Awesome Humane Technology – Massive Collection of Resources

Contents

• About this list
• Community
• Humane design
• Ethics
• Security
• Privacy
• Tracking
• Consent
• Analytics
• Blocklists
• Fediverse
• Social networks
• Freedom
• Geolocation
• Voice Assistants
• Internet of Things
• Gamification
• Health
• Mindfulness
• Inclusion
• Awareness
• Censorship
• Unmaintained
• Related awesomeness
• Contributing
• License

About this list

Tech and social media is having a big impact on our society. While many innovative technology inventions are improving our lives, there is increasing awareness on negative impacts that come with these trends, such as large-scale privacy invasion, surveillance capitalism, and tech monopolies. They lead to social media addiction, mental health issues, and are even eroding the fabric of our society.

This list aggregates open-source projects that are directly related to humane tech topics.

Community

Our mission is: To Help Improve Wellbeing, Freedom and Society!

We gladly invite you to our Humane Tech Community Forum to read more about interesting Humane Technology subjects, participate in our discussions, and become a true ❤️ Humane Tech Activist!

You can also follow us on the fediverse at @humanetech@mastodon.social.

Humane design

Humane design is a subset of humane technology and an upcoming field in information technology. Resources in this space are tracked separately in a curated list that is part of the delightful project on Codeberg.

• delightful-humane-design – A curated list of humane design resources for UX designers and developers.
• delightful-small-ai – A curated list of open humane artificial intelligence resources.

Ethics

• Machine Learning Ethics References – Machine Learning and Data Science discrimination, bias and ethics.
• WikiTruth – A Wikipedia and Quora-like system with a vetting mechanism to verify facts from trash.
• Programmer’s Oath – An ethics oath for programmers, comparable to the Hippocratic Oath.
• Ethical Design Manifesto – The Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for sites and projects practicing ethical design.
• Ethical OS Toolkit – A guide to anticipating the future impact of today’s technology.
• ACM Code of Ethics – The Association for Computing Machinery’s code of ethics and professional conduct.
• Ethics Pledge – Global initiative aimed to adopt our ethical framework and principles into your data work.
• Hippocratic Oath for Technologists – An optional oath for building ethically considered experiences.
• IoT Design Manifesto – A code of conduct for everyone involved in developing the Internet of Things.
• The Critical Engineering Manifesto – A manifesto of critical thinking concepts applied to engineering attitude.
• The Digital Product Ethics Canvas – Identify and mitigate the risk of digital products to individuals and society.
• Fairwork Foundation – A project working to set and measure standards and certification in the platform economy.
• Guidelines for Trustworthy AI – Guidelines based on fundamental rights and ethical principles for trustworthy AI.
• Ethical Web Dev – A guide for ethical website development and maintenance.
• Declaration of Digital Autonomy – Our technology must respect the rights and freedoms of people who use it.
• A New Digital Manifesto – Our inalienable rights within the digital age.
• Society Centered Design – Move beyond human-centered design. We must design for the collective, for society.
• The Hippocratic License – An open source license for developers to enforce the ethical use of their code.
• The Ethical Source Movement – A community that practices Ethical Open Source principles for its projects.

Security

Security is an important aspect of humane technology. It is also a vast field we leave to the experts. For a good top-level entrypoint please refer to:

• awesome security – Software, libraries, documents, books, resources and cool stuff about security.

Privacy

• privacytools.io – Knowledge and tools to protect your privacy against global mass surveillance.
• Privacy Respecting – A curated list of privacy-respecting Services and Software.
• Ungoogled Chromium – Chromium without Google integration, enhancing privacy, control, transparency
• Signal – Signal is a messaging app for simple private communication with friends.
• Local Sheriff – Browser extension to help identify what sensitive information (PII) is shared / leaked to 3rd-parties.
• Webbkoll – An online tool that checks how a website is doing with regards to privacy.
• PrivacyScore – A web privacy measurement platform.
• arkenfox user.js – A user.js template for configuring and hardening Firefox privacy, security and anti-fingerprinting.
• user.js – Configuration for Firefox to harden browser settings and make it more secure.
• Decentraleyes – Browser extension that emulates Content Delivery Networks to improve your online privacy.
• User-Agent Switcher – Browser extension allows posing as another browser by changing User-Agent header.
• Random User-Agent – Browser extension that automatically replaces User-Agent after a specified time interval.
• Smart Referer – Browser extension that automatically hides the referer when changing domains.
• Canvas Blocker – Browser extension that prevents fingerprinting via Javascript Canvas API.
• Disable WebRTC – Browser extension to disable WebRTC to avoid leaking IP address from behind a VPN.
• Syncthing – Replaces proprietary cloud services to synchronize files across multiple devices, decentralized.
• Tox – A peer-to-peer instant messenger aimed at making security and privacy easy to obtain for regular users.
• Oversec – Android app that captures and encrypts texts you type, then passes it to the actual app.
• Cloud Firewall – Addon that enables to choose & block top 5 cloud companies based on their IPv4/6 ranges.
• Librefox – A project that aims at enforcing privacy and security of Firefox without forking the project.
• amp2html – Browser extension to automatically redirect Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to the actual page.
• Location Privacy – Privacy filters for shared location links.
• DeepPrivacy – A fully automatic face anonymization technique for images and video.
• PrivacyFlash Pro – Generate a privacy policy for your iOS app from its code.
• Reveal Frame Component – A privacy-minded iFrame placeholder (JS script). Only loads after user consent.
• FreedomBox – Easy to manage, privacy oriented home server.
• EteSync – Secure, end-to-end encrypted, and privacy respecting sync for your contacts, calendars and tasks.
• Image Scrubber – A browser-based tool for anonymizing photographs and scrubbing EXIF metadata.
• LocalCDN – A browser extension that emulates Content Delivery Networks to improve your online privacy.
• Universal Android Debloater – Debloat non-rooted smartphones, to improve privacy, security and battery life.
• RethinkDNS – DNS over HTTPS and Tor, DNSCrypt client, firewall and connection tracker for Android.

Tracking

• Privacy Badger – Privacy Badger by Electronic Frontier Foundation blocks spying ads and invisible trackers.
• uBlock Origin – An efficient blocker add-on for various browsers. Fast, potent, and lean.
• Exodus Privacy – Analyzes privacy concerns in Android applications.
• Exodus Android App – App for Exodus Privacy that lets you know what trackers are embedded in apps.
• Exodify – Wondering if an app is tracking you? Now you can see it directly in the Play store.
• Firefox Multi-Account Containers – Keep your online life separated into color-coded tabs that preserve privacy.
• Mozilla Facebook Container – Isolates Facebook activity from the rest of your web activity, to prevent tracking.
• Google Container – Isolates your Google activity from the rest of your web activity, to prevent tracking.
• Tracking Token Stripper – Browser extension that strips Google Analytics (UTM) tokens from URL query strings.
• SilverDog – An audio firewall to block ultrasound tracking applications.
• Blokada – A compact, fast ad blocker for Android that works for all apps and does not require root.
• Better – A privacy tool for Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac that blocks behavioral ads and trackers.
• Firefox ProfileMaker – A tool to create Firefox configuration profiles with good defaults.
• Searx – A trackerless, privacy-respecting metasearch engine that can be self-hosted.
• DNS66 – A DNS-based Host Blocker (and lightweight ad blocker) for Android.
• Cookie-AutoDelete – Browser extension that deletes cookies as soon as the tab closes, unless site is allowListed.
• ClearURLs – Addon that removes tracking elements form address bar URLs using 130 rules.
• Pi-hole – A DNS sinkhole to block ads or trackers on a local network without installing any client-side software.
• Shariff – Enables website users to share their favorite content without compromising their privacy.
• Social Share Privacy – jQuery plugin for adding social share buttons that don’t allow social sites to track users.
• TrackMeNot – Browser extension that hides your real search-queries by adding noise and obfuscation.
• Deda – Printer tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation toolkit.
• MailTrackerBlocker – An email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail.
• Warden – App management utility for Android that detects and disables trackers and loggers.

Consent

• re:consent – Browser plugin to view / change the consent you have given to websites for data processing.
• Trackless – Add a GDPR-friendly Google Analytics opt-in/opt-out button to your site.
• ConsentCookie – Customizable script that allow users to opt-in for cookies on a case-by-case basis.
• GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework – Help for compliance to EU data protection & privacy rules.
• Klaro – A simple and powerful tool to manage user consent on websites.

Analytics

• Matomo – The leading open alternative to Google Analytics that gives you full control over your data.
• Fair Analytics – A Google Analytics-alike server that doesn’t undermine user’s privacy.
• GoAccess – A real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal or in a browser.
• Countly – A real-time, mobile & web analytics, rich push notifications and crash reporting platform.
• Ackee – Self-hosted Node.js based analytics tool for those who care about privacy.
• Koko Analytics – Plugin for WordPress that doesn’t use external services and respects your visitors’ privacy.
• freshlytics – A self-hosted privacy-friendly, reliable and easy-to-deploy analytics service.
• Plausible Analytics – Simple, lightweight (< 1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics. Hosted in the EU.
• Goatcounter – Simple web statistics. No tracking of personal data.
• Open Web Analytics – Stay in control of how you instrument and analyze the use of websites and application.
• Shynet – Privacy-friendly and detailed web analytics that works without cookies or JS.
• PostHog – Developer-friendly, open-source product analytics.
• umami – A simple, fast, website analytics alternative to Google Analytics.
• AWStats – Free real-time logfile analyzer to get advanced statistics.
• Offen – Fair web analytics. Gain insights while your users have full control over their data.
• Kindmetrics – Privacy focused website analytics made in Crystal – Hosted in the EU.
• Counter – Web Analytics made simple and therefore privacy friendly.

Blocklists

• Hosts – Consolidates several reputable hosts files, and merges them into a single unified one.
• Blocklists – Shared lists of problem domains people may want to block with hosts files.
• Referrer Spam List – Community-contributed blocklist of referrer spammers.
• FilterLists – Directory of filter and host lists for advertisements, trackers, malware and annoyances.
• hosts-blocklists – A host and domainname based blocklist specifically designed for use with dnsmasq.
• All In One Customized Adblock List – Adblock list that thoroughly blocks trackers, ads, unwanted cookies.
• Web Annoyances Ultralist – Fix and remove annoying and distracting web elements from many websites.
• Wiper – Firefox extension that strips Google search results based on a blocklist you define.
• EasyList – Sets of rules that automatically remove unwanted content from the internet.

Fediverse

The Fediverse is the place of hope for humane technology with regards to social networks. Only most well-known applications (taken from fediverse.party front-page) are shown. See Feneas Watchlists for a complete overview.

• Mastodon – Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community.
• Pleroma – A free, federated social microblogging server built on open protocols.
• PixelFed – A free and ethical photo sharing platform, powered by ActivityPub federation.
• PeerTube – ActivityPub-federated video streaming platform using P2P directly in your web browser.
• Funkwhale – A federated social platform to enjoy and share music.
• Socialhome – A federated personal profile with social networking functionality.
• Misskey – A forever evolving, sophisticated microblogging platform.
• Diaspora – A privacy-aware, distributed, open source social network.
• friendica – A decentralized social communications platform.
• GNU Social – The free/libre software social networking platform.
• Lemmy – A link aggregator / Reddit clone for the fediverse.

Social networks

• Humnub – A feature rich and highly flexible open-source Social Network Kit written in PHP.
• Patchwork – A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB).
• Pump.io – A stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network.
• Facebook Demetricator – A web browser extension that removes all the metrics from the Facebook interface.
• Twitter Demetricator – A web browser extension that removes all the metrics on Twitter.
• News Feed Eradicator – A browser extension that replaces your Facebook news feed with a nice quote.
• Granary – The social web translator that breaks silo’s by converting data between social networks.
• Neocities – Social network that brings back the lost individual creativity of the web.
• DeleteFB – Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts.
• Minimal Twitter – Minimal Theme for the new Twitter UI.
• Talk – An open-source commenting platform focused on better conversation.
• Invidious – An alternative front-end to YouTube without Ads.
• Delta Chat – Decentralized Whatsapp-like chat via email, without the tracking and central control.
• Nitter – An alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy.
• Invidition – Firefox extension that redirects YouTube and Twitter requests to their alternatives.
• Bibliogram – An alternative front-end for Instagram.
• Privacy Redirect – Redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google Maps requests to privacy friendly alternatives.
• UnTrackMe – App that transforms Twitter, YouTube links to Nitter, Invidious and delegates to another app.
• FreeTube – A private YouTube client for Windows, MacOS and Linux.
• NewPipe – A libre lightweight streaming YouTube alternative for Android.
• Tweak New Twitter – Browser extension to stay on Latest Tweets timeline, reduce “engagement”, tone down UI.
• Barinsta – A libre, alternative, and lightweight Instagram client for Android.
• SocialAmnesia – Electron app to ensure your social media accounts only show your posts from recent history.
• YouTubeSearchFixer – Firefox addon to fix search, de-clutter home page and make UI less distracting.
• Teddit – Alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy.
• Libreddit – Private Reddit front-end written in Rust.
• YouTube2PeerTube – A bot that automatically mirrors YouTube channels to PeerTube channels.
• Watomatic – Auto reply for WhatsApp so you can stop using it.

Freedom

• Alternative Internet – A collection of interesting new networks and tech aiming at decentralization.
• GlobaLeaks – Software intended to enable Secure and Anonymous Whistleblowing initiatives.
• SecureDrop – Whistleblower submission system to securily interact with anonymous sources.
• EdgeDeflector – Force Windows 10 to use your preferred web browser instead of Microsoft Edge.
• Wayback Everywhere – Redirect all pages to snapshots in Wayback Machine and auto-save pages.
• 996.ICU – Collection of resources advocating against 996 work schedule (9am – 9pm, 6 days per week).
• DeGoogle-FOSS – A list of free and open source software containing proprietary Google binaries.

Geolocation

• OpenStreetMap – A crowdsourced map of the world with many layers, free to use under an open licence.
• OSM StreetComplete – Surveyor app for Android to allow users to contribute to OpenStreetMap with ease.
• Mozilla Ichnaea – API to get geolocation coordinates from other sources (Bluetooth, cell or WiFi, GeoIP, etc).
• Qwant Maps – A map application, based on OpenStreetMap, that respects your privacy.
• Owntracks – A privacy-respecting mobile app that allows you to keep track of your own location.
• Hauk – A fully open source, self-hosted location sharing service.

Voice Assistants

• Almond – The Stanford open, privacy-preserving virtual assistent.
• Rhasspy – A fully offline voice assistant toolkit for many languages.
• Mycroft AI – The open and private voice assistant.

Internet of Things

• Home Assistant – Home automation that puts local control and privacy first.
• GadgetBridge – Replace gadget vendors’ closed source Android apps (Pebble, Mi Band, Liveview, HPlus, etc).
• Gladys Assistant – A privacy-first, open-source home assistant.

Gamification

• Security Belt – A framework for improving the IT-Security of your teams through gamification.
• Habitica – Gamify your life. Motivate yourself to achieve your goals.

Health

• Stanford HabitLab – Change your online habits, set goals, try interventions, view progress.
• redshift – Redshift adjusts the color temperature of your screen according to your surroundings.
• Safe Eyes – Safe Eyes is a tool for Linux users to reduce and prevent repetitive strain injury (RSI).
• Prisma Care – App to strengthen relationship between people with memory loss and people close to them.
• Loop Habit Tracker – An Android app for creating and maintaining good habits.
• If me – A community for mental health experiences encouraging people to share their stories with loved ones.
• Stretchly – A cross-platform app that reminds you to take breaks when working with your computer.
• ActivityWatch – An automated time-tracker that is cross-platform, extensible and privacy-focused.
• Red Moon – An android screen filter app for night time phone use.
• Workrave – A program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).
• Grayscale Mode – A macOS menu bar app that gives you more control over Grayscale Mode.
• FitoTrack – A privacy oriented Android fitness tracker for logging and viewing your workouts.
• OpenTracks – A sport tracking application that completely respects your privacy.
• Winddown – Write code and stay healthy. A VS Code extension that encourages you to take a break.
• dijo – A scriptable habit tracker that runs in your terminal.
• Golden Cheetah – Performance software for Cyclists, Runners and Triathletes that reads from many devices.
• gammastep – Linux tool to adjust the color temperature of your screen to your surroundings.

Mindfulness

• Mindfulness at the Computer – Helps you stay mindful of your breathing while using your computer.
• Chomper – Internet blocker for Linux with allowLists/blockLists and timer to be more productive at work.
• Jobs Done – A ritual app for ending the work day inspired by Deep Work.
• Break Timer – An application for taking periodic breaks and preventing RSI, eye-strain and tiredness.
• MindBell – Mindfulness bell and meditation timer for Android.
• Detoxify – Generate a fake app to replace any addictive app.
• Nudge – A Chrome extension that makes the internet less addictive.
• SelfControl – A macOS app that lets you block your own access to distracting websites and mail servers.
• DelayWebPage – A Firefox add-on that makes you wait before wasting time on the internet.
• Leechblock NG – A simple productivity tool designed to block time-wasting sites at the specified times.
• Introvert – Audiovisual experience encouraging to do, to focus, to relax while it generates a unique artwork.
• Slim Launcher – Replaces Android home screen with a minimalist version and a maximum of seven apps.

Happiness

• Happy DB – HappyDB is a corpus of 100,000+ crowd-sourced happy moments.

Inclusion

• AlexJS – Catch insensitive, inconsiderate writing.
• Buster – Browser extension and Captcha Solver for Humans.
• The A11Y Project – A community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier.
• IETF Inclusive Language – Terminology for inclusive language conventions (latest version on github).

Deaf and Hard of Hearing accessibility resources:

• Remote Workplace Communications Access – Recommendations for Employers In Times of Expanded Telework.
• Improving Virtual Workspace Meetings – Accessibility Tips for a Better Virtual Meeting Experience.

Awareness

• Hack the Media – Media literacy guide highlighting how our media sources can give a flawed worldview.
• Hack an Engineer – A media literacy guide for software engineers.
• Facebook Data Analyzer – Analyze the Facebook copy of your own data.
• HTTP Leaks – All possible ways, a website can leak HTTP requests.
• Who Tracks Me – Bringing Transparency to online tracking – built by Cliqz and Ghostery.
• Awful AI – A curated list to track current scary usages of AI – hoping to raise awareness.
• Firefox Lightbeam – Addon that visualizes Web requests between 1st and 3rd-party sites in real time.
• OpenWPM – Princeton Web Transparency & Accountability project, a privacy measurement framework.
• Email Privacy Tester – Check your email provider and client protection against many tracking techniques.
• Browser Autofill Phishing – Demonstrates phishing for autofilled form fields that are hidden to the user.
• Facebook Political Ad Collector – Browser extension to help ProPublica collect political ads on Facebook.
• Who Targets Me? – Browser extension that tracks which entities are targeting which demographics with ads.
• Where are the Eyes? – A program for detecting and mapping surveillance cameras.
• IMSI-Catcher Detector – An Android app to detect IMSI-Catchers aka Stingrays (project in Alpha).
• Dogsheep – Export data from big companies (e.g. Google, Twitter) into Sqlite for personal analytics.
• Tracking Exposed – Research, browser addons on tracking, profiling, and influence of algorithms.
• Social Media Awareness Toolkit – An open and intuitive way to scrutinize what’s trending on internet platforms.

Censorship

• OONI Probe – Observation network to detect censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation (first read risks).
• Green Tunnel – An anti-censorship utility designed to bypass ISPs that block access to certain websites.

Unmaintained

This section is for inactive projects that are nonetheless still of interest regarding their topics or code.

• Wi-Fi Privacy Police – Prevent smartphone or tablet from leaking privacy sensitive information via Wi-Fi networks.
• Data Selfie – Track yourself on Facebook and analyze your data (server discontinued, code still usable).
• Breathe – Take a moment to breathe. A Pebble app for breathing, written in C.
• Mozilla Stumbler – A scanner that collects GPS and wireless network data for our crowd-sourced location db.

Also check out these sites for great alternatives to the monopolistic, privacy-invading software you may now be using:

• degoogle – A huge list of alternatives to Google products. Privacy tips, tricks, and links.
• switching.software – Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software.
• ReverseEagle-Developers – Privacy-conscious, ethical and safer alternatives to software for developers.
• ethical.net – Ethical alternatives & resources.
• JustPrivacy – An in-depth list of alternatives to Google and its products.
• Tromjaro Apps – A curated collection of trade-free applications.
• delightful project – Similar to awesome project, but only for FOSS, Open Data and Open Science.