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.
- PC: DIY + Linux (But don’t forget chip backdoor Thank you @geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml)
- Laptop: Framework Laptop, System76, MNT
- Smartphone: Brax Phone
- Smartwatch: ?
- TVs: ?
- Game consoles: ?
- Routers: ?
- Security cameras: ?
- E-ink devices: ?
- Projectors: ?
- Wireless headphones: ?
- Speakers: ?
- Printers: ?
- 3D printers: Prusa 3D Printer
- Cars: ?
- Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?
Other suggestions:
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.
Game console: Mister FPGA (and other compatibles). Up to N64 hardware emulation without big tech behind. Internet connection not requited.
Thanks the post is updated
Would steam frame fall into a vr headset category that doesn’t spy on you?
Yes an account is required and it is made to primarily work with steam but from what I know it 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
Cars: Anything released without wifi/calling. I dont think any modern electric predates this, but you can convert diesels to friendlier oils or most engines to a run off wood. As a bonus higher trim older cars used a lot less plastic
Smartwatch: Pinetime
3D printers: id like to add Sovol, not sure about their more recent ones but their older ones either didnt have wifi or run regular klipper. The SV06/SV06 ACE are also entirelly open source except for the GUI, but you can install other klipper GUIs (theres also a repo with steps to build a minimal Debian install instead of relying on sovols firmware updates)
Routers: GL.iNET Use a modified OpenWRT install out of the box but can be flashed to vanilla OpenWRT through the GUI
Maybe snapmaker u1? I think their firmware is open source and if it goes the direction of bambu people are already able to run custom firmware, and printer functions fine completely offline.
Smart watch:
ZsWatch. They are developing the PPG sensor and I have used their PPG sensor hub driver for my own smart watch project. The guy heading it up is super knowledgable.
Healthy Pi Move this one seems interesting but maybe less open.
Also with GadgerBridge, you can have complete local control of many smart watches like Amazfit (Helio strap is my choice there for accuracy and whoop alternative. Bip3 is also very accurate) and a lot of Garmins and xiaomi.
Thanks the post is updated
Thanks The post is updated
Opnsense is a great router/firewall. OpenWRT is fine for WiFi APs.
OpenWRT is also quite capable firewall. It’s a full fledged router software after all.
Opnsense is also that, and more. Compare the list of its packages with OpenWRT. Plus, it’s BSD based.
Opnsense can’t do wi-fi as far as I know, so its more like firewall/managed switch rather than router, isn’t it?
The Slate EV doesn’t have any telemetry.
The Slate EV also doesn’t actually exist yet.
Is it shipping yet? Looks US-only.
No, they are supposed to start delivering then later this year.
You can preorder in the UK
The Jolla phone.
Thanks the post is updated
For privacy, probably better than Brax, worse than GrapheneOS at the moment. Should be possible to harden Jolla, but at the moment there’s no turnkey Linux phone that’s secure and privacy respecting of which I am aware. Fairphone 5/6 with PostmarketOS is coming along nicely as I understand, battery life notwithstanding.
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.
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.
I have one, I got it to replace my broken pebble. It felt very limited in comparison.
I have since upgraded to a new pebble time 2. Fully open source now, not sure about telemetry, but since it is FOSS it is able to be modified.
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
Buy? That’s where you went wrong.
The less you buy, the healthier the society.
Trade with neighbors instead, make your own.
Use FOSS!
But to the extent you do buy, it is nice to know.
For example, even for an open hardware design, you need to buy parts.
But some things are either possible, but already nicely packaged by someone else (my opengarage I could have built, but it was well worth it to buy). A video doorbell I don’t see good open designs for, so the “part” is the doorbell itself. A bed cooler has open designs, but they call on you to basically buy a donor commercial product to use for parts.
Donate to FOSS devs!
Laptops: Tuxedo
Phone: Volla Phone
Could someone elaborate how Volla Phone compares to Jolla phone? I honestly thought at first this was a typo but both actually exist 😅
Jolla phone runs Sailfish OS (partially closed source, but Linux-based) while the Volla phones can either run Android or Ubuntu Touch (more open-source). They have very different aesthetics and target different prices too (the former is cheaper and has a plastic fantastic build, while the latter are glass slabs)
Personally, I’m rooting for postmarketOS, since it’s compatible with lots of devices. has the ability to install Flatpaks due to using a mainline (or at least closer to it) kernel over Ubuntu Touch and SailfishOS using the Android kernel (or at least parts of it I think, “proprietary blobs”), and recently the Fairphone 6 has been getting good pmOS development (super exciting! Even fingerprint has been made to work!)
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…
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
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.
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.
watch: i haven’t looked too deeply into the pine watch but i think it could be worth looking into (it is open source) https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/
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
