Purism Differentiator Series, Part 8: Big Tech Avoidance

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Todd Weaver

Founder and CEO
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Latest posts by Todd Weaver (see all)

• Hardware Encrypted COMSEC Bundle by Purism - April 29, 2024
• Purism Differentiator Series, Part 14: Surveillance Capitalism - April 23, 2024
• Purism Differentiator Series, Part 13: Modularity & Right to Repair - April 23, 2024

Welcome to Purism, a different type of technology company.

We believe you should have technology that does not spy on you.
We believe you should have complete control over your digital life.
We advocate for personal privacy, cyber security, and individual freedoms.
We sell hardware, develop software, and provide services according to these beliefs.
To do all that, we think differently across all areas of business and technology.

Purism Differentiator Series, Part 8: Big Tech Avoidance

Kashmir Hill once tried 5 weeks without Big Tech, a main thread of that was how Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon are pervasive and how it is nearly impossible to operate in a digital society without these companies touching your personal data. At Purism we work diligently to avoid everything from these companies in our day to day operations and our infrastructure, that in turn allows for our finished products to also offer an alternative where you are not forced to use these companies but can choose to use these companies. We do not use nor sell anything associated with Apple, Microsoft, and Google, we avoid using critical services tied to Amazon and Meta. We do of course market to customers in dystopia about how to avoid these companies by using Purism instead. Once you are in freedom respecting utopia using Purism products there is no need to go back to dystopia.

Hardware

We avoid hardware from Big Tech obviously by using our own hardware for nearly all our internal jobs, be that our Librem 5 phone, Liberty Phone, Librem Mini PC, Librem 14 laptop, and Librem 11 tablet we prioritize our hardware for all our needs.

Software

We avoid operating systems from Big Tech obviously by using PureOS by default for nearly all our hardware and services. We avoid Big Tech software and applications for any core business function and we release all our source code of everything we author.

Services

Because we desire to avoid funding Big Tech’s business model, we evaluate all our services we use internally and desire to self-host services as alternatives to using proprietary third-party or Big Tech operated services. The list is not complete, but it gives you an idea of how seriously we take this desire:

• Website: self-hosted in domain WordPress
• Analytics: self-hosted in domain Matomo
• Videos: self-hosted in domain Web Server (We also cross post into dystopia)
• Team Communications: self-hosted in domain Matrix and Element
• Source Code Management and Ticketing: self-hosted in domain GitLab
• Cloud Storage and Cloud Tools: self-hosted in domain NextCloud
• Email: self-hosted in domain OS and Default Daemons
• Office Suite: self-hosted in domain and on-device LibreOffice
• Creative: on-device Photo Editing, Illustrating, 3d Modeling and Animating, Audio Recording, Video Production, and Video Editing
• Librem One: A bundle offering Email, Social, Tunnel, and Chat
• Librem AweSIM: Private (VPN like) cellular service

Avoiding Funding Big Tech by choosing to self-host and maintain services helps protect our assets, our customer data, and our business.

Purism Products and Availability Chart

	Model	Status	Lead Time
	Librem Key (Made in USA)	In Stock ($59+)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5	In Stock ($699+) 3GB/32GB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 COMSEC Bundle	In Stock ($1299+) Qty 2; 3GB/32GB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Liberty Phone (Made in USA Electronics)	Backorder ($1,999+) 4GB/128GB	Estimated fulfillment early November	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 + SIMple (3 GB Data)	In Stock ($99/mo)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 + SIMple Plus (5 GB Data)	In Stock ($129/mo)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 + AweSIM (Unlimited Data)	In Stock ($169/mo)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 11	In Stock ($999+) 8GB/1TB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 14	Backorder ($1,370+)	Estimated fulfillment date pending	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem Mini	Backorder ($799+)	Estimated fulfillment November	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem Server	In Stock ($2,999+)	45 business days	Learn More Buy Now