It could be they are collecting and hiding the data, but what they publicly disclose they have certainly varies. My de-google-fication really started when I used google takeout (like the OP here). Excluding things I wanted backed up (e.g. photos), Google still had more than a GB of textual data (this was 7 years ago or so—my memory may be wrong). I use Apple a lot so I went to their “takeout” page. They had a few MB of data pretty much all of which I considered innocuous. I don’t think they are equivalent.

I do agree Facebook probably collects as much data as Google, but I gave that up long ago.

It’s Google’s name for a service that lets you download all the data Google has on your account. If you google google takeout it should get you to the page.

That sounds very slick. I never really used twitter so had no reason to use mastodon instead, but I am glad it exists!

If you migrate your own account to a new server, do other people follows of you automatically migrate too? Or do all your followers need to then update to follow you at the new location?

I so wish someone would make a cleaned up version that uses something like Podman and better conventions. Honestly, it needs to be a wiki like document that is slowly updated, improved and even varied. Because when I look at these comments I lose faith in implementing the original post.