After 6 months of painstakingly moving all my accounts from gmail to tuta, I finally deleted my google account today! No more google, meta, or apple in my life. Its crazy how much my relationship with technology has already changed. Deleting Spotify was probably the biggest change so far. Its insane how my music taste has expanded. I was so afraid of discovering less music without Spotify, but the opposite has happened. Before I had a relationship with the algorithm. Now I find music organically, looking through peoples bandcamp purchases, SoundCloud likes, and soulseek folders. I’ve found myself listening to albums much more and developing relationships with artists and their work rather than the algorithm! Music is everything to me, but I didn’t realize how dedicating time to managing a digital library and purposefully seeking new music would transform my relationship with it. It feels like one of respect and reciprocity rather than overwhelming scrolling and recommendations and feeling like I’m in a pigeonhole.
I’m excited to see how getting rid of Instagram and the YouTube algorithm will effect my psychology. I defiantly have an addiction to the numbing that these algorithms provide. I’m sure I will replace these numbing agents with other forms of distraction, but I’m hoping they’ll be at least a little less toxic. I’ve been reading the arch wiki a lot and thinking about picking up a new hobby…
How has this process been like for y’all? How has it impacted your life and the way you see the world?
Here is a good online radio station for music, you can listen live:
https://www.pbsfm.org.au/guide
Or go through the archives of each show genre:
https://www.pbsfm.org.au/programs/list
I really like Soak, because it’s slow and gentle:
hardest part for me is services like google’s “find my phone” or google maps. If I need to quickly find a business, osmand or organic maps tend to fail, or default to finding a region of a street, instead of a single address for some odd reason.
Good on you though, I’ll be in the same boat by year end, if I find proper solutions
I’m excited to see how getting rid of Instagram and the YouTube algorithm will effect my psychology.
I was never big into youtube but when I deleted Instagram all my friends just started messaging me the good memes instead. It’s great.
I honestly wouldn’t say much has changed in a mental health way but also… not much has changed. So I have zero desire to download it again.
what did you about your phone?
grapheneos :) its been great! still have to use a burner google account sadly cause I live in a horrible traffic car city and need google maps.
Check out user profiles and work spaces in Graphene. I isolate all my G service apps and only use them when needed.
