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?
Congratulations, I did mine in 2023 and have been very happy with not having it since then.
The only Google service I interact with on a common basis is YouTube, and then only through Newpipe. With that said, I’ve been doing my best to replace some channels with peer tube channels instead, because I am afraid that one day Google is just going to lock down YouTube and require a Google account in order to use it entirely, which would kill Newpipe.
Ugh. YT on tv via Smart TV has got me. Without the logged in algorithm it’s trash.
Spotify also has me to. I just want to press play and have music.
But there the last two to go and not linked to the same accoint. So that’s something.
I feel you! Getting rid of Spotify took me a long time. The thing I discovered that changed the game for me was multi genre tagging for my music. Cause, at least for me, that’s what I really liked about Spotify: opening the app and clicking a recommended playlist which normally centered around a certain genre/vibe.
When I first starting building up my digital music library, having to make specific playlists for each mood felt like way to much work. But now I use Auxio on my phone and use mp3tag on my computer to add genres to new music that I download. Some are less then accurate but reflect that desire for certain vibes. For example I use a ‘nostalgia’ genre tag which for me just means 2010s recession pop that I listened to as a kid.
The real nice thing is that now songs appear in multiple genres. So if want to shuffle 'sad piano ballad’s that include a rihanna song, I have that with one click, but I also have that song in my ‘nostalgia’ genre!
It does take a fair amount of work to tag, but now that I have about 1500 songs all tagged the way I like, I don’t miss spotify’s convinience at all!
From the 80s to now has been a wild ride for music fans. I never gave up my CD collection, but the last 15 years haven’t seen a lot of additions. Streaming just made it so easy. Then during COVID, I went hard on vinyl and did that for a few years. Then last year, I decided to start bringing my media back in-house. I spent weeks ripping CDs. I spun up a Navidrome server. I found Symfonium. I started buying CDs again.
Symfonium has a “Track Mix” feature, so I get in the car, hit that, and it just plays random shit. My collection is currently at about 25,000 songs and I have no idea what might come next. It’s great. There are some things I’ve probably only listened to once before, 20 years ago or something.
Then at home, I hit the Random Albums tab in Navidrome while I’m working and just choose something from there to listen to.
It has helped make my listening more meaningful again and brought me back to my love of physical media.
I still have YT Music and I use it to listen to new releases each week or for the odd song I think of that isn’t in my collection (yet).
i think it’s actually better when the addicting algorithm is trash.
I really need to install graphene to this pixel. When I upgraded I had a bunch of stuff going on so I didn’t take the time to do it and now it’s been like a year…
Same.
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 was using Google Maps every once in a while, not for directions, but just to find out how long it would take me to get from one place to another. And then they decided to nuke the website so that you couldn’t even do that without downloading the app. And so I rediscovered that MapQuest exists. So maybe you might take a look at that.
Also, I found that OpenStreetMaps does not do particularly well with addresses, so what I do is use a website like gps-coordinates.net to convert the street address I want to go to into GPS coordinates and then paste that into OSM, works great
If you’re in an area where OSM doesn’t have address data then you can always add the missing data yourself using something like Street Complete
Maps has been hard. If CoMaps had better business info (just basic stuff, not even pics) and could suggest alternate routes (not based on traffic, just like 2-3 options with roughly the same ETA) I think I’d use it way more.
Yes! Same, the routes thing makes it hard in a city with traffic! I’m haply to use something like gmaps wv for finding which route is best, but then there’s no way to choose a different route in comaps!
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.
I’ve been mostly off YT and IG for a few months. I might login to either one weekly instead of daily. I don’t think I’m that different except I’m doing more real shit now, like in the real 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:
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.
Have you tried TomTom? I have to drive a lot and it works great for me and has been pretty good with helping me avoid high traffic areas. It’s not as slick as Google Maps, but it works for me and they are a Dutch company, so not American or American/Israeli like with Waze.
https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/navigation/mobile-apps/Ooo I haven’t! I will definetly try it out. Thanks for the rec :)
Check out user profiles and work spaces in Graphene. I isolate all my G service apps and only use them when needed.
Noice! What made you take the first step?
I stopped using social media altogether about six years ago. I wanted to quit because I found people’s interactions fake, hollow and shallow. I needed to quit because it was making me sick all the time - constantly trying to compete with people in who was living the most glamorous life. This freed me from Meta.
At the same time - or shortly thereafter - I started to read up on online privacy, data brokers and mass surveillance. I don’t quite remember why, though. This freed me from Google. Went with Tutanota. This also freed me from YouTube and Spotify. Went with Newpipe and Tidal.
Now, people can reach me by calling me, sending me an SMS or joining me on Signal.
The way this affected me is that I’m not sick from competing mindlessly anymore. I live more in the present. My mental health has significantly improved. I have a sense of pride and security, thinking that my digital life is not being harvested and sold for profit anymore. I too listen to albums after having switched to Tidal. I never “listen to music” anymore. I listen to album X made by artist Y.
I struggle with cronic illness and I suspect social media plays a role. I’ve made some questionable decisions in my life and looking back I do wonder if social media instilled some drive for status in me that made me disregard my health. Not to mention doom scrolling on the couch for hours directly impacting my body.
It makes me happy to hear how these changes have positively impacted your life. I am also starting to feel that pride and security. It feels like I’ve killed some digital demon sucking energy from my soul and subconscious. I’m hoping its absence helps with my social anxiety.
It’s kind of a double edged sword, because while all the benefits are true, the majority of people around me still rely on social media and online dating. This just exacerbates my anxiety. It makes me feel that I’m being left behind and that I’m a weirdo. Of course, I know that this isn’t the case, but it’s how I feel sometimes. What a world we live in, where taking a stance against big tech and doomscrolling actually comes with the risk of isolation. :/
Edit: typo city
Yeah. I feel you. People make so many references to social media in conversation too. And people give me blank stares when I try to explain my world view. I just hope by going all in on my actual interests I’ll eventually find the people I actually connect with IRL eventually.
I took a class from a musician I really look up to and we connected over how Instagram has negatively impacted the music scene, specifically in terms of placing a huge emphasis on ego. Big tech and the modern music industry puts so much emphasis on becoming a rockstar. But in reality art is decentralized. Its scenes and subcultures are what truly impact the culture at large. Artificially boosted pop stars are just a way to extract money. He encouraged me to stay off social media and that really helped me feel more secure in my decision.
I don’t know if I would have been able to have that conversation a year ago. This shift in my life has defiently been isolating from my family and most of my friends, but I have some hope that I’ll get better at navigating the social world without big tech.
OMG! Yes, the fear of missing out (fomo) was/is a big concern of mine about leaving social media. I know several local groups/companies ONLY post events on Facebook.
