A Guide to De-Big-Tech-Bro'ing Your Life

17 March, 2025, 10.26am

One of my resolutions for 2025 was to align my internet use with my values. This means not supporting technofascists and hyper-capitalist models of business. This has been an monumental task and I'm tackling it one step at a time because the reality is that the creep of enshitification has entered virtually every aspect of my technical life. I've spoken to a lot of people about my tech shift this year and a friend asked me to write up a guide of how to approach it. I'm not the first person to do this, and this "guide" is really an amalgamation of things I've sourced from the web. But I thought I would add some details on my thought process to help you prioritize your shifts because, let's face it, de-big-tech-bro'ing your life is a huge undertaking. It will probably take you all year to do this, and it will be an ongoing assessment of the tech you use and how it aligns with your values. So here's how I approached it this year.

Step 1 - What do I care about?

The first thing I did was think about what my values really are and what I want to prioritize when choosing alternatives to my current tech. For me this focused on political values of the company, data privacy, AI use, and a FOSS (free-open-source-software) model.

Political Values

The big names in tech (X, Meta, and Amazon) are widely known to be harmful to democracy and the planet. The first checklist I thought about was whether a company had meaningful engagement with the ideological values I hold dear to myself. I care about diversity and inclusion. I care about action on climate change. I care about small-business and community. This means opting out of companies that do not support DEI, those that openly, and with large sums of $$, supported Trump, that are having a gross negative impact on climate change (looking at you Amazon), and uphold hyper-capitalist values (oh, hello again Amazon).

Data Privacy

I've had somewhat of an awakening in this space. I used to not mind if my data was sold to advertisers because, I reasoned, then I get better targeted advertising and I can support businesses I care about. But recently, I've been reassessing this mindset. I fundamentally want to participate less in capitalism. I want to buy less, and what I do buy I want to buy from small local makers and producers. These aren't the people who buy advertising on Facebook and Google. I'm also extremely concerned by what this data can be used for given the current fascist government we have in power. This means opting out of companies whose profit is driven by the sale of personal data. The big move here is off Google. No Gmail, no Drive, no Google search, no Chrome.

AI Use

I've had a journey here too. I was cautiously optimistic about AI. I like to think of myself as a tech hobbyist. I do get excited about new computing advances and have definitely found AI platforms (like Claude) extremely useful at untangling my mess of ADHD thoughts. However, I haven't been able to reconcile the use value I've gotten from AI with the vast environmental impact this computing system is having.I can't, in good conscious, continue to use AI mindlessly. Do I still use AI occasionally? Yes, I do, because sometimes my brain can't translate the thought I'm having into meaningful language and AI is extremely helpful during those times. But I want to be deliberate about my AI use. Just like I am deliberate about when I use my heater, or choose to take a flight. Because of this, I'm opting out of tech that automatically includes AI without me having a say in it. This is a more complicated task than the previous two values as it needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Cutting Google is a good first step, but then it comes down to opting out of AI search summaries in my new search engine, turning off AI assistance in other programs I'm using, and looking for software alternatives that aren't prioritizing AI integration.

FOSS

This falls under my values of anti-capitalism. Free Open Source Software functions in direct opposition to capitalism. The goal is to create software that is open source and free to use for whoever needs it. It stands against subscription models and rental agreements where you never actually own what you are paying for. This means saying goodbye to Adobe, to Microsoft Office, eventually to Windows. It's a big move and something I'll be working on for the longest time I think.

Bonus! Hosted outside of the US

This was a recent addition while watching the encroaching fascist regime and not trusting that the government won't introduce new executive orders to control the information hosted within the US.

Step 2 - Planning

After spending time thinking about what I care about I next moved on to planning. I made a comprehensive list of all the tech I use - all the online services and software - which allowed me to see if they can stand the water test of my values I'd previously outlined. Here's what my list looks like so far (it's a living document as I learn more and decide to make more changes). Don't panic just yet about how achievable each of these things are. The goal now is to just have a list, to brainstorm what you want to change if you could wave a wand and have everything align with your values.

• Social Media
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
• Google
  • Mail
  • Drive
  • Browser (Chrome
  • Search Engine
• Communication with familiy
  • Facebook Messenger
  • Skype
• Dropbox
• LastPass
• Microsoft Office
• Windows
• Adobe (Photoshop and Reader)

Step 3 - Research

Now that I have my list I started to do my research. What were appropriate alternatives to each of these things I wanted to change. As I said earlier, there are a lot of guides that I used to make this list (I've linked the ones I found the most useful). There is no right way to approach this and you will need to choose the alternatives that align with your values. I'm giving you the services I switched to (or plan to switch to).

Social Media

I've moved to the Fediverse. For me this means Mastodon (which functions a little like Twitter, though I see similarities to how I used Facebook as well), Pixelfed (an alternative to Instagram), and Lemmy (akin to Reddit). The Fediverse is a little complicated to start with, but you can get the hang of it pretty quickly. Here's a good explainer. I also like FediTips.

Why not BlueSky? The big shift from Facebook and Twitter seems to be towards BlueSky. A lot of my friends have gone there but I've decided that it doesn't align with my values. Here's a good article that sums up my concerns, but basically, while BlueSky claims to be a decentralized community-driven platform it is largely founded by crypto venture capitalists. I don't trust that BlueSky won't drift towards the Twitter model as large investors start to demand ROI.

Google

"De-Google" is the search term you want to use to find the corner of the internet that is dumping the company whose motto used to be "don't be evil". There's a lot here as Google has created an almost monopoly on internet services. Here's where I'm at with my De-Googling process:

Mail /Calendar -> Tuta mail - hosted in German and fully encrypted. You can get a free email with them, but I purchased my own domain so I can move to whatever email host I need to and not lose my email address.

Drive -> LibreDocs and/or Cryptpad. Both FOSS options. LibreDocs is not an online cloud service but functions like Microsoft Office. Cryptpad does allow cloud hosting and sharing.

Chrome-> LibreWolf - I was previously using FireFox but a recent change to the privacy policy puts them in my firing line. Basically, they are now following Chrome and selling browsing data. LibreWolf is a fork of FireFox that prioritizes privacy and comes with its own addblocker.

Google Search -> Duck Duck Go - I'm currently using Duck Duck Go, but I'm on the market for a new search engine for a couple of reasons, mainly because they are introducing AI search and it seems that no matter how many times I turn it off it keeps coming back. I'm looking into alternatives. Brave is not an option for me because of its foundation on crypto (which has the same environmental impact concerns as AI), but that is a value you need to address yourself.

Communication with Family

Facebook Messenger-> Signal which is a fully encrypted messaging service hosted in Swizterland

Skype. I'm still looking for alternatives to Skype, which is sped up by its impending shutdown

Online Services

Dropbox -> Sync - This shift was driven by the urge to host outside of the US. Sync is hosted in Canada and costs a similar amount. The transfer was extremely painless and I haven't noticed any difference since my shift.

LastPass -> 1password - Motivated by shifting away from US hosting and the fact that LastPass has had some major data breeches

Software

Photoshop -> Krita. I confess I'm still getting used to this one. Having used Photoshop probably around 1998 with a bootlegged copy, Photoshop was like a second language to me. The shift has been wobbly, but I'm told Krita has all the capability of Photoshop without the price extortion or them selling your work to train AI models. I'm also holding out for Stuart Semple's Abode which is taking longer than expected to get off the ground, but that man can do no wrong in my eyes.

Microsoft Office -> LibreOffice feels like Microsoft Office from 2001 and I'm okay with that. It's FOSS which means you don't pay and a community of coders are always working to improve it. I forgot to cancel my Office membership this year, so I'm going to get the most out of Powerpoint, Word and Excel for at least another year, but I'm starting to play around with LibreOffice and I'm especially impressed by their pdf reader/editor (another nail in Adobes coffin)

Windows -> Linux. This is a long term goal. I'm not ready to ditch Windows just yet because a lot of the video games I play are only compatible with Windows. But switching to Linux is a long term goal. Maybe one day I'll have a dedicated gaming computer that can run Windows and I'll do everything else on Linux. This switch is a journey and I recommend using the vast resources online to guide you through it.

Step 4 - Timeline

It would be a fools errand to make all these changes over a long weekend. This is a marathon task that you will chip away at over time. Some things to think about:

How easy is it to swap to the alternative? Changing search engine and browser are extremely simple. You can even download your bookmarks from one browser and upload them to another. This is something you can do over a lunch break! However, moving to a new cloud service takes some time. You need to back up your data and make sure you can migrate smoothly. Similarly, if the shift means learning a new software, you may want to consider some overlap time while you get used to the new system. Perhaps migrate some tasks over first as learning practices then slowly move the rest of your life across.

When do your subscriptions renew? If you have a service that is about to renew (think Dropbox, Microsoft Office, Adobe) prioritize switching them over before you have to pay for another year of service.

Are there other people involved? Do you have family accounts? Is this a tool to communicate with other people? More people to organize means more time and logistics. Plan on these shifts taking more time.

What are you interested in? I was really excited to learn about the Fediverse so this made the top of my list. If you are interested in the new system, then you will be motivated to move over and learn how to use it quicker.

Some Tips

Don't do it all at once. That's really the crux of this "guide" make a plan and chip away at it. Do a little when you have a spare moment.

Treat this like a new hobby to learn new skills and interact with new people. It's been a fun process and I feel like I've learned a lot in the past couple of months.

Use email migration as an excuse to unsub from all the spam you've been getting. Shifting from Gmail to Tuta is by far the biggest task I've faced. I now spend about half and hour each day going through my inbox, updating emails that I want to keep and unsubbing from all the crap that inevitably builds up. This is also a great opportunity to create an email alias that you use to signup to sites so you don't get swamped in more spam.

Tell people why you are moving. Tell your friends and family why you are leaving the big social platforms. When the businesses ask you why you are cancelling, tell them. Be vocal about your choices. This helps to normalize getting away from big tech.

Resources

Here are some links that I've found useful. I'll add to them as I find them.

• Some great ideas on FOSS to get you started
• How to leave Google Mail
• Another blog showing someones De-Tech-Bro process. Honestly, you should read all of Joan's writing. She is on the money with so much stuff re: the tech world right now!

If you have any thoughts or things you think I should add (especially links) toot at me on Mastodon!

My Project 2025

29 November, 2024, 9.42am

The 2024 US election was the first presidential election that I voted in. It felt momentous but also scary.

And the outcome knocked my feet out from under me.

Hindsight is 20-20, so it feel disingenuous for me to say that I was preparing for Trump to win the election. But I think there's a grain of truth there. I do believe that, while I was cautiously optimistic that the Democrats would win, I was holding space for the other outcome. What I wasn't expecting, was that it would be so resounding. I thought we'd be fighting election results for weeks, that we might have another January 6.

That didn't happen. Trump won. Both the electoral college and the popular vote.

So, we now look forward to what that means. I've been thinking a lot about how I want to live my life, not just during the next four years, but the days that come after that. For basically all of my adult life, I've felt like my values are not represented by the over-culture I reside in. I disagree with the premise of infinite growth and exploitation that underlie capitalism. I don't align with the hyper-individualistic narrative that I'm supposed to embody. It saddens me that the ideas I hold as core to my identity - kindness, inclusion, care - make my views radical.

"…nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change"

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I think I've avoided leaning into the title "radical" for a long time because it made all too clear how much I don't fit in. But "radical" does something else too. "Radical" is activating. It suggests purpose and conscious actions. So, I've decided to own "radical". Not just wear it like a badge that I can take off when it doesn't suit the situation. I'm going to start living it. Actually living it.

This isn't as big of a step as it may appear. I've lived in radical ways for a long time. I don't pay attention to fashion trends. I mend my own clothes. I buy second-hand. I (try to) grow my own vegetables. I talk about issues that matter to me.

But all of these things have been layers to my life that, yes, I've engaged in, but not in the deep way that I see a true radical engaging in them. I slip up and buy crap I don't need because I want it and it was advertised to me. I'll buy things that I do need from big box stores (or, unfortunately, Amazon) when my bandwidth is too low to search out those items second-hand. My garden is, at best, a hobby which (let's be real) fails to provide food for even one substantial meal a season. I do talk about important issues, but I could focus myself better in this area as well.

And this is something that I think most progressives (or wannabe "radicals") do. They want to do these things, but they fall short of living by that ethos. It's easy to fall into the traps of capitalism. Capitalism feels nice. It's easy to press a button and get exactly what you want delivered to your door without any energy from you. And all the costs to humanity and the environment are hidden behind layers of marketing and free-trade agreements. It feels better to sit in your home, distracted by the endless stream of entertainment instead of looking outside at the countless atrocities and acts of harm happening ever second.

I'm guilty of this, and when I realise I'm doing it, I feel immense shame. Which sucks, because I actively stepped into capitalist dissociation to avoid negative feelings!

Time to be actively and decisively radical.

That's my pledge for 2025. My project 2025, if you will. I'm living this coming year true to my values.

1. Practice Anticapitalism

This involves a few things. Mainly, it involves not buying new shit. I've done this before, so I know I can do it again.

1. No new clothes. I have so many clothes already, I don't need any new ones. If I want something different, I can repurpose my existing wardrobe. If something wears out, I mend it. If I need a new item of clothing, I will make it from scratch or buy second-hand.
2. Make do. Repair. Second-Hand. For all essential purchases of items around the house, I will not buy new. I will fix what I can, and buy second-hand if needed.
3. No frivolous purchases. Full stop. I'm going a year without buying shit.
4. Gifts for people will be either hand-made, a gift of labour, or purchased from a small independent business.

2. Practice Eco-consciousness

Much of this will be covered by not buying new stuff, but I can also do better in other areas, mainly in the amount of waste generated by packaging that comes into our house. I want to drastically reduce this as it's something that distresses me greatly. However, I have had to give myself grace on this aspect during grad school because reducing packaging is time-consuming and time is not something I have a lot of right now. This means, that attempting to reduce packing that comes into our house is going to wait until I finish my PhD:

1. Seek out refillable options for cleaning supplies and foodstuffs
2. Create a go-bag that we can use when we go out that includes re-useable cutlery, serviettes, and food containers for leftovers

3. Be Radical

This is harder to quantify. I think what I mean here is that I don't want to hide my true values anymore. I want to be clear that I am concerned about climate change, about LGBTQIA+ rights, about racism and bigotry. I want the things I teach to be infused by this worldview. I want the conversations I have to uphold these values. I want my very existence to make the world feel safer and brighter for people who are currently feeling downtrodden. Again, I recognize that I need to give myself grace while I'm finishing my PhD, so I will do what I can within my means until July, but I want my life post-PhD to be actively pursuing a better world.

1. Be authentically me
2. Learn to teach in an anti-colonial way
3. Use my privilege to make those who have less privilege feel safe
4. After my PhD, find an activist community to be a part of

Reading through my plan, I see how my last value is the hardest to put into words and clear actionable goals. There's definitely work to be done there. I've decided that this is just the first draft of my plan for the year. I'm going to continue to work on it and adapt it. And I'm posting it here to be accountable.

It's too damn hot to do anything

8 September 2024, 5.17pm

Sigh. It's extremely hot today. Well, hot for San Diego. And San Diego has a way of turning people weak. Especially if you live by the coast where the temperature sits around 20-26 degrees celcius throughout the year. You habituate to this perfect climate, like a tropical frog in a climate-controlled terrarium. Then, BANG!, heatwave! The temperature jumps 10 degrees celcius and even though you grew up reguarly sweating through those temperatures in Brisbane summer, your body is completely unable to process what is happening.

All this to say that it's hot. It topped out at 36' today and I'm not okay with that. 🫠

Anyway, I've done some updating to site today. Started to play around with some different looks and implement my own art into the site. As much as I have some heavy nostalgia for blinking backgrounds and the scrolling marquee, I always preferred going my own way when it came to design. So I'm going to use this as an opportunity to get creative and have fun.

Stop everything! I've re-discovered the old web!!

21 August 2024, 3:40pm

A Rant about Social Media

I've pretty much always been suspicscious and disappointed by web 2.0. I held off joining Facebook for quite a long time and have actively avoided other social media sites like the plague. The irony is not lost on me that one of the major events of my life (meeting my now partner) would not have happened without Facebook, and I definitely admit that there are some positives that I have gained from these services. That is why I have been so reluctant to outright delete everything and completely move off social media once and for all. But I do find the list of reasons I stay has dwindled significantly. Right now, I can think of two reasons I stay on Facebook:

• The handful of memes that bring me pleasure, supplied by the three-or-so meme groups I interact with
• I can keep in touch with my family there

Other than that I find myself spending less and less time on social media. The ads annoy me. I have to do an annoying series of secret clicks to get a feed that shows the most recent posts first instead of what the repetitive -A-L-G-O-R-I-T-H-M- deems is acceptable for me to see. And election season is in full swing which inevitably means avoiding most news sites if I want to keep my mental health in check. I've also found the shift towards extremely short videos that came with TikTok incredibly annoying, realizing that I have two ways of engaging with media... either in a single static meme image or a 90 minute video essay. There is no in-between. This has meant I've basically given up on Instagram. And I have less than zero desire to create a TikTok account.

I don't want to be a brand

Another thing I've been thinking about a lot over the last couple of years is how there has been a shift in the way we think about our presence online. We're not just putting our ideas out there for people to reflect on. Or using it to share things in our life that matter to us anymore. Instead we have to think about our brand image in the way we post. Our "online" life has become so carefully curated to project an image of what we think we should be. I had moments where what I was choosing to do my "offline" life was based on how it would appear "online". This is fucked up. So I decided to just stop posting. You might have noticed this... or maybe you haven't. Lord knows the algorithm doesn't favour individual people over advertisers or influencers. I made a conscious decision to not blast every thought I had on social media. I avoided posting photographs of what I was doing and instead just live my life. It definitely helps that doing a PhD means I doing really do that much these days besides read articles, analyse data, and grade undergrad papers but I still stand behind my decision to post less.

I used to love the internet

And through all this turmoil with what I was seeing on the new internet--the one that is dominated by gigantic corporations--I was craving what I missed about web 1.0. I used to love the internet. I spent so much time bouncing around webrings reading ghost stories and looking at pixel art and talking to people on text-based-role-play forums. When I was studying contemporary art, I would seek out artists making web-based art projects in flash. I remember being blown away by an artist who took a photo of himself everyday and uploaded it to his website (fyi - he's still doing it today). Mind you, I found this guy in about 2002 after he'd been working on the project for two years already. Instagram wouldn't be founded for another 8 years. Today, this seems like such a prosaic thing - uploading a photo of yourself and I think about this project a lot. I think about many of the art projects that were exploring the boundary between the online and the offline during the early 2000's. I wonder if there's even a boundary anymore. And I wonder in which directly the bleed occurred... is our offline self more like our online one, or the other way around?

These existential questions still tickle at the back of my head and it's been exciting to see the wave of Y2K nostalgia that has crept over the internet. The rise of analogue horror has me reliving the nights spent sitting too close to the computer screen reading through the journal of Heather Donohue as she describes her time in the Burkitsville woods hunting for the infamous Blair Witch. Of course, nothing will ever be able to truly recapture the experience of not knowing exactly whether that movie was true or not. We can't go back to those innocent days when we believed whatever we read on the internet... which is probably for the best. But when I really drill down, it's not about the doubt that was raised by The Blair Witch Project that made it so compelling, it was that it had never been done before. It was a completely new and creative way of using the internet to tell a story that made it so captivating. And while the analogue horror I've watched recently certainly coudln't claim to be completely new, they are definitely doing something more creative.

It was really my delving in to analogue horror that sparked by desire to go back to the early internet. I started to look for some of those old art projects which not a lot of luck. I had long since lost their urls so I couldn't even look them up on the Wayback Machine and Google is completely broken to the point that unless you are searching for something to buy on Amazon you have no hopes of stumbling across something interesting and undiscovered. I've been frustrated by the sameness of "Content" that I get given across all platforms I engage with, desperately trying different strings of keywords in the hopes of being given something unusual, something unlikely, something... anything... I hadn't seen before.

Then I found Marginalia. I can't remember the arcane symbols or what combination of keys plus the konami code I put into Google that led to me finding this utter delight on the internet. I'm pretty sure it was a link someone had posted on Reddit (which, by the way, had been the closest I'd come to the old web because it is less about the algorithm and more about people. At least, it is for now. But I'm sure the enshitification is not far off now they have gone public). Marginalia is part of a movement to escape the capitalist hellscape of the current internet. It's an independent search engine that is designed to find things that you would never find using the big search engines. I tinkered a bit looking for weird search terms, but where Marginalia came into its own (at least for me) is with the Random button. Clicking on this little rainbow wonder will bring up nineteen completely random websites. These websites will likely have low views, be weird personal websites, and feel very very much like the internet did 20 plus years ago. One of the random pages that I was served up was yesterweb.org which led me to the rabbit hole that is the Small Web. I'm not even going to attempt to provide links here because one of the main points of the Small Web is discovery and curiosity. Here you are on your own journey of discovering what you are interested in and I'm completely in love with it.

Why this ugly wonderful website now exists

And that is why I decided to crack out my html coding skills and hard code this baby to look just how I would have made it look when I was building similarly ugly websites in notepad back in the 90's. Yes, I am going to use animated gifs. Yes, I am going to use cluttered tiled jpeg backgrounds. Yes, I will likely use at least one scrolling marquee text effect. And maybe I'll start adopting pixel animals again. But I'm definitely pulling up my chair on this little piece of turf on the Small Web and I'll use it post what's going on in my life here. If you want to stay up to date with me, this will be the best place to bookmark. I'm not ready to completely delete my social media presence yet (see those two remaining reasons above), but it might be coming.