words.

My corner internet is a little less fucked.

Emphasis on a little less fucked. I still have Gmail and Drive. I check Instagram constantly. I have an easy time creating content for networks I hate and a hard time creating content for networks I like.

Now that I’ve gotten rid of a few apps, I know I can make a change when I force myself to. I think it’s time to take stock of what’s on my phone (and maybe throw a few web apps in there) and figure out which apps make my life better, which apps I use when I want to, and which apps are just using me.

So, I am going to make a tier list. For this first attempt, I will only consider how good the apps are for my life. 

In the future, I will consider their privacy policy, but for now, baby steps. As I’ve said before, this process is going to take a while. I will make an exception to this rule for some Meta and Google products. I can’t use them and feel good knowing how little I trust the parent company with my data.

If you don’t see your favourite app, don’t get mad. I just don’t use that app.

The basic requirements for this list are:

• Do I feel better after using the app?
• Do I use the app when I want to use it?
• Does using the app make me better, smarter, and more capable?
• If it’s a social app, do I have a community there?

^*2025 updates in slime green

s-tier apps

These apps are only good for me. Without them, I would be lost. I use them every day.

• Notion
• Focusmate
• Find My
• Screen Time
• Duolingo
• Signal
• 1Password
• iCal
• iPod/mp3s
• Grammarly
• Authy
• iMessage
• Apple Maps
• GitHub
• VSCode
• Habitkit
• Apple Reminders
• AppBlock ^*upgraded to s-tier

a-tier apps

These apps are always good for me with an asterisk. Mostly, I don’t just can’t force myself to use them as much as I want to/should. These apps can stay for now.

• one sec (I might get a promotion to S-tier soon) ^*replaced with appblock
• Discord
• Strava
• RidewithGPS ^*still kinda use this, but only seasonally for bikecamping – seasonally unsubbed.
• Bandcamp
• Mastodon ^*fell off
• Mozilla VPN
• Headspace ^*replaced with happier
• VPL (Vancouver Public Library)
• Firefox ^*replaced with zen (built w/ firefox)
• Weather
• Apptiv ^*replaced w/ runs and blogs
• Wikipedia
• VLC ^*replaced with plex
• Brave ^*fell off
• Bandcamp
• Plex

b-tier apps

These apps usually make me feel good but don’t really add real value to my life. Often just they are fun or serve a particular neutral purpose. Not too distracting. 

Some, like Tumblr, are just entertaining and show me things I like. Others like GitHub Copilot, I just don’t fully trust the tech behind it ~shifty eyes~.

• Tumblr
• Pocketcasts
• Mail
• DuckDuckGo ^*replaced with ecosia
• Feedly ^*fell off
• Tachimanga
• GitHub Copilot

c-tier apps

These apps can be fun or helpful, but I am either using them too much, or they are using me. Chances are, they are showing me content to make me angry. They likely have one or two redeeming features that are keeping them on my phone or daily visit list. They are candidates for guillotine if they step out of line or a better option comes along.

For some, I either feel neutral or worse after using them.

• Netflix ^*unsubbed, and kinda replaced w/ plex
• Reddit
• YouTube
• Etsy

d-tier apps

I only use these apps because other people I connect with do, and it’s simply a numbers thing. I don’t trust these apps or the companies that run them, and I am actively trying to reduce their effect on my life (or hoping to remove them in the future)

Or, I have been using them for so long that it’s going to be a real long process to leave them.

It might not be that the service is bad (aka Google products). I just may have a real distrust of the parent company.

• Instagram
• Gmail
• Google Search ^*replaced with ecosia
• Google Drive ^*replaced with icloud
• Google Home ^*replaced with icloud
• Google Docs ^*replaced with icloud

f(ucked)-tier apps

These apps and sites need to go. No argument is strong enough to keep using them any longer. Either they are terrible for me, or I don’t want them to have the data they have.

• Google Photos ^*replaced with icloud
• My Amazon account (Prime’s already gone) ^*ded and deleted
• WebMD, NHI, etc. (I have Illness Anxiety Disorder) ^*blocked and almostly completely stopped self-checking

That’s it for now, I’ll keep editing this as I go.

Facebook sucks. It has sucked for years. That was bad enough, but lately, Facebook, advertisers, and the communities there are going from shitty to scary. They are spreading COVID disinformation, attempting to dismantle democracy, and, worst of all, everyone won’t stop posting pictures of their kids.

That’s a joke. It’s not the worst part of Facebook. However, we should have a conversation about whether kids can really consent to what it means to have their image exist forever on the internet. Also, using your kids for internet points may not be the best thing.

I am not a parent, though, so I’ll shut up.

Previously, when I’ve thought about leaving Zuckerland, I’ve always stayed because Messenger… and Marketplace… because I really want to hear about the political views of my Albertan oil-funded family (kidding, I don’t, and have self-banned talking about politics in-person with them).

But fuck it, this time I am done, zuck. No more. No more data for you. No more tracking every online conversation I have.

So far, this actually had way less impact on my life than expected. The people I actually spend time and talk with still message me on other platforms (Signal, iMessage, and Discord. Preferably in that order). I can still buy questionable electronics off of Craigslist instead of Marketplace. Now, the sellers are more interesting, and more posts are written in all caps.

Here’s the thing. The large group chats kind of sucked, I just didn’t know it. Often, I would just get vague invites to things on nights I already had plans on. 

Now, I just pester my friends to join Signal and create groups there. Most are annoyed but generally cave.

Next up, maybe a change on how I use Instagram? 

I would like to guillotine Netflix, but I don’t think my partner will have it. Maybe I’ll just be an elist jerk and refuse to watch it with her. kidding again.

Last week a new shiny browser (Arc) was released. It is by far the best browser that I’ve ever used. It’s well organized, fast, feels like an OS for the web (a great line from their marketing, btw).

I won’t be using it.

september 2024 goblin here: i am definitely now using it, lol. it’s honestly great. i hope firefox steals every one of their ideas. until they do, i am sticking with arc on mac. i still pay for mozilla’s vpn & relay though. they are still the only browser i am actively giving money to. so ya, arcs great, but mozilla is better for the internet. using opera gx on windows atm, because my aesthetic growth was stunted at 14 and i still love rgb-gamer-core.

There is nothing wrong with Arc, they aren’t some secret evil corporation that makes money solely off exploiting its user’s data (at the moment^*). The more competition in the browser space, the healthier the internet is. It isn’t even because it’s built from Google’s open-source browser engine like Chrome and Edge.

It’s because they are in the business of making money first and foremost. This will always complicate the ethics of products, regardless of their profit model or mission.

I love Firefox and it will stay my primary browser (although I have switched to Brave for a few productivity tools that keep crashing Firefox) because Firefox is built by the Firefox Corporation, which is owned by the Firefox Foundation, a non-profit guided by some pretty awesome guiding principles.

In my current attempt to unfuck the internet, the first thing I’ve learned is being intentional online means dealing with a lot of inconvenience. Nothing is simple when you start to remove yourself from the buffet of media and services available online.

Currently I am downloading the vinyl and tapes I own and adding the mp3s to my phone. Sometimes it’s simple, other times, the sites that used to host those files no longer exist. I just bought a cassette assuming that it would come with a download code, but no luck.

Trying to stream albums from bandcamp, attempting import mp3s into my phones music app, all of this is can be super tedious.

Recently I removed Messenger from my phone. Which means missing messages as I remind folks that I have transitioned to SMS, Discord, and Signal.

The thing is, I think it’s worth it. We’ve grown so accustomed to such an easy, cheap online existence that we’ve never really questioned what we are trading in return.

We are trading our data, our privacy, our attention, our behaviour, and little bit of our identity.

Hear me out.

Music is a huge part of my life. Same with anime. Same with some of the shows I really, really adore (the owls are not what they seem). I learn a lot about people through their interests and their collections. Recently I had a vinyl night with a friend and I felt I knew them better as I flipped through their record collection, excited to share in their passions.

So ya, using a browser has a vision I believe in is inconvenient at times. Ya, losing access to all the music ever is inconvenient.

I think the trade offs are worth it. In return we get: software that is more ethical, a better sense of ourselves, and a better sense of each other.

The internet isn’t in a great spot right now. Everywhere you turn, it is being used to radicalize, advertise, and retain user attention by any means possible, regardless if the design patterns are healthy for users.

In the 2000s, we thought the internet was going to expand our relationships and our connection to our interests, and for a while, it did. MySpace. Nex. MSN Messenger. And others seemed centred around connecting us.

Something along the way got broken, though. Applications turned from serving their users to serving shareholders and advertisers. Users became a metric to be optimized and manipulated for as much profit as possible under the guise of providing a service.

This is uhhhh… not good for us as the people who use the internet.

It means always feeling like we don’t have enough time each day (because we are spending mindless hours online), like our lives are not going well in comparison (our feeds, just like everyone else’s, are hella curated) and costing us a decent amount each month (Until recently I was spending $180 a month on subscriptions).

There are countless reasons why this sucks beyond those listed above, but I don’t really have time to get into them. What I do have time for is an honest attempt to reclaim my time online and maybe a little bit of money. Even if I don’t save money, I would like to have more of it go to the people I actually want to support.

So here goes. Let’s Unfuck The Internet.

This is my personal attempt to try and walk the walk. Take back my time, relationships, and money from people who do not have my interests in mind.

This is a pretty massive task, as I am pretty steeped in an internet I don’t like. My productivity tools are heavily Google-ified. My media is mostly Netflix and other streaming subscriptions. I watch endless hours of YouTube. Worst yet, embarrassingly enough, I unironically love Instagram, and I haven’t read a small blog in years. Ya, I am deep in it.

So, I got my work cut out for me.

I got to break this down into steps. The first service on the chopping block is Spotify. This one is actually going to be fairly easy (I think).

When replacing a bad habit (if you’re going to be successful), you should have a good one to replace it with. So, this substitution is going to be two-fold.

First off, I am going to prioritize buying (and streaming) music from Bandcamp. Tapes and Vinyl when it’s worth it, and digital versions when I don’t want to fork out for a physical copy.

Then I can import my new shiny mp3s into iTunes/Apple Music and listen from there.

Why am I starting with Spotify? I think the last album I knew front to back was just before streaming became how most people listened to music. I want that back. I want to feel connected to the music I listen to.

Also, as a musician, I know how terrible streaming has been for artists. It’s basically robbery that you have to consent to. If you want your favourite artists to continue to make music, pay them.

So that’s step one. Step two is not to renew my yearly subscription to Spotify next year and go all in.

When I feel I got a hold of this. I’ll make another switch. Probably bailing on Facebook Marketplace and buying used goods on Craigslist instead. We will see.

Wish me luck.