Tag: OptOutProject

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The internet and computers are great. I love them and I want to share this digital world with my two kids. But it’s not all wonderful. Here are things I am trying to avoid with technology:

  • Ads
  • Tracking of my activity online
  • Click-bait
  • AI slop
  • App stores that 30% cuts or more of profits
  • Walled-gardens (for example Apple)
  • Not being able to own anything (digital rights management software allows Amazon to revoke access to books that were bought on the Kindle)
  • Apps that are designed to be addictive
  • Opaque recommender algorithms
  • Proprietary code and black box apps that make it difficult to learn how it works
  • Powerful platforms where regular people have little say
  • Banning and shadow-banning when people have different political views than ownership of platform
  • Secret business models (usually meaning start free and then enshittify later)

Things that I want more of with technology:

  • Consent
  • Privacy
  • Ownership of my data
  • Software where you are encouraged to learn how it works
  • Freedom to mess around with software and media and to share it with others
  • Software organizations built by and for the community
  • Open, sustainable business models
  • Community
  • Decentralization (no monopolies that can over power a market)

In 2025, these aspirations can seem like a pipe dream. But I’m optimistic that there is another way. At the very least, I can move in the direction of this dream even if I can not fully achieve it. My plan is to follow The Opt-Out Project’s guide which has a 21 day plan (LOL, it will take me much longer) to switch my whole digital life toward services that respect this dream.

This will not be easy. The guide shows how to completely get rid of Gmail, Google docs, and even Google Maps which are all services that I rely on heavily. It won’t just affect me too. It recommends switching away from Big Tech messaging apps like Whatsapp and from proprietary social networks such as LinkedIn as well. I will need to navigate how to distance myself from these exploitative services while hopefully finding ways to stay connected to my friends and family that still use them.

But I’m excited about this effort. I’ve already switched to an open source social network, Mastodon, which is part of a wider social network called the Fediverse. I love it! I find really interesting people, and I am encouraged by them. It’s nice to have more control over who shows up in my feeds, and feels more like how you meet people in real life. It’s more work, but has a chance for deeper connections. I’m expecting that as I transition more of my other services away from big, profit-seeking companies that I will learn a lot. I hope I will experience more freedom and connect with a positive community.

I plan on sharing my journey about it. So far I have finished Day 1 and Day 2. For Day 1, I bought an external hard-drive to save all the data that will potentially be on all my accounts on these Big Tech services. I got a 4 TB WD My Passport. Day 2 was more involved and was about moving away from Big Tech browsers and search engines to more open source and privacy protecting options. I already used Firefox, a popular open source browser, and DuckDuckGo, a privacy conscious search engine. But I wanted to diversify options since browsers and search engines are critical to accessing the internet. So here are the things I explored :

  • Firefox privacy improvements
  • Installed and tested additional search engines
    • StartPage, a private meta-search engine that uses Google results but protect your information from Google tracking
    • Quant, is a French search engine with its own search index
  • I installed and tested out a couple other browsers
    • The super private Tor browser following this guide (I installed it by downloading the Tor browser installation files as a tar file)
    • Vivaldi is an open source browser built on top of Chromium which is the foundation of the popular Chrome browser

They have been working fine so far. I’ve been using Quant as my main search engine on my desktop computer with no issues. I’ve used Vivaldi some and Tor occasionally and they both are fine too. I just switched my default search engine on mobile to Startpage so I will begin testing that out more too.

That’s it for now. I hope to work on Day 3 soon where I will take stock of all my digital accounts. Sounds like it will be a lot!

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In my last post Self-directed small groups for learning, I talked about wanting to start a group where we support each other with personal projects and learning. I reached out to some friends and acquaintances to see if people were interested. Some people are interested, and I had the first meeting with one other person this week. It’s exciting to get started! But many of the people I talked to had questions about this group idea. Here are some: what kind of projects? What is the topic or theme? Is it about accountability? Do you need to be a programmer/tech person to join? These questions helped to clarify what kind of group I’m hoping to form.

I am imagining a group where the members are connected by a desire and ability to support each other to make progress on their personal projects or learning endeavors. On the desire to help side, the members ideally will be curious about the other member’s project and be ready to hear about these projects, even if it is about topics that they are unfamiliar with. In my experience, just having the desire to help is usually enough because there are many ways to support that do not require specialized knowledge. Just listening and asking clarifying questions can be enough to help someone solve a problem (even a rubber duck can help!).

But there could be situations where there are barriers that prevent people from effectively supporting each other. With some projects people are essentially speaking different languages because the knowledge needed for a project is so specialized. Relatedly some members might be triggered by certain subject if they had a negative experience it (maybe a terrible physics class). Alternatively people might want to meet with people with similar experience and interests. In these cases, it probably would be better if people formed separate groups.

With that clarification of the kind of group I’m interested in, here are my responses to the questions:

  • What kind of projects?
    • Whatever you’re interested in! This group will be meeting remotely, so projects were you can make some progress while at a computer would probably be a better fit. But it doesn’t have to be all digital. For example you could document and publish your efforts to achieve new levels of physical fitness. For me, I’m going to be working on how to switch all of my software services to open source/privacy respecting services. I’m following The Opt-Out Project guide.
  • What is the topic or theme?
    • Ideally our efforts would help the community in some way. In my previous post, I mentioned a goal of “Adding to knowledge and culture through open source work that can be shared and modified by others”. Personally I’m interested in ways that people and communities can have more agency with the technology they use.
  • Is it about accountability?
    • Each person is driving their own project, so they don’t “need” to do anything. But it can be helpful for member’s to remind each other about their previously set goals. So yes it is about supporting each other as we each work toward our goals.
  • Do you need to be a programmer/tech person to join?
    • No. It would be good to have a project or something that you’re interested in, but it does not need to be about programming or tech. I am one of those science/tech people and my projects will mostly be in that realm, so if that doesn’t bother you then it will be fine.

I hope that helps clarify what I’m aiming for. If you’re interested reach out!