It is so difficult to find modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy and use directly without worrying about telemetry or advertising.
The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206. Please note that this list may contain errors.
- Laptop: Framework Laptop, System76, MNT
- Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?
This post is off-topic for the community.
That said, its a topic people here are quite passionate about, which is why it gathered quite a bit of comments already.
I’m going to leave it up, but locked.
The Brax phone raised some extremely serious red flags when I saw they put on their banner it was promoted by Joe Rogan and use Brave as their primary browser.
Having two scammers featured makes it feel like a scam.
I have included the criticism, but there is no evidence that it collects telemetry or displays ads.
I think it’s way too rare for brave to catch strays like this. Like it’s only at some nieche comment section where one person says things like “yea the founder is a homophobe”. I only ever see praise about it (and some people calling it scammy here on lemmy lol)
I didn’t know about the homophobe thing. I’m talking about the whole secretly mining crypto thing they did in the past and then afterwards the sketchy crypto pay stuff they tried to pull off after
Edit: and now I see the Brax phone controversy linked in the main post. I’m thinking it’s not so strange Brave browser keeps popping up in problematic projects like this. Birds of a feather flock together I suppose.
Would steam frame fall into a vr headset category that doesn’t spy on you?
Yes an account is required for most straightforward functionality and it is made to primarily work with steam but from what I know it can be bypassed and isolated to a specific dongle network channel and will only sends stuff like eye tracking or camera data if you submit troubleshooting logs, everything else is either on device or not stored at all
Thanks the post is updated
Purism for phone and laptops, Starlabs for laptops and tablets. Router: Openwrt. SmartHome: Homeassistant + zigbee devices (no wifi). Everything Else: A raspi with a soldering iron.
You can also use zwave with home assistant. In some ways a better protocol, but it’s not nearly as prolific as zigbee devices.
Thanks the post is updated
Brax Phone, LOL! yeah, I’ll surely trust this list…
I have included the criticism, but there is no evidence that it collects telemetry or displays ads.
But why is the list not hosted in a repo or something but instead needs to be over at lemmy.ml?
For eink, the XTEink devices work offline. If you put https://crosspointreader.com/ on them, then it’s not even XTEink’s software running on it.
Mozilla has their Nothing Personal online magazine with product reviews. It’s only a small handful of product at this point. This started out as “Privacy Not Included”, which is now defunct.
Thanks the post is updated
I would remove Brax Phone altogether, that guy is fearmongering people into buying old insecure phones. There were times I was watching his videos until I saw the pattern…
I have included the criticism, but there is no evidence that it collects telemetry or displays ads.
I don’t have it so I can’t tell for sure about the telemetry part but PineTime is an open source smartwatch, so if someone can confirm about telemetry you could add it to the list.
Well it can only connect via Bluetooth to your phone so the watch itself can’t possibly have telemetry, it’s up to what companion app you use. And there are a lot of foss ones, like Gadgetbridge
There’s a Linux mobile OS that’s not related to something two scammers have boosted as part of their scams.
Oh man how I wish Steam made a linux phone… Sure we have pmOS but it not yet daily driveable (I have it on op6) for most people and second, once there is official Linux phone from a big company, every Linux phone benefits because there will be new apps like banking apps and similar.
Last I checked (which, admittedly, was a few years ago) I literally couldn’t find any security cameras that weren’t compromised in some way. The only options are basically:
- Consumer models tied to “cloud” services
- Generic Chinese ONVIF cameras that probably phone home to who knows where unless you firewall them off from the Internet
- ONVIF cameras that might have a slightly better reputation than the previous category but are only sold through security system installers, not normal retail channels
- Analog (not IP) cameras that you hook up via coaxial cable
- Building your own goddamn camera from scratch with a Raspberry Pi or something
It’s ridiculous!
For TVs, there used to be the option of Sceptre dumb TVs, but even those have disappeared from the market in the last year or so.
I’ve been looking for a smartwatch/fitness tracker (and a bike computer, which is kind of a similar category) and the pickings seem very slim there, too. There’s the Pebble and the PineTime, which are open but maybe lack some of the sensors one might want in a fitness tracker, and there’s stuff that’s intended to be proprietary but supported by Gadgetbridge (e.g. iGPSPORT bike computers) . There might be others, but I don’t know about them.
It’s fuckin’ bleak, y’all. I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering building almost all my own tech out of Raspberry Pis and/or ESP32s because that’s easier than searching for needles in the infinite haystack of surveillance capitalist slop!
Depending on how comfortable you are with flashing, you can go the Thingino route with security cameras. I would recommend getting cameras that can utilize the no tools/sd card method for flashing though. Wish I would’ve known that before buying my tapo cameras…
My supernote hasn’t advertised anything ( besides an occasional marketing email ): www.supernote.com
Category: e-ink device ( read+write ).
The Bangle.js 2 for the smartwatch category. Open source OS, no server to phone home to, the data stays on device unless you copy it to your phone or PC. The heart rate monitor and sleep detection are jank af, but it does everything else well.
Thanks the post is updated
