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As you may know, Google removed the option to sign in Google Messages with QR Pairing. Now, they force you to do it ONLY with a Google account. People who don't have and don't want to create one, or people that just prefer QR pairing can still do it. But with a workaround:
- Download (or use) a Google Messages version that still allows QR pairing (like one from January 2026). It can be downloaded from Uptodown store. I tried installing it from an apk directly but it failed.
- Open the link: https://messages.google.com/web/authentication
- Sign in following the instructions on the screen.
Do it as soon as possible because Google might remove this option soon.
convenience always wins out because it takes A SHIT TON of effort to understand what you're giving up to get that convenience when you lack the background understanding that most of us here have.
it's definitely a failure on their part; but we've reached a point at which there's SO MANY who have failed that it's become everyone's problem.
I didn't always have the understanding of what I was giving up, but the signs were there so I chose to dig deeper. Fast forward 10 years, my mental health is the envy of many people because I chose to not care if people removed me from their lives for refusing to use the same services they do.
Having said that, we all have a choice to make. So, I disagree with that comment that it's now everyone's problem '. It certainly isn't my problem. There are those that have chosen to add what I use to their arsenal of services, others that flat out switched to them, and then there are those that, likee, refused to use other services (like Signal and SimpleX) and I'm very happy with the decisions each of them made.
expand the scope and you'll come to understand why it's also your problem.
for example: what happens if one of those people who have added to their arsenal to communicate with you puts the password into a compromised password manager? or what if their phone is already compromised somehow and they don't know it?
People don't care about their own health or privacy, let alone others. Look how many people don't practice any sport, smoke, drink alcohol or eat unhealthy foods. Or regarding privacy, how many people pay by card, although they know all their transactions are saved and seen by banks and potentially goverment. You made a very strong decision by putting your privacy first, over relationships. Maybe if more people would be like you, privacy-respecting messengers would grow up more.
I honestly believe we all have the power to get to maybe 95% privacy, but it requires effort, time, consistency and willing to change some actions that have become muscle memory.
Trying ro do it all at once was ridiculously overwhelming for me. I deleted all social networks overnight, and plastered a status on my WhatsApp that said "I will delete my WhatsApp account in 90 days. Install Signal of you want to keep texting with me", and kept counting down the days on that status. I called my close friends and family on the phone, and told each of them what I was doing and why, and some other 'not-so-close' acquaintances and relatives that asked me in WhatsApp because of the status asked me and got the same information. When the days hit 0, I just deleted that account.
Removing Google, Microsoft and many others was a way longer run, as I had accumulated too much data in their drives and email services over the years, so that took me almost 3 full years. I started by building an UnRaid NAS, and slowly moving the files over.
With my Gmail, I added QN automatic auto-reply, similar to the countdown on WhatsApp, that said something along the lines of 'this email address will stop being monitored on xx-xx-xxxx. To continue communication, please reach out to me via Signal, or call me'. Then exported all my email and cleared the full inbox, leaving it at 0 emails. Microsoft was easier, as I only used it for my ISP and my kids' Minecraft account.
I opened 2 different accounts on different email providers (tuta, proton, etc) and started using those instead, created a permanent forward on gmail to 1 of the accounts, and started monitoring what was coming in, and sending all the garbage I didn't want to spam in the new services. The other account on each service would be the ones I planned kn using permanently when I had finally chosen which one to keep.
This is only part of the road, going private after years of choosing convenience is not easy, and if you want as little disruption as possible and want to minimize loss of data, it's a long journey.
However, the benefit of dropping all that garbage from my life, and dare I say, the people this has removed from my life, has been the dramatic improvement to my mental health. And of course, its incredible how much I learned along the way, and how Much I keep on learning.
One more benefit that wasn't immediately evident was the type of people I now interact with in the internet. It used to be all the gossip, the 'look at what my dumb kid does', and other honestly irrelevant shit for me. Now, I interact with people that I consider to be some of the smartes individuals alive on Lemmy and even Mastodon. Sure, there's still a shitload of imbeciles too, but the numbers pale in comparison to the number of people with common sense and that are looking to learn more, as well as help me and others learn, and have the capacity to have civilized (some times 🤣) discussions to figure out new ways together to increasingly better solutiona, while also warning others of some new dangers when they come to light.
All this to say that, it is hard, maybe even painful, but absolutely worth it.
Today my tech infrastructure is basically my steam deck, a System76 laptop running CachyOS, GrapheneOS phone and a server on Proxmox running about 40 services with 20TB of storage to keep my own shit. This backs up weekly to a similar setup at my brother's house, and I keep an offline backup that I update every 3 months or so.
It's fun and refreshing, feeling this level of ownership of my data.
So you left Big Tech entirely. You followed an interesting journey on it. I guess it was hard, especially in the beginning. Of course, people on Lemmy/Mastodon know more about technology than normies from Reddit or X. I also want to run GrapheneOS, I heard in 2027 it will be released on Motorola. I have Trisquel. Any step away from Big Tech and towards FOSS alternatives is excellent, so congratulations on all of them!
Thanks. A few months ago I tried going back ro stock pixel, and lasted only 2 days before feeling overwhelmed at the sheer amount of data being transferred and how much they constantly push for you to enable shit you don't want.
I hope more people can find their way out of big tech. One step at a time, and it can certainly be achieved. And it just keeps getting easier and easier as you go along.