In a previous post I mentioned my relationship with and opinion on the current state of technology,and how it influences almost every element of our lives. But the core of this is that technology should serve us, not act as a means to control us. And that is most definitely not the case most of the time.
Without giving up on a lot of the improvements that tech gives is, it can appear impossible to move away from this mode of surveillance capitalism. But there are steps you can take which will mean tech can be less intrusive, and that you’ll be feeding less into the machine for it to try to influence you further. Some of them are simple, one-off, five-minute jobs. Others involve more effort. And what’s right for you may not be right for someone else.
You may not care about any of this. But you should do. We’re not going to move into a tech utopia any time soon, but taking small steps will mean that you live a better life, and also that businesses can gouge less from you each time you do something. Giving in is not an option that will lead to a good outcome.
Firstly, turn off notification that really don’t matter (which is most of them), and then group the ones that do matter into chunks.
Imagine if a fork was constantly asking you to pick it up to eat food. A bit like the talkie toaster on Red Dwarf, always offering toasted bread products. This is what modern phones are doing. They want you on them as much as possible – regargless of whether you want another lovely slice of hot buttered toast. But there are tools to stop this default from happening.
This is built-in to iOS, making it easy for iPhone users to do this. Mine come up at 9am, 1pm and 6pm. There are some contacts (such as T and the kids and a couple of friends and group chats) and apps that can always get through. The rest can wait a few hours, and be dealt with in one lump. The rest of the day I am untroubled by my phone, but can of course check it manually if I need to (they are not hidden if you go into the app, just don’t appear outside). Doing this on Android involves more complication via third-party apps (or at least it did last time I looked), but it is possible. You will be using your phone when you want to use it, rather than it constantly drawing you back in.
Secondly, automate your phone going into greyscale mode in the evenings. This is possible on both iOS (via a shortcut that can be automated) or Android (via a third-party app). Do this at a ‘wind down’ time (mine is set to 10pm). Black and white phones are far less appealing, and for good reason – lots of research has been done into the use of colour to draw you in, and there’s a reason that the notification counter on iOS is red! This will mean you’re able to go to sleep more easily as your phone won’t be nagging you to come out and play. Try it for a month and see if it makes a difference.
Thirdly, STOP USING GOOGLE CHROME. It is not your friend. It’s a way for google to track everything you do on the internet, every time you use it. There are technical reasons it’s become worse over the years that I won’t wibble on about, but changing to Firefox is the only way to stop this without having to become a complete nerd. Yes, there are a few sites that don’t work well with Firefox (and I mean a few), but I can only count one reason I ever need to use Chrome at any point now, and thats ironically for a nerdy thing to do with my home disco lights system. Microsoft Edge is built on Chrome, and is every bit as bad, for the record.
Fourth, use an ad blocker. I use ublock origin, as it is pretty good. Ads often contain malware (effectively viruses, but technically slightly different), so you are helping yourself not be ripped off by doing this. Note that you can’t use a good adblocker in the same way as you could on Chrome any more – and this may tell you something.
Fifth, make sure apps only track your location, etc. when you are using them. Otherwise they are constantly tracking what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, and often with whom. This is surveillance that the nutters I knew in the 90s thought the government were doing. Governments just don’t have access, computing power or the skilled staff to carry this off. Megacorporations do, and they rely on it. If there’s an option which is open source and less intrusive, then use it.
Sixth, change to a messaging app that isn’t WhatsApp. Yes, I know, it seems like a drop in the ocean, but if everyone did it, Meta wouldn’t be able to see who you’re talking to and when. Yes, WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, but Meta knows who you are talking to/messaging and when. It’s all part of the reason they bought WhatsApp as it was beating Messenger. Signal is the same thing, (WhatsApp is actually built on Signal’s communication protocol), and works perfectly well. Don’t use Telegram unless you want to lose your mind to the lunatic fringe of Tate Wannabes and Alternative Truthers who are endemic to the platform.
Seventh, – and this is probably the highest-effort but best pay-off long term – set a family culture that works to maximise in-person contact. For instance, no phones at the dinner table. For many years we had ‘no devices’ on Sunday nights, which the kids hated initially (and which died a death during the pandemic when I didn’t see T or the kids for 11 long weeks). When you go out for dinner, one I heard was that whoever uses their phone during dinner gets the bill – good luck with that one, but worth a try. Certainly no phones at the dinner table works wonders, as does eating together. Everyone needs to find what works for them, but uncontrolled use doesn’t work for anyone. Looking up that meme or the name of the actor in a film you saw earlier in the day can wait until after dinner.
Stop Using Free Services when paid services are available (see the caveat about open source software at the bottom). If the product is free, you are the product. It’s as simple as that. You’re not being done a favour, you’ve not found a great deal, you’re just being sold. There are great email services such as fastmail, protonmail and many others that offer good storage, features, apps and deals and work every bit as well as gmail or hotmail. There are lots of lists of free alternatives to paid software, and there’s no point in me listing my current ones as they will age like milk (whereas I think the general points made here will last a long time – a lot longer than I will).
Get Off Platforms You Don’t Agree With. X is a cesspit. Elon Musk is a moral imbecile, and shaping the world into a worst place based around the mind of an immature 15-year-old incel from 4chan. He has more money and power than any human should do, and actually rejoices in taking food from the poorest people in the world (via the ‘woodchipping’ of USAid), not seeing any irony in any of this. If you have an X account, close it. Use something else, like Bluesky. Or anything else. But if you use X, you are approving (albeit tacitly) of Musk. Governments and News Outlets should all have left long ago, but refuse to do so ‘because everyone is there’. But they really don’t need to be, and neither do you. The same goes for shopping experiences – whether it’s Shein, Temu or whatever. If you don’t agree with their business practices, don’t expect them to clean them up. Just leave.
Last, if you really want to improve things while you are at home – in terms of your experience of the internet as well as stopping a huge amount of tracking, consider spending a nerdy afternoon and a few quid running a thing called Pi-Hole. I will spare you the details, but this blocks a massive amount of advertising – both on the internet and while youre using apps. It’s reasonably easy to set up – the software is free, but you will usually want to run it on something like a Raspberry Pi (hence the name). You can even buy a ready-to-go-kit from the Pi Hut in the UK. In addition to stopping adverts on your computers and phones, you can also stop your smart TV from showing you ads on the home screen and (in newer cases) during watching of programmes.
What you may not realise is that nearly all smart TVs phone home with details of what you’re watching (even if you’re watching it on DVD or whatever as it scans what’s on the screen and reports back on this). All of this sounds proper tin-foil-hat stuff (I thought it was all lies when I first read about it) but it’s sadly true. And pi-hole can stop this too. I’ve been running it for years, and T’s comment is that the games she plays on her phones are annoying and unplayable when off the wifi because of all the ads. And if you ever get anything that doesn’t work when you’re using pi-hole, you can turn it off really quickly, or just turn Wi-Fi off and you’ll be back to the usual ad-filled nightmare that is the modern internet. If anyone does want help with installation, the forums are immensely helpful, and while it might be a ‘learning’ afternoon doing it, I really think you won’t look back. Mine has been running trouble-free for years without causing a single minute of downtime. And if you’re worried about what your kids are doing on the internet, you can see if they are on there at 4am. It’s not full on spying as you’ll just see sites accessed and sites blocked, but it’s instructive – particularly if your kid’s PC is suddenly doing bitcoin mining or something else they aren’t aware of.
If you really don’t believe that you are being influenced by what you’re being shown every day, then there’s little I think I can do do persuade you of what’s happening. But there is an interested experiement that you can run if you want. Either create a completely new YouTube account (on a fresh computer so there’s no link to your existing account), or wipe your watch history and subscriptions completely. And then search for a fairly innocuous topic and see what related videos you get suggested. While YouTube claims to have made progress in stopping suggesting extreme content from originally middle-of-the-road searches, the engagement maximisation formula is still present. You’ll get videos which are longer (allowing the serving of more adverts), and often on subjects you’re only tangentially related to, but which they have plenty to show you. Do that for a month and see how different what you’re being presented with is, and if it’s starting to provoke any thoughts for you. When I did this, it was instant rabbit-hole straight down into extreme prepper content, but that was 2019 and has been specifically guard-railed against now.
There is one kind of software which is generally OK to use if it’s free, and that’s open-source software (OSS). This is generally written by enthusiasts as hobby/passion projects, and powers much of the internet. Many large businesses take advantage of the tools and facilities that OSS provides, and should put something back into the tools that keep them (and in the internet’s backbone) running. But in addition, you can find many apps which fulfil this and don’t spy on you. Firefox is one of those many tools, but there are countless replacements for paid tools which will do as good as job (sometimes a better one) for no money. You can consider supporting them voluntarily in a number of ways, and be positively contributing to a better technical future which is built on open collaboration, not walled gardens, vendor lock-in and Venture Capitalism. You still have to keep your wits about you (free Anti-Virus software is often not really free as they gather lots of data about you and can try to upsell you to a paid product), but spending a bit of time and research can take you to a better, more secure place where the software you use works for you, rather than you for it.
