Robots with feelings.

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

uBlock Origin blocks trackers and almost every ad on almost every site (Facebook is the only exception I can think of). It blocks YouTube ads too. It also has a "zapper" mode that lets you get rid of elements on the page, like annoying sidebar videos (it's not AI btw. it's just a little bit of developer tools CSS magic).

uBlacklist lets you block results on search engine pages. You can block them manually or by using lists such as the Huge AI Blocklist. (If you're interested in blocking AI sites specifically I also maintain a list of sites that are partnered with OpenAI. You can add it as a subscription with the raw text URL.)

Indie Wiki Buddy redirects you to either a non-Fandom wiki for a piece of media or serves you a version of the Fandom wiki that is just the content with no ads.

For PDF readers:

Firefox has a built-in pdf reader! It's good for filling in PDF fields, but for more complex edits, pdf24 looks a lot more powerful.

On Windows I used SumatraPDF.

On Linux Mint Cinnamon, I use qpdfview (also available in Software Manager) because it doesn't reset the zoom level when jumping between sections using the navigation. Just be aware it handles copying text a little differently than other readers (though it works great!).

For ebooks:

Project Gutenberg has public domain books in multiple languages and formats.

Anna's Archive is similar to the Internet Archive - a lifesaver for books that are hard to get your hands on, like the books I've used for my historical research.

For art (all of these are available on Windows, Mac, and Linux):

Photopea is an in-browser recreation of Photoshop.

Krita and FireAlpaca are drawing tools - I prefer Krita but FireAlpaca is more similar to Clip Studio Paint. You do have to pay for the enhanced version of FA to get darkmode though.

LibreSprite is a pixel sprite software.

For email addresses, I use both Tuta and Proton Mail, and I like them both. I pay for Tuta to get unlimited tags and calendars, and I use Tuta Calendar as my primary calendar. The two features I miss over Google Calendar are not being able to import public calendars and not being able to type a time in the event name and have the calendar parse that into the event time. Otherwise it's been great and I appreciate being able to easily assign custom hex colors to each calendar. One thing to note about having multiple addresses in one Tuta account is that they all go into the same inbox, which might be a dealbreaker for some folks. I'm not sure if it works the same way for Proton because I don't pay for Proton.