Here you can find reviewed, impressive and comprehensive European alternatives for digital products and apps if you wanna break from American (big) tech companies.
Have a look, you'll be impressed...
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
349 points (98.1% liked)
Technology
79064 readers
3399 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not all android spies on you. Have you ever tried GrapheneOS? It's very secure and pro-privacy. Technically it's not android (if you really want to nitpick), but you need a Google Pixel to run it.
Yes, GrapheneOS is Android (it's AOSP without Google Play Services and GApps, with open source replacements). It's like what CyanogenMod was back in the day. I haven't used Graphene; I've never owned a Pixel. And Graphene is only on Pixels.
I've used a ton of Android custom firmware... from around Ice Cream Sandwich through Lollipop — back when Android was named for desserts. My favourite CFW was LiquidSmooth based on Jellybean, based on AOKP, which was an AOSP fork that tried to be "cool." It wasn't quite as cool as Paranoid Android (which was fucking awesome), but it was way more stable. And CyanogenMod was the most stable but "boring" by comparison. I mean it wasn't flashy. But LiquidSmooth was rock solid. So no, I haven't used Graphene, but I've used forks/ROMs like it.
If Google Play Services is running on it, and you're not blocking it with a firewall (not sure if you even can, but I suppose it isn't impossible), then yes, it's spying on you. (I do not think GrapheneOS runs Google Play Services.)
Yeah. Before OneUI 8, you could set up a custom ROM on a Samsung phone too. Short of that you can disable google services. Use non google apps from F-Droid or Aurora Store. You can also use ADB to uninstall system-level APKs. Though the only way that I know of to fully de-google is to install a different OS.
The label "Android" explicitly includes the ability to spy on you. GrapheneOS is not Android certified.