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.