I'm enjoying the results of disenshittifying my digital life so much that I need a more celebratory word for it than 'disenshittifying'. So far, every solution I’ve switched to is better than the Big Tech one I left. Not ’better’ as in ’not enshittified’, but better designed. LibreOffice: does what I need and only does what I tell it to do. AntennaPod: much better features than Spotify. Tuta: functional and calm and 10 months later, I still haven’t received a single spam mail.
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I stopped using Booking.com ages ago, tired of the spam and Big Corporateness of it. Now I only book directly with hotels. Every time, it's cheaper and the experience is better. If I need to contact a hotel, I communicate with a human. When I needed to make a date change not covered by the booking: 'no problem!' They changed it instantly for free. I'd forgotten how actual customer service used to be. I also forgot to actually delete my account. #DanmarkSkifter reminded me. I just deleted it.
Organic Maps. Another example of an app I found in F-Droid that turns out to be nicer than the BigTech one I switched from. Not disenshittification, but enhancification. It's great for walking & cycling. Nice to use. Works offline. Feels 'human-sized'. First time I used it was to find a bus stop. It showed me the right one & noted 'shelter + bench'. To compare, I looked the same up on Google Maps (web). The actual map was barely visible behind ads for local businesses.
I told local friends who know the area that I would get the bus from the bus stop near the Squirrel In A Top Hat.
What are you babbling about, what squirrel, there's no squirrel, they said.
The map says there’s a squirrel in a top hat, I said.
No it doesn’t, they said, showing me squirrel-less Google Maps.
Yes it does, I said, showing them the Squirrel In A Top Hat annotation in Organic Maps.
I sent back this picture from the bus stop.
While making the final preparations before cancelling my Microsoft subscription in time for Denmark's Big Switch From Big Tech Day (March 20th), I discovered I still have a Dropbox account. If I'd forgotten I had it, then I was just digitally hoarding and don't need it. So this was an easy one to walk away from. Took me less than 20 minutes to delete the files and delete the account. So easy that I should be embarrassed to name it as A Goal and boast about it, but I'm not.
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