Okay, let’s do a half-way report here. June is almost over, and at this point in Project Unplug I had abandoned it and basically reversed the polarity of my philosophy. As in, I went from an approach of whitelisting necessary websites to blacklistng unnecessary ones. Project Unplug wasn’t really successful and I already knew six months in. Here – not a bit of that. This is going **really well**. I am genuinely less stressed on a day by day basis by – well, everything. But it’s not like the project is done. There’s still plenty to be wary of, and plenty to fix.
Enshittified Platforms
I made a note for myself at the start of the year about which platforms I considered shittified, and what I used them for. So, it’s time to dig deep in to where I am now in this longer-term project.
Gmail and SSO
I only ever used this for logins to accounts that I don’t care about. Not exactly load-bearing behaviour. So I have adopted a little bit of extra logistical shittification – I created a new email address purely for that purpose. I still need to keep checking Gmail for the odd email that I forgot to migrate over, but every month there are fewer and fewer and I no longer use a Gmail address for anything new. I could look at building some kind of replacement self-hosted architecture, but maybe the real solution here is to simply not create accounts on sites. If they force me to do it – that’s shittification to be avoided.
The lost of Google SSO stings a bit. Being able to just press a button to create an account I don’t care about is very convenient. And it doesn’t really hurt to do that – by definition I don’t care about what Google does with accounts I don’t care about. But this is still a tech dependency so I need to work out the best solution. I’m still bound to a few services that don’t let you switch out once you switch in, but I will eventually get rid of those entirely.
So, by the end of the year I fully expect to have deleted my gmail account and to have migrated over every single service, or deleted them entirely.
Original Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Google Search
Nope, not using this any more. I started using DuckDuckGo early on. The results were bad, but I can’t remember the last time I ever found anything except AI slop on Google Search. More recently I have moved to a self-hosted SearXNG container which is – also bad, but perhaps not quite so bad. It sends searches out to a whole pile of external sites and then integrates them into a single search interface. Unfortunately they still go through the big tech search engines, but they do at least give me the results stripped of most harmful telemetry. And SearXNG is often blocked by Captchas, rate limits, and so on. I’m not really sure there is a good solution here except to ensure that I don’t get trapped into the quagmire of AI sloppified search results. Search is alas one of those ‘big compute’ services that are beyond my individual ability to meaningfully shift.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4 stars
Google Photos and Google Drive
I stopped using Google Photos, and started to use a self-hosted Immich instance instead. Unfortunately I find Google Photos on the phone keeps setting itself as a backup for my local photos, and Pauline is still using it so occasionally she will force me at gunpoint to look at some photos there. That’ll go away when i migrate her over to Immich on her devices, I hope. And as I experiment around locking down my phone, Photos re-inserting itself into my workflow will end.
As for Google Drive – I stopped using it, stopped paying for it, but I have no replacement for now except mapping direct access to a Hetzner storage bucket on my systems. That doesn’t let me quite so easily share files with people, but that’s a solvable problem. There are self-hosted options here that I need to explore, but it’s not really been a big deal for now.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4.5 stars
YouTube
I still use YouTube for background noise, but I have this locked up tight. I have plugins that get rid of the explore tab, recommended videos, shorts, the home view, etc, etc. All I see are my subscriptions, and I’m gradually paring those down. I used to have a lot of commentators about social media trends – like toxic exposure at three degrees removed. But what the fuck do I care about what people on TikTok are obsessed about? I might like the commentators, but the content has essentially zero calories. I’m gradually unsubscribing from ‘creators’ who make ‘content’ about ‘content’. And I might even later on cut down the ones doing their own original thing because I find it’s all gotten very samey. It’s like every single channel has succumbed entirely to the algorithm and there’s no room for individuality. And that’s because every single channel has succumbed entirely to the algorithm and there’s no room for individuality.
It does mean I often don’t have anything particularly new to ‘watch’ while I’m working but music is fine. Podcasts are fine. Good even, sometimes! I have a media centre loaded up with stuff, and if it’s a show I’ve seen many times before (The X-Files say) I don’t even need to pay attention. I think, if someone put a gun to my head, I could probably get my subscriptions down to maybe ten channels I actually would care enough to keep. I could get behind some kind of ‘Fediverse’ YouTube but I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to dethrone YouTube. Fundamentally I don’t think its replicable. It could only have been done in the way it was done, at the time it was done.
The other solution is to simply abandoned Youtube and follow creators on whatever other platforms they frequent. Many of them don’t use anywhere else though, at least the ones I like.
Original Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 3.5 stars or 5 stars. I don’t see much middle ground.
Google Scholar
This remains must-have for me, for now. What I probably don’t need though is my own profile bookmarked on my toolbar, so I removed that. I’m in a low-citation field, and my work is explicitly and intentionally slow-burn. Why do I need to have easy access to an h-index that changes glacially? Instead I set up a ChangeDetected script that mails me directly when the profile changes, along with a summary of what changed. No more seeing ‘Oh, I have two more citations but no idea what year got them’. It’s much better. I know I said ‘no notifications ever’ as a philosophy but these are emails and it replaces a harmful cycle of idle clicking.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4 stars
Gemini and other AI Platforms
Unfortunately since a lot of my recent work has been on hauntology and nostalgia as expressed in generative AI, I probably still need to keep using these. It is a work thing though. But that said, I do use AI a fair bit these days. Not for creating anything, but as a kind of ‘rubber duck debugging’ for ideas. I feed it something, see what it says, say ‘No that’s absolute bollocks but it does make me think of this other thing’. It feels like the healthiest way to use the technology. For now, unless I pivot to another research topic (or explore this one in another frame), I need to keep using AI platforms. But I have made no progress in deshittifying here, and I suspect if anything the shittification rating is going to get worse over time. If any part of my analysis is especially fragile to the tokenpocalypse, it’ll be this one. Hopefully AI becomes so shittified that it becomes impossible for any of us to use.
There are options to self-host local models, but for now they don’t do what I need them to do (accurately reflect the hauntological traces of frontier models). As the models begin to plateau and the compute performance starts to get better, that might become an option. That’s not this year though, and it probably needs the AI bubble to crash before we begin looking at smaller, more agile models as a social solution.
Original Deshittification Rating – 1 star.
Current Deshittification Rating – 1 star.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 1 star
Google Analytics
I used to use Jetpack Stats for WordPress, which did everything I needed and was included in the pro Jetpack plan I used to pay for. I paid for Jetpack Pro. I gave them money every month. And then they decided ‘No, giving you access to this number needs you – a commercial entity – to pay an additional fee beyond the fee you are paying. To get a number that a hundred other plugins will give you for free’. Jetpack was probably the first real shittified service that fell victim to my indignation, many years ago. By commercial entity they meant ‘You have a Patreon link’. Astonishing greed really, so I cancelled my Jetpack Pro subscription (great work lads, really stellar business planning) switched to Google Analytics and I hated and hate it.
I just want to know how many people are coming in and where they come from. The route to find that information requires the incantation of magical rites of baffling complexity. But also, I don’t really care that much any more – MLU has been on hiatus for years at this point, and the stats are pretty stable. But there was a cool quirk here – I bought a new router. I did that because I bought a new TV, which means I am now the owner of a complex piece of industry grade spyware and blocking it all couldn’t be done with the router my broadband provider gave me. I switched to an ad-blocking DNS, and lo and behold Google Analytics isn’t reachable any more. Now I have Koko Analytics, and it’s – fine. It doesn’t have a low of deep analysis, but I never wanted that in the first place.
Original Deshittification Rating – 1 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4 stars
Android
Sadly I seem to be stuck with this for the moment. You can’t live in Sweden without BankID and BankID requires a phone. Sweden is a ‘digital ID, apps first’ infrastructure and you can’t just opt-out of it. But this is a real tension point for me because fundamentally I despise everything that this represents. My tiny phone is great but it doesn’t let me use anything like Graphene or /e/OS. I could get a Linux phone but they don’t support BankID except within virtual machines and by that point you’re just setting yourself up for failure through sheer technological fragility. I really don’t think I have any options here except to massive restrict my usage of Android infrastructure where I can. But play services verification has more control over my device than I do. I think I either need to abandon a tiny phone (ironically go for a Google Pixel which can take Graphene) or abandon sovereignty over my mobile device. I don’t think I can have both a tiny phone and a say over how it works in the world. This is an unavoidable bifurcation – a fork in the road that requires me to sacrifice one of my goals in service of the other.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 3 stars or 4.5 stars. This depends on the eventual fate of my tiny phone, but I think this is probably going to be 4.5 in the end.
Amazon
I will deal with this in in a separate update.
Original Deshittification Rating – 1 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4.5 stars
Facebook and Other Social Media
I still use Facebook sort of, but it’s so stripped down from the intended site that it’s basically a daily update digest. I only see status updates from friends, so it’s maybe twenty or thirty updates in a week. I still check it reflexively though. I need to work on that. And if everyone was up for moving somewhere else, I’d be up for that too. On that score, I started up a social network of my own running HumHub. Only a few people are hanging out there though, but I hope by the end of 2027 I can abandon Facebook entirely and simply engage with whatever community I manage to bring over there. That’s how it worked in the old days, after all – you didn’t have ‘your people’ on ‘your platform’. It was easier to make friends out of your digital neighbours than to make digital neighbours out of your friends.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4 stars
I’m also idly on Linkedin, which does at least have the benefit of being literally the funniest social media network out there. Seriously, everyone on it treats every post like it’s a golden age TED talk. Everyone is always ‘delighted to announce’, or ‘I have the immense honour to say’, or ‘Let me tell you about how being cuckolded taught me an important lesson about customer service management software’. It is unironically hilarious. But also, God it sucks.
I’m on there because my long-lasting personal policy has been that I don’t add students to Facebook while they are active students, and for ‘power differential’ reasons I don’t initiate a friend request when they graduate. So it needs them to no longer be students and send a request themselves, and none of them really use Facebook much. Good on them. Linkedin though – yeah, that’s fine. I’ll add anyone there as long as I recognise their names. But I don’t actually pay much attention to it, rarely post, and only occasionally skim the surface to find my own localised version of /r/LinkedinLunatics. I could get 99% of the benefit out of this by never logging in again. An easy five stars is available just by blocking it in my /etc/hosts file and I think that’s what I will end up doing.
Original Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Other Social Media Sites
No others, and I don’t intend to add any more. People keep trying to get me on Whatsapp, but no. The Fediverse is great for people who want to bring an architecturally pure version of Twitter into their life. I absolutely don’t want anything Twitter flavoured anywhere near me. You can absolutely miss me with that shit. I have been checking Reddit a fair bit, but with a specific focus on project-related subs such as /r/digitalminimalism, /r/buyfromeu, /r/degoogle, etc. I want to stop that soon too since it feels like I’ve gotten everything I can out of them. Break that habit, or block it in /etc/hosts, and I won’t miss a thing.
Original Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Spotify
Done, as discussed in three separate updates.
Original Deshittification Rating – 1 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 5 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Microsoft Windows
I moved from the Office stack to LibreOffice and it is aggressively fine. I think every version of Word since, like, Word 5 has been a step back. So things are a little less familiar but not to the point it stops me doing anything. ODT is an annoying format though. This, plus Zettlr, solves all my word-related needs, desires, and lusts. At least for now – I do have another book to write this year and that’s going to be the real stress test. But I think it’ll be fine. Especially considering how Microsoft has begun trying to force perpetual licence holders of older products like Office 2019 (which I own a few product keys for) onto Office 365 by turning the whole thing read only.
Original Deshittification Rating – 1 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 5 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Adobe Products
Thankfully I lack even the most rudimentary designerly instinct so I have never been drawn into the Adobe ecosystem. It would absolutely have been a dealbreaker for this project if I needed to use any every day. However, there is one Adobe product I have to use and it’s Adobe Acrobat, because I need to digitally sign PDFs every year for Masters thesis students and the way it’s set up at work absolutely mandates Acrobat. Plenty of tools digitally sign PDFs. None work with the field-based multiple authentication bullshit our work cards require. You can’t even sign these online through Adobe, it just says ‘You can only do this in the desktop app’. That’s pure shitware.
Good news, since I’m masters thesis co-ordinator for our unit, I can push for us to abandon these ridiculous gonk documents in favour of something that feels more proportional to the task of attestation and less like buying a luxury car through a cryptocurrency broker who works exclusively with drug dealers. That’s a long game to play though.
In the meantime, what I did was send a bunch of emails to our program administrator saying ‘Yeah,sorry, can’t sign these but I will attest that each of these students accomplished all their compulsory requirements’ and she was very kind about it. But I decided that wasn’t exactly fair so I spent an afternoon building another solution – A stripped down Windows 10 installed in a virtual machine that runs on my sacrificial mini-PC (more on that to come later). The problem is that it’s incredibly slow and laggy, even with all the telemetry and creative cloud bullshit and more stripped down. Start up webmail and Acrobat and you’ll get regular 30s pauses. I gave an instance of Windows 7 a try but that has its own problems. But this is, for now, a solution if not a great one. I can probably find a balance here though that keeps Adobe out of my system but still lets me sign these forms, **or** aggressively petition for the forms to be redone. This is an systems problem – I have to use Acrobat because of these forms, and I have to use these forms because departmental policy requires them. It can be fixed in multiple places, but slowly.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4 stars
Microsoft Exchange and Authenticator
I need to use Exchange for work email. which since we use 2FA through a mandated Microsoft Authenticator, is institution enforced shitware. I do have a solution to this which is okay and I’m doing a shakedown tour of that. More on that in the future. Also, I can’t simply ignore Teams because it’s mandated too through work, but hopefully the EU’s new initiatives on deamericanising tech will filter through to the national level and we’ll end up using something less odious. In any case, as I say – I have a solution I will outline later.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 4 stars
Obsidian
I love Obsidian, but I’ve taken a forward looking approach here. I’m not just looking at current enshittification but enshittification trajectories. Obsidian is a candidate for enshittification over time because it is closed source, and it has monetization pressures that are starting to kick in. Like for example how it restricts syncing between instances (even if it’s trivial to get around it, it shows a direction of travel). It’s great at the moment – I don’t judge anyone for using it. But I don’t want to love a tool that could go feral. So I shifted instead to Zettlr. Deshittification requires open source, I think. I lose a lot of the kickass features of Obsidian but Zettlr is at least predictable and controllable.
Original Deshittification Rating – 4 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 5 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Overleaf
Similarly I love Overleaf, but it is so fetishistic about AI these days and I don’t want any AI forced on me. As when I wrote about Gemini, I think it sucks for content production. Soulless, smooth, corpo-speak with no fire or personality. I only want to use AI to force me to think about things I may not otherwise be thinking about. But Overleaf is **otherwise** so good. My rule at the start of this though was if I need to pay for a subscription, it’s on the cutting block. At least i get a pro account through work. But also the minute it starts trying to push AI on me, I don’t go looking for the setting to switch it off, I go looking for an alternative. So Overleaf is in my sights. I just don’t know yet what to do about it, and it’s getting worse every month. Zettlr is great but it’s not ‘dealing with latex templates for papers’ great. For now, I see this being an area where backsliding is inevitable, until whatever epiphany comes along and convinces me it isn’t.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 2.5 stars
iDrive
I used iDrive for years when it came to backups and it was basically fine I guess. But increasingly they charge more and more for less and less, and the software became unreliable. Sure, complex version-tracked incremental backups and such are great but when you need to strategise what to backup because they only give you a sliver of storage – and then don’t reliably back it up – something has to give.
My solution was to pay much more money for 20TB of storage at Hetzner. It’s just a drive, it has no software, no management tools, nothing. All it has, on my backed up computers, is a simple script that uses rsync to dump a list of directories from my computers to the remote directory. All I need here is a redundancy in case drives die, I don’t need anything more sophisticated. The downside – 40 euros a month just for storage. The comparison is 25 euros a month for 20TB with iDrive. Wait, what? That’s a lot cheaper than the last time I looked. Anyway, at least this way I have full control over the backup and how reliable it is.
Ah right, VAT isn’t included in the price. So it’s actually 32 euros a month. Still. better than I remember. But the cost of that small discount is more bloatware, proprietary software lockin, less reliability, heavily throttled restores (it might take literal days to download a few hundred gigabytes), dark patterns hiding the cancellation options, and no grace period to retain your data when your payment lapses for whatever reason (like you got sent a new card). They also let you exceed your quota and then charge you extra (a lot extra) for it rather than stopping it happening. Also I’m pretty sure their online browsing tools are a security trashfire. The personal service does not support rclone or rsync, and the e2 service would be… holy shit, over 100 euros. God, yeah. Glad I’m not using it any more.
Overcharge BTW is 25c per gigabyte per month. So, 100GB (not much on 20 TB of storage) is 21.55 euros on top of the base cost. 67% of your monthly bill for a 0.5% overage.
Original Deshittification Rating – 2 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 5 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 5 stars
Steam
Steam, in a world of shittification, largely remains ‘the good one’. At some point I’ll regret having locked my entire game library onto a proprietary server that can ban me from every game I own at the whim of some erratic billionaire, but that point isn’t now and probably not within the next year or two. This might, ironically, be considered actually the same situation as Spotify which I so ruthlessly excised from my life. Here, it’s a case of grudging pragmatism I guess. There is no technological solution, no self-hosted shibboleth, that will let me exert meaningful sovereignty over my game library. Most of the time you can’t even buy physical media directly, and when you do it’s usually just a licence for Steam. GOG represents perhaps the only feasible path going forward but it’s still platform lockin. I don’t know if there is a solution to this, but if there is it can wait a bit. There is no urgency here – I don’t feel Steam ‘curates’ my tastes the same way I felt Spotify did.
Original Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Current Deshittification Rating – 3 stars.
Predicted Final Deshittification Rating – 3 stars