



My mom doesn't give much attention to which apps she uses as long as it works and does what she wants. Luckily I think a lot about what software is good or not good for my mom. These apps give you better control, no ads, mostly open-source AND they are as convenient as the more famous (but evil) apps.





My mom never liked Facebook so she used Instagram. We now all know that that is the same... For choosing an instance I went to https://fedidb.com/software/pixelfed and filtered it by Latest Version, Open Registration and Region: Europe.








Whatsapp without bloat, I mean if you don't do it for the 'privacy', do it for the convenience of not getting AI-slop or messages from Whatsapp itself.




I've set the blocking level to Optimal so that she doesn't see ads on websites + turned on blocking cookie banners.


You can also choose for AdGuard instead of uBlock Origin Lite. It has a lot of features: blocking ads, protecting you on Safari, changing your DNS-server or VPN... but for most of the features you'll need to buy a subscription.


Good search results and most of their profit goes to planting trees instead of extra horns for the evil persons of the internet.
You can choose between getting the search results from Google and/or from Bing.


Just explain why you want to set it up and she will understand it. You just have to make sure that it doesn't make her digital life more complicated.