Thanks for sharing. I’ll be sure to try it out next month.

At the moment I’m trying out Arte (French) and Play Suisse (Swiss; you’ll need a vpn for this one). Both of them are free and I’m surprised by the quality of service. I also discovered some great bangers there. The two inconveniences I found are the identity card requirement for Arte to access all of their catalogue (some of the stuff is age restricted) and the fact that Play Suisse is region locked for whatever reason.

From what I read they make their money the traditional way: ads. The difference between Qwant and Google is that Qwant doesn’t use cookies and blocks trackers (unless you give them permission by making an account or enabling trackers). Since they don’t save any data about the user, their ads are completely random. Ecosia on the other hand is similar to Google the difference being that it redirects its revenue towards environmental causes like planting trees. At the moment, both use results from Google and Bing which is why they’re trying to create their own engine.

I use Qwant and I’m satisfied. It runs reasonably well and I honestly feel a lot more comfortable browsing despite the ads.

One alternative I haven’t seen mentioned is MobiOffice. It’s developed by Mobi Systems, a Bulgarian company. I’ve been using it for years and I’d say it’s the closest thing to Microsoft Office out there.

I didn’t know OnlyOffice had Russian ties until now so if anyone has more info that point in the same direction for MobiOffice, please share.

To be fair, I don’t think Lemmy is to blame for all the negativity. It’s impossible to escape politics nowadays thanks to American dominance in social media. And since the US is a dumpster fire since 2016, the rest of the world gets to be a dumpster fire as well.

In my opinion, Lemmy is the least negative social media platform out there and that’s saying something. I advise against going back to Reddit. I take peeks at it every once in a while and oh boy did things go downhill since I deleted my Reddit account after the API changes.

The best way to deal with all of this is to limit your exposure to social media all together.