Open Source Cloud and Social Networking Platforms
Maintain Privacy and Freedom of Speech

As big tech companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, and others experience large growth of their user base, they have utilized their power to manipulate public knowledge. Most recently, Facebook and Twitter have engaged in very dangerous activity of censoring user content for political reasons. It would be understandable if Facebook or Twitter censored due to malicious activity, but the reality is quite the opposite.

In 2016, Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU General Public License in which most open source software like GNU/Linux falls under. released an article on his website regarding the dangers of Facebook. In particular, he outlined several things in 2016, even the fact that Facebook has so much power that it can manipulate elections, that unfortunately have come to light in 2020 surrounding the Presidential Election of 2020. He also described at how Facebook extensively gathers information about its users and archives it for government use and more. He does provide a compromise to using Facebook, which is to briefly post information there and direct followers and users to an official website, that is hosted by a full website hosting provider. Apex Internet Solutions, LLC is one such full hosting provider, and is strongly against the surveillance and political censorship practices of Facebook.

Unfortunately, Facebook is not the only social media platform that has the ability to manipulate public knowledge. Twitter has also been found to adhere to the same activity, along with Google, and the three companies have even been found to be collaborating together to gain even more power over their user base.

Luckily, open source software has a solution to bypass these big tech companies and their controlling platforms. There are open source alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, and even some of Google's services. Remember, open source software is not owned by any single entity like big tech companies, but is the property of the public. Therefore, there is no need for the data harvesting and control within the software that is implemented by proprietary systems of big tech companies.

Alternatives to Social Media Platforms

One of the most prominent use of the Internet today is for social media. This list below provides alternatives to big tech proprietary social media platforms. By using the alternative, users can free themselves from the surveillance, data harvesting, and political censorship.

Closed Source Alternatives to Social Media Platforms (not recommended due to being closed source, but can have privacy benefits):

Alternatives to Cloud Platforms

Cloud platforms have grown tremendously in recent years, mainly because of convenience. However, there is a danger of data harvesting and privacy with these platforms, since all data and activity is done at the provider's end of the software, and not on a personal computer. The list below are alternatives to bring this functionality of common cloud software back to the local computer or server, in order to fullfill complete privacy and data safety.