How is ethical defined here? I cannot see a definition and I don't see what is the common denominator between all those tools. For example why isn't Telegram considered ethical but Signal and Wire are? What is unethical about Word or Excel (given that OpenOffice is mentioned as an alternative), is it the ownership by Microsoft? Or the use of proprietary format in the past? What is more ethical about Steemit or Mastodon than Twitter? I would understand if the focus was on privacy and taking back some control/ownership, but that's not really something I would consider to be an ethical argument.
Not every tool on here fits everyone's ethics, but SOME tools fit SOME people's ethics. It's important to question what is ethical and what is not, but the question becomes moot if we never attempt to put the answer into action. Let's not hand-wring about "What is ethical?" so much that we never make any attempt to behave ethically.<p>I don't agree that all the tools on the list are ethical, but there are a few I plan to start using, because I do believe they are ethical and I didn't know about them before.
JFC, I skimmed top comments for something that wasn’t “but, but...”, and as of this writing all I got it is either that, or the page won’t load with an ad blocker.<p>To the page author, I for one appreciate the effort. No, your definition of “ethics” probably doesn’t fit mine. But having just skimmed it, I think it will give me something to chew on later. Like many, I’ll have my share of “but, but...”s, but it’s the thinking about it and not the curated list, that is important to me.
I am not sure how ethics is defined here. In fact, I can totally see how some of these options can be considered unethical.<p>Before we proceed, recall that Facebook is now a "morally bankrupt liars" because it "enabled genocide", "facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions", "allow the live streaming of suicides, rape, and murders", and "host and publish the mosque attack video".<p>Let's compare this with one of the ethical browsers listed here -- Tor. Tor allowed Silk Road, which allowed dangerous drugs and fake IDs to be sold, and other sites that hosted child abuse and pornography content.<p>But privacy! Well, how about PeerTube? Interestingly, PeerTube "viewers don't have privacy" as it exposes the IPs of all viewers. Imagine if YouTube or Facebook does this.<p>So what gives?
Thank you!<p>There's a lot of negative feedback in here (which I mostly agree with) but I found a few gems on this page, and I wanted to thank the author and contributors.
Ethical seems to be a very fuzzy expression here without any meaning whatsoever. Even most of the claims made next to the service are not supportable in any practical way (for online services owned by third parties).
See also: <a href="https://prism-break.org" rel="nofollow">https://prism-break.org</a>, but there are no "organizations" there.
This is really cool. I (and I think some others around here) would like to move away from Google, etc, but sometimes it's hard to find other options. It's great having a semi-comprehensive list in one place! I'll definitely be looking into some of these.
Some of these services claim no adds, chronological timeline, etc., but that was Facebook and Twitter in the early days too. How do we know these services will remain add free?
When it comes to ethics, I care way more about stuff like "not exploiting workers or the environment".<p>Most of the "ethics" here are pretty academic, and don't have a real impact on actual people. I'd love a version of this site that does the same thing for ethically produced goods (there are a number of sites like that out there, but none are this clean, and they tend to focus on specific niches (clothing, etc)).
Update: Adblock Plus was hiding body element as it had "headersocial" class. I have fixed the issue and the site is accessible with Adblock Plus on Firefox now.
PLNKTN is a good carbon footprint calculator app. Great design (<a href="https://plnktn.life/" rel="nofollow">https://plnktn.life/</a>).
This resembles orthodox rabbis discussing what is considered kosher.<p>I half expected to see my music player on the list, given it's popular, GPLv3 licensed and has no tracking, but I have no idea what the approval process is.
I think one reason so many people in these comments are having issues with the definition of "ethical" is the partial realization that there isn't a way to ethically consume things, especially when capitalism is involved. You can use Firefox, but that still supports Google. You can recycle, but an ocean freighter burning bunker oil pukes out enough pollution in one voyage to invalidate your entire life's effort. You can make better or worse choices, but we live in a fundamentally unethical global economic system.
I don't like this idea, just like I don't like the idea of ESG ETFs and whatnot. It presupposes what is ethical and what is not, despite the obvious personal nature of the problem. The 300 "ethical" alternatives are just things the OP thinks are ethical and it seems unlikely to me that such a personal list of stuff is applicable to really anyone else besides himself. Or maybe it is, but just not to me.<p>Or maybe it should be renamed to "Progressive alternatives to mainstream stuff."