Hi. I don't know how you found this, but I'm glad you did. And the fact that you've even read this far is great. The TL:DR of this blog, is that I am going to write musings about my journey looking for a way to live independently from “Big Tech” and the prying eyes of authoritarians.
I am a dreamer. I dream of a world where humanity is not boiled down into datasets and our interests mean more than what an algorithm shoves onto our feed. Where our engagement with a piece of software comes with consent, and doesn't serve some amorphous, pseudo-religious devotion to the technologies known as “Artificial Intelligence.” In the past couple of month, I have been living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota during the occupation by Federal ICE agents. As you may know, shit has been bad here (If you don't know, welcome to the Internet). In that time I have read about the software used by these goons to locate people who are living here, working here, going to school here, and abducting them, often deporting them unjustly, and also terrorizing our communities. These actions are facilitated by the 5 Big Tech companies: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta (“GAMAM”). So my reaction to that fact? Cut out as much of their services as I can. That's it. I'm done.
I have been an Android user for over 10 years now. You could call me a recovering Google fan. Now, I am on a journey to De-Google my online life. I will also cut out as much of the other GAMAM companies as I can... It is impossible to completely stop using them all, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft host a vast majority of the Internet. This blog will be a memoir of that journey. And a journey it is. I'll try to share insights, context, and hopefully share plenty of apps and services that could help others make this leap. So, join me, won't you? Let's disenshittify our lives.