One of my 2020 new year resolutions was "A month without social network". The least I can say is that it was an enabler for me 💪
I spent way too much time in front of my screen endlessly scrolling for my next shot of dopamine. So in March 2020 (after a 🍸 Dry January and a 🍗 Vegan February - Maybe the subject of another blog post 🤔), I went all-in:
I disconnected all my devices from:
Facebook
Youtube(If you think Youtube is not a social network.. good for you... Don't spend to much time.. Youtube is the final boss of Social networks for me)
9gag
Reddit
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
and removed all apps from my phones
The month went on ... like a breeze. (Yes: it's actually easy to survive without social network, it's not like air or sleep ... Who would have thought 🤷♂️) I honestly felt it was a loss of time.
It was only in April, when I was back on social networks, that I started to become way more aware of the enormous amount of time that I was losing scrolling endlessly 👀 ...
So I did as any curious person would do... I researched:
Why are we addicted to social media?
What is happening inside my brain when I scroll Facebook?
What's in it for Instagram when I interact with content on their platform?
Obviously, these answers are well known ... Everybody knows it. Yet I found it extremely interesting to do my own research.
A TL;DR:
Companies collect your behavioural data to sell them to other companies that are using them (The more commun example : Targeting ads). The more you interact with such platforms, the more data they collect, the more precise the targeting is. Social networks are using strong cognitif biais such as the Default choice, The Ikea Choice, Esthetic reward, etc, etc to trick your brain into asking more content.
Do you remember the time where the web was paginated? The designer of the "infinite scrolling" thinks that his creation (Although extremely effective to keep you engaged) wastes around 200'000 human lifetime every day
(Just another post and I stop)
Watch the wonderful video series "Dopamine" on Arte available in French, English, and German... It is an amazing eye-opener...
The point is: I became data-aware. I started to research how the services I was using were using my data... And I decided to see if I could find more "data-responsible" alternatives... or as a fallback, ways to reduce the usage of a specific platform.
Here they are :
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👍 Facebook / 📸 Instagram Eventually, I ended up deleting my Facebook and my Instagram account: No alternatives here.
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🎥 Youtube I did not manage to find a way to fully replace YouTube yet. However, I found some pretty good tricks to better own my watch time.
De-activate Auto-Play
Replace your YouTube bookmark with https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions that way you will go straight to the content YOU subscribed to, and not the content YouTube thinks will keep you engaged.
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🔍 Searching the web I replaced Google search with DuckDuckGo. For personal tips and learnings:
Google search is miles away from any competitors in terms of search accuracy. (They have way more data, they understand much more precisely your search intents, they give better results, rinse, repeat, profit)
The above point 👆 can discourage you, because when you venture into the unknown, you will focus more easily on things you don't like.
✅ Tips for new DuckDuckGo users: It is ok to give up and want to fallback to google sometimes... DuckDuckGo has you covered. It's called bangs. Just prefix any search by "!g" and you will fall back to Google automatically. Just like that
✅ Using Qwant? prefix your search by "&g" for the same result. They call them qwicks
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✉️ e-mails I replaced Gmail with Hey I am going to be honest with you... Hey is weird. Hey is not "yet another mail client". Hey is doing almost everything the opposite way than other mail clients... I love it 🔥. It's pricy though .. 99$/Year I would suggest you to check the feature tour before committing to Hey... I would understand that people dislike Hey, as it is so far away from anything we know about mails...
Both security-oriented mail providers... way cheaper too.
But as a PM, I got attracted by some of the features that Hey offered, and at the end of the day, I think it's worth every penny.
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🌍 Browsing the Web I replaced Chrome with Brave. Brave is a chrome-based browser. This means you can use everything you know and love about Chrome (Extensions, shortcuts, etc, etc). It's available on all platforms (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, name it) Fewer barriers to migrate for you 🎉
Brave has a really well thought built-in tracker and ad blocker, and it works amazingly well.
19 data points blocked after 2 minutes of watch time on youtube...
I honestly don't see a single negative point with Brave... Give it a try now. You will be surprised to see how many trackers Brave is blocking for you.
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💬 Instant Messaging I created a Telegram account and a Signal account a long time ago... The biggest barrier to switching an instant messaging app is that you also need your friends to do it 😅. But honestly, since the whole "Whatsapp - Facebook will share your private data" debacle, everyone started to talk about Signal...
I managed to migrate my 4 most active multi-chat groups on Signal... I said to myself "It's a good first step" ... Well, it turned out to be an amazing first step, It's been 2 months since I did not open Whatsapp.
More and more people are trying out Signal... Speak to your friends, I am pretty sure you are not that far from saying "bye bye" to Whatsapp.
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☁️ Cloud Storage, 🌅 Photo Storage
Like a lot of people, I got hooked by Google Photo. Fast service, unlimited storage for free...
💡 Heads-up if you are not aware and if you are using Google photo: Google Photo is changing its storage policy: Starting June 1, 2021, any new photos and videos you upload will take up storage space. This one is, unfortunately, a bit more hardcore to replace 😓 I own a Synology NAS, and for a few months, I am using their Moments service...
So I am now storing my photos locally in my own "Cloud".
Moments is available for both Android and iOS... The web app is wonderfully designed (Strong inspirations from google photo)
The only negative point of this alternative is the price 🤷♂️ ...
A NAS cost roughly 300$
Add 300$ of Hard drives
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🗺 DNS Routing
This one is much geekier than the others... That's why it's the last one 😅.
For those not familiar (like me before starting this project), there are some servers acting as big "Address book of the internet": DNS Servers.
Every-time you type an address on your browser (let's say www.google.com), it goes to a DNS server... and the DNS server replies:
So you don't have to remember IP address by heart... (They change anyway so 🤷♂️ don't try)
Interesting to know...
Almost all third-party ads on a website are coming from the same sources... The famous companies that are making a profit by targeting ads. (Like criteo)
Almost all tracking points are collected to the same destination ... (Like Google Analytics)
When you load a webpage:
If this webpage is integrating a Criteo ad: a DNS query will be sent to resolve criteo domain.
If this web page is tracking your behavior... It will try to send data to Analytics, and the DNS will have to resolve it too.
Most of the time, DNS servers are owned by big companies (Cloudflare, Google, Your Local ISP ...)
Some projects are using this "Single point of resolution" as a powerful way to block Ads and Trackers:
For almost every resolution request, your DNS server is going to delegate the resolution to an up steam DNS server (So it's a lazy local DNS)
Your local DNS server has a list of every ad domain and tracking domain. For those resolutions, it does not delegate anything: It just routes them to a back hole (Literally: 0.0.0.0)
It's like having Ad Block on your network.
Every connected device benefits from it
Your TV
Your connected lights
Your friend phones
Etc .. etc...
A safe bubble 💪
I was surprised to see the share of resolution blocked...
~15% of all my DNS resolution are blocked by AdGuard Home.
That's right... 15% of internet resolutions are either for Ads or for Tracking 🤯
The most blocked domains for me are:
Analytics related to my PhilipsHue lights
Analytics related to my smart climate control
Analytics related to my smart vacuum cleaner
Analytics related to Netflix
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I hope you learned something about what you can do to start owning your data. Start small: Use Brave, Try DuckDuckGo. These are 2 really easy steps.
When you start your privacy journey, the sky is the limit 🚀
