How to be a Bad Product
I visited the Supermarket near home yesterday and discovered that a biscuit packet I had picked up was torn away on it’s side and some of the biscuits had been nibbled at.
Bad product. Bad bad product!
Anyway, the biscuit packet and me have some parallels. In some ways, I’d like to be a bad product too. The idea is that large tech firms own so much data about us, we are constantly manipulated into doing things that we never would have thought of doing in the first place. Dozens of tiny little nudges everyday, herding us to goals, like rats in some godforsaken experiment.
When a large retailer started intruding into my life through Whatsapp, which I consider a private communication channel for friends and family, I decided enough was enough and began the process of trying to reclaim my privacy.
I now realise that protecting my privacy in itself could become a full time job. No wonder Richard Stallman is so paranoid about this kind of thing. It seems there is no way that I can disentangle myself from this mess without also losing some of the convenience that big tech brings.
So perhaps I need not stop being a product and just try and be a bad one. Like a nibbled biscuit packet that is on display but is pointless. Not that I won’t be traded anymore, but if I cannot have my privacy I can at least be an annoying product. Petty, I know – but still oddly satisfying.
I have started using mine, which a friend in my network recommended to me. Mine helps you reclaim your details from companies that store them. So far I’ve managed to reclaim personal and credit-card data from 10 companies with some 30 more in progress.
I logged into Google’s data and privacy section and changed my age and gender, removed web & app activity tracking and reduced location history to a more sensible range.
I installed uBlock Origin, which describes itself as a wide-spectrum content blocker and so far I think it is pretty amazing at what it does.
Another Linkedin contact introduced me to a cool service called Minutebox, which provides Throwaway email IDs. Recently a content startup offered me ‘free’ articles on Linkedin, which aren’t free at all. They wanted my email id. I gave them my throwaway id instead and took the articles. Guilt? Not really. It’s a Win win situation. I get articles and they get to show their investors an uptick in sign ups.
I’ve resisted using Duck Duck Go as a search engine for too long because Google was just convenient. Not anymore. Now I use it on all my devices. I’ve also resorted to using EWW, a text only browser which naturally blocks all JavaScript and makes it harder to track me.
The only social media platform I use is Linkedin. Although I’ve tried most of the big ones a little bit over the years, Linkedin stuck, (even though they used a dark pattern and tricked me into inviting everyone in my address book when I first signed up). I like the people on Linkedin, but found myself using it a little too much. In 2020 for instance I made 162 posts, and god alone knows how much time I spent scrolling down that damn stream. This year I’ve been using Leechblock to cut down on Linkedin and YouTube usage. The way I’ve set it up, I get 10 mins of usage every hour, for 2 hours in the morning and 2 in the evening. So 40 mins a day in total. If I try to login anytime else, it blocks me.
Google’s Gmail is too good to abandon. Their spam filtering and search is fantastic. Also my company uses Google Apps, so i’m stuck with it. However, rather than use Gmail in the browser, I have set up mailutils to download my email to a local folder and use MU4E, a text only email client to read, manage and reply to email. I have also used Alpine, a command line email client for this in the past. Technically, I don’t think this helps me with privacy in any way – but I can zip through my emails and zap the unnecessary ones, because it’s all plain text. For HTML email though, I have to either use the browser or use Evolution.
I also have some projects lined up for when I have some time to experiment.
Drop WordPress and move to a Static Website
I want to move my blog to a static blog format, because uOrigin has found trackers in my own damn website. Moving to simple HTML and CSS for a blog should ensure that my visitors are safe. I plan on using Hugo and the goal is to migrate to this setup by February or March next year.
Cryptomator for cloud storage
I have a tonne of files (many many GBs) stored on various cloud services. I come from an era where I used to FTP my files so I could access them, and this new generation of Cloud Storage makes it so much easier. On the other hand, i’m pretty sure they are also being indexed and mined by these service providers. I’m keen on trying out Cryptomator to lock them out.
Look into TOR
I want to experiment with technologies that are related to the TOR project. I’m also interested in trying out the Tails portable OS. I use Linux Mint which is very nice, but it may be useful to carry Tails on a USB stick if I ever need to use a friend’s machine.
Using MUTT for email
I’m very interested in learning to use MUTT for email. It seems a little technical, and I haven’t enough time at the moment to tinker with it. Maybe some time next year.
If you’ve ever considered being a bad product, I hope this post has some ideas you will find useful.