virtualbriefcase

My advice would be to look into things one at a time while also avoiding taking the sledgehammer approach. Based on what you mentioned, some things you might want to look into:

Look into some encrypted cloud storage/backup options. Filein comes to mind but there's plenty. I'd recommend against self hosting your own cloud in most cases (like nextcloud) in most cases it is both less secure and less private especially on a VPS - and if its on a home server it makes your backups less redundant.

Try doing more stuff in web browsers, web wrappers, or front ends. Unlike an app, there's a lot less sneaky stuff a web browser can do, even if it's the same platform. The Brave browser does cookie isolation and progressive web apps well, it might make a good second browser dedicated to progressive web apps. Apps like newpipe are great for YouTube and piped/invidious for yt or nitter for twitter are two good examples of front ends.

Installing apks is easier than you might think, and if you install FDroid it's three clicks (download, allow installation, install) and worth checking out. Once it's installed you can treat it like any other app store, and in combo with Aurora (on FDroid) you can get about any app without going through a Google account.

As for email, you can forward emails from a gmail account to a proton account. And as for content, consider trying to follow via RSS (you can follow just about anything with RSS one way or another).

For social media look into activity pub and nostr. Just about any alternative social media is going to have the crazies from one or both sides of politics kicked off of mainstream platforms, but federated and decentralized platforms allow you to pick and choose a lot more.

Last, as the phone goes, whenever possible try disabling background data and setting aside pre-installed apps you don't want to use and going from there. A step up from that would be to uninstall/disable them (either in settings or adb bridge for those you can't disable). Custom Roms would be the biggest leap, and the most technological. If you're going to buy a phone with the intent of installing one, Graphene beats everything else hands down while still being one of the easiest to install.

Good luck

Rufus or registry editing during installation can both dodge the requirement if you need it.

Tbh, there are a handful of reasons to avoid F-Droid, all of which existed long before this. AFAIK nothing with the app itself changed as of yet so I'd hold off on quitting it over this.

Calyx with Micro G does have benifits, but isn't quite as good as sandboxing, and also doesn't have some of the other degoogling and security Graphene does.

If you have the time + know how to keep up with Arch, and want the latest packages or need the latest drivers, then go for it.

If you only want an Arch install experience, then fire up a virtual machine and stick with Endeavor or switch to a stable release like Debian on bare metal.

But most importantly, if it brings you value (in productivity or experience) then whatever you decide isn't a stupid decision.

Not sure you can, unless you're using a Pi Hole. Vanadium doesn't accept plugins to my knowledge.

Do filters cancel a notification? If so you can send them to a generic folder that doesn't notify you.

And if you don't want to give them an email that matters consider simple login. It's owned by proton and will give you a few addresses for free.

Mozilla's funding comes from Google (not all of it but enough that all their other finding source's wouldn't even cover the bulk of the CEO's salery). I doubt Mozilla is going to do much.

We can hope it doesn't bode well for their ongoing anti trust case though

Is it wireless? If so, and the controller supports it, try using it in wired mode. Sounds pointless, but have had issues with wireless controllers that worked fine when connected via USB.

69 ... Nice.

I hope this doesn't end badly for VMware. I use VMware exclusively in a professional setting, and partially in a personal setting. With everything I've seen it's by far the most stable (Qemu seems to be close to bare metal in ideal conditions, but can get a little quirky at times to say the least) and beats out virtualbox in both performance and stability.

If it's mostly in cash & stocks hopefully from my layman's view they're buying a valuable asset and not going to enshitify it for a quick buck when the debt bill comes in with an uncertain economy.

IPFS?

Yes. Brave focuses on providing random data points each time it's asked (e.g. screen size). A hardened Firefox will try to provide a generic fingerprint.

Apples to oranges more or less, I'm unaware of any proof that one or the other is considerably better across the board. Though my gut does tell me that randomization is a lot better in the specific situation of regularly signing in and out of accounts.