protections It will search the source code to look for things you may not like, such as code that can track you.
You may see scary warnings from Android as you install F-Droid and then install your first app from it. Contrary to the warnings, F-Droid apps are much safer because they are open source. Play apps can be closed source, not allowing you to know what they are doing on your phone. If you want safety, security and privacy, F-Droid is the way to go!
You may need to enable developer mode on your device to install it. This is easy. You basically find the Android build number on your phone and tap it repeatedly until it tells you that developer mode is enabled.
If you install F-Droid on a device that has Play, you’ll still be able to use Play. It does not disable it. You’ll just have two ways to install apps.
I highly recommend, though, that you try to only install apps from F-Droid going forward. Part of this process is changing habits. Not all apps are available on F-Droid that are available on Play. However, before you head over to Play to install it, ask yourself, do you really need it? Is it worth the loss of privacy and other risks that come with it?
The coming guides will show you how to do common things using apps on F-Droid, so you can learn to be free.
