After Apple betrayed my trust by announcing they are going to install malware on my phone, I have taken some actions "against" them and other big tech companies.<p>1) Deleted all apps which are not absolutely essential to me. Realized that for most of them the website functions perfectly well.
2) Ordered for a basic Android phone. After a 7 day wait period, I am going to root it and install Lineage OS+microg on it.
3) I have 2 iphones which I am not going to sell, as I consider it unethical to impose Apple's policies on the buyer.
4) Donated 200 USD to FSF.
5) Signed up with posteo and am going to use their e-mail service from now on - already migrated 90% from Gmail and the entire process should take a month.
6) Going to remove Windows from all my laptops tomorrow and replace them with GNU/Linux.<p>Some inconveniences I will face
a) not sure how some essential apps I need will work with Lineage. Need to figure out alternatives, which I will.
b) will never play a PC game again - as an introvert and loner, games have been very important for my mental health. But removing Windows is even more important.<p>Would love to hear more ideas from the community on actions I can take to help free software (not open source) and reduce the power of big tech.
There is nothing you can do to reduce the power of big tech until free software can provide an appealing option for regular people.<p>The best thing you can do to help is pick a problem that stands in the way of regular users adopting free software and dedicate yourself to working on it for 10 years. I don’t mean quit your job. I mean just keep the long game in mind. If you don’t have the skills now, start anyway and learn them as you go.<p>If a just few thousand people did this, the world would change a lot in a decade. If a decade seems like a long time, it is less time than it took either the iPhone or Facebook to become what they are today, and both of them took relentless effort by developers.
It doesn't matter. Your personal actions have essentially zero impact on Apple or any other large tech company. This isn't to discourage you from picking the devices and software that align with your values - do that as you please. Just don't think that you're making an actual impact on the rest of the world because you really aren't.