Hi, I just wanted to share this (not so) small victory!

Back then, my partner didn’t know about this movement at all, but I have been very vocal about it ever since I started making changes myself so my digital life’s values aligned more with what I truly cared for in real life.

So over the past couple of months my partner has been progressing so much! Always asking for alternatives when he finds himself using a Google product, changing how much time he spents on Meta’s social media, deleting Twitter, and so much more. I occasionally find him watching Invidious :)

But that’s not the focus of the story (even if it still makes me super happy and proud)!, but what happened because of my partner’s changes.

Soo my partner recently entered college (yay!) and because of the way he is, he’s always open to talk about things he truly cares about. So in one of the first classes one professor teased that one of the future assigments was gonna be posting a video to instagram about a specific topic and trying it to go viral. My partner quickly went to talk to the professor and discuss an alternative assignment because “[he] doesn’t use any Meta products”. The professor seemed genuinely interested about the concept, so he saved it to research it later in his free time. He then offered YouTube as an alternative (lol), so my partner gave the same answer, (not being able to go that much in depth because it was in the middle of the class). The professor said to my partner that he was gonna find more information about this topic becuase he was deeply intrigued by it, awesome!

But that’s not the end!

About a week later, a random student approached my partner to ask him about what he said in class! Appearently she was very interested in what he said because she doesn’t like modern social media and wasn’t aware that people could make a change, and that there are alternatives etc (Sound silly on paper, but in my country our entire youth is on Instagram. The idea of not having it on your phone feels isolating). So because this was during free time, my partner could go full in-depth about the issues! He explained everything: Environmental impact, fascism, impact on mental health, the U.S and Israel, privacy concerns, AI, and so on. The student was super invested and kept asking questions so my partner could further explain some topics, and she was writing down some stuff!

Extremely happy that my journey has been able to impact this many people! Not considering all the Reddit discussion ab the topic I engaged in that might’ve left a mark in some people haha. Happy to have made the world a better place, even if just by a little (and the main responsible for my degoogle+ journey is @fallenwalnut@lemmy.world , so thanks to you too :)