More than a decade ago, over the July 4th holiday, I declared my personal Independence Day and attempted to sever ties with Microsoft, then a pervasive and abusive technology monopoly.

I failed.

Several of Microsoft's products were just so much better than the independent alternatives, so I gave up my personal Microsoft protest. And gradually, as US and European antitrust authorities helped give new companies a leg up on Bill Gates's power, I became more willing to use Xbox, Microsoft Word, even Bing.

In the meantime, other centralized giants have grown to early-Microsoft levels of power and beyond. Facebook is turning us into guinea pigs. Apple – what doesn't Apple want to control in your life? So I've done what most folks who prefer convenience over security wouldn't do until a month after hell froze over: I've given up some Google and turned against the corporate entities and government agencies that may well believe they have my best interests in mind – but act in ways to control what I can do.

If you think fading user control of technology and communications isn't a problem, think again – hard. The internet is being neutered by those tech giants. They're spying on us. They're capturing all kinds of data from us and selling it. They're hocking hardware and software that they ultimately control. This isn't hypothetical. This is happening. And it's getting worse.

"We are seeing an increase in walled gardens created by giants like Facebook and Apple," said one of 1,400 respondents in a depressing new survey from Pew on the future of online liberty. "Commercialization of the internet, paradoxically, is the biggest challenge to the growth of the internet."

To me, it feels deeply wrong to support that, so I've made a series of adjustments to become more technologically independent. And the alternatives are getting better all the time, so my little war against the monopolies feels like a personal victory with every log-in. On my Independence Day weekend for 2014, maybe these everyday tweaks will give you some ideas:

No Facebook: making the unavoidable colossus avoidable again

Maybe I'm missing some party invitations, but I don't care to feed the Facebook data beast or be a "lab rat" for Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else. I log on to Facebook solely to keep an eye on what the company is doing, which I can't avoid due to my work in following the industry.

It's not that I ever used Facebook much in the first place, largely due to my misgivings about the company's ethics. But the latest row over the emotional manipulation study that's so engaged – and enraged – much of the internet has only amplified my misgivings. We've turned over so much control of our communications and commerce to unaccountable people that even Silicon Valley long-timer Chuq Von Rospach is just about ready to bag Facebook entirely. And it would be smart if more privacy-minded people did the same.

Alternative: Twitter. I still really like Twitter. And the IndieWeb, which is early in development and still mostly for techies, but decentralized in all the right ways.

No iMac: discovering the intuitive power of Linux

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The iPotty is a thing. Journalism apps without Apple approval are not. Photograph: REX

I had used Apple's desktop and laptop computers exclusively for a long time. But fed up with the company's expanding control-freakery that is not going away any time soon, I switched to the only real alternative left: the GNU/Linux operating system.

Linux is free software, created and maintained by volunteers and companies that make money selling ancillary services. Variants of Linux handle a vast amount of computing around the world, mostly on servers and mobile devices, though it has a relatively small percentage of the desktop and laptop market. I'm not saying everyone should run Linux, but it's not just for geeky people like me.

In April, I updated my ThinkPad laptop to the latest version of Ubuntu, my current favorite Linux version for traditional PCs. It is in almost every way a modern operating system – intuitive and easy to use, with only a few rough edges that would deter someone who doesn't want to know anything about how computers work. And there's very, very little I can't do just as easily on this system as I used to do on Windows or my Macs.

Alternative: For the exceedingly rare exceptions when Linux can't handle something, I keep a copy of Windows 7 on my Lenovo machine.



No iPhone: out of the dictatorial ecosystem and into the open

I still think the iPhone is the most elegant computing platform I've ever seen. But I ditched it in large part because the iOS ecosystem is the ultimate example of Apple's controlling ways. The company even insists on the right to tell journalists whether their journalism is acceptable if they want to distribute it in app form. Want to give away an app for free? Even then, you still need Apple's permission to enter the dictatorial portal that is the App Store.

As soon as Google's more open Android operating system became truly useful, I switched over. But Android comes with catches, too, notably the tendency of device manufacturers and mobile carriers to lock down devices in somewhat Apple-like ways. Here's a current example: Because I altered the software on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, it now refuses to update the operating system, including security fixes. This is infuriating – I believe it should be illegal for companies to block security updates for any reason – and I'm in the process of replacing the software with a truly open variant of Android called CyanogenMod ... or just switching devices altogether.

Alternative: One possibility is the new OnePlus One phone, which is sold with Cyanogen pre-installed – and which I'm testing now.

No Google: searches without a repository of your every move

Google wants to know pretty much everything about you, on multiples devices, all day long. "When we connect all these things," officials at the search giant claim, "you can truly start assisting people in a more meaningful way." Well, I want to know how to keep my Google data footprint as small as possible.



So I use Gmail sparingly. I do my web searches with the DuckDuckGo and StartPage services, with a little Bing tossed in for variety; they're not as good as Google, but certainly good enough for most queries – and DuckDuckGo and StartPage promise not to log my searches in a database. And I'm trying to use OpenStreetMap more often, as a counterweight to the commercial map operations. Give these a try, too.

Alternative: It's pretty difficult to ditch Google entirely. It may be in the surveillance business, but it's also mastered the convenience state.

To the extent possible, I'm also encrypting what I do online, including using a VPN (virtual private network) that scrambles my communications from (most) potential adversaries. This is plain common sense – even if the NSA targets the privacy-aware – and I'm glad encryption is becoming more widespread, with more, smaller security companies chipping away at the monopolies.

"There should be many information sources, more distributed, and with less concentration of control," Marc Rotenberg president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says in this week's Pew report. "We need many more small and mid-size firms that are stable and enduring."

We also need more concerned citizens trying them out. And, look, this stuff isn't for everyone. I understand that. And it's not easy to reconfigure your life. It is, in fact, inconvenient. But it's not impossible, and it's not paranoid. So I'd urge you to think about what liberty and security mean to you and your internet independence.