digital agency

It's been a while since I posted here! Due to a confluence of professional, geopolitical, and medical factors I ended up taking stress leave earlier this year. It was much-needed and enormously helpful, and I'm grateful that taking care of yourself is (mostly) normalized here in Denmark.

Still, I'm not eager to repeat the experience, so I've added my sundry interests back into my life gradually. My approach is that I have a limited number of cognitive inventory slots for hobbies and social activities: once they're full, I have to finish or drop something to start something else. (Maybe I'll write up a post explaining the inventory approach in greater detail, but it's not this one.)

It feels good to get back to writing. This blog fulfills an important function for me: it's a place to think out loud, a place to make sense of the world, a place to share my knowledge and experiences. That said, it also takes time and energy, and even things that are normally enjoyable can feel daunting or stressful when those are in short supply. My goal with starting this up again is to double down on using this as a mental playground, so that I enjoy the journey of writing for a good long time to come and never come to see it as a burden or obligation.

Two months ago, I embarked on a long journey to move away from Big Tech platforms and apps. The journey has been easier than expected in some ways, harder than expected in others, and instructive as to how entrenched Big Tech has become in our digital lives.

I structured my previous post - goodbye, big tech - as one giant laundry list of Big Tech products in my life, and the various alternatives I was considering for each. This post will be a bit different: I'd like to focus on what was surprising, either for good or for ill. I'd previously tried to write the follow-up laundry list, but couldn't manage to make it feel engaging to write (let alone read), and (see above) I'm of the opinion that keeping this blog shouldn't be an exercise in masochism.

OK, let's dive in. This is what it's like to start cutting Big Tech out of your life.

from monocultures to polycultures

Big Tech platforms are like Walmart: sprawling megastores where every feature imaginable is available. Aside from social networking, Facebook offers Craigslist-style marketplace, an IRC-style messenger, a Flickr-style photo sharing site, a Meetup-style event planning tool...the list goes on. Google has expanded far beyond their initial search engine offering to provide everything from online collaboration tools (Google Docs) to email (GMail) to video sharing (YouTube) to maps and navigation (Google Maps) to web browsers (Google Chrome) to payments (Google Wallet)...the list goes on.

Big Tech platforms are like Walmart: they crush entire ecosystems of mom-and-pop startups through buyouts, predatory pricing, and other anti-competitive tactics. Their aim is to be the only game in town.

When you leave Big Tech, this is most likely the #1 thing you'll notice. Small-to-medium tech platforms aren't trying to do everything. They might offer a marketplace, or a messenger app, or photo sharing + file storage, but they won't do all of these. You will need to replace one-stop-shop platforms with multiple separate tools.

This is often, paradoxically, both a regression and an improvement in user experience (UX). The UX regression is one of convenience and scale. Maybe you felt this a few years ago, when people started leaving Facebook for other platforms - and now you have to contact them on Signal, or Telegram, or email, or wherever they happen to be. Or maybe you were on Google Reader, and it was glorious to have this community of readers recommending fascinating things - and then it was just gone, shuttered as not lucrative enough. (A reminder that this convenience can be fleeting, and Big Tech capricious in revoking it suddenly.)

The UX improvement is many-fold, but not as immediately noticeable. Maybe it's the lack of ads and questionably useful AI features (and guess what data those are trained on?). Maybe it's easier to import and export data: often, these platforms appeal to a user base that values privacy and portability. Maybe it's knowing that the product is the core business, and won't be shut down as long as the business survives (see Google Reader above). Nielsen Norman may focus a lot on visual and interaction design (and those matter too!), but reliability and agency are also valuable parts of the user experience, if somewhat underappreciated.

As seminal as Don't Make Me Think was in web usability, sometimes I think we've taken its core message too far: we forgot that users are people, and people like to be in charge of their tools - not the other way around. People also like to grow and learn. They like to have meaningful options, and to be trusted with deciding between them. These are all aspects of agency, which is anathema to Big Tech monoculture thinking. If you have agency, you might leave, and where's the profit in that?

whispering into our own shared void

One of the biggest non-technical surprises was the level of support I received from friends and family. When I told them that I was moving away from Big Tech, I got several responses like "hey, I've thought of doing that too!", "actually, I've been on Signal and Telegram for a while...", or "so what Mastodon instance do you use? my handle is..."

We even moved our jugger club off of Twitter / X, and we haven't regretted it for a second. Unless you're looking to recruit among far-right extremists or corporate PR flacks, you don't need it. Most of the jugger world has moved off of Facebook already into Discord and various other forums and channels - and this is a loosely-affiliated, barely-organised community of several thousand people worldwide, which isn't enormous but also isn't exactly small.

In exchange, the quality of my digital interactions has gone way up. It feels like my digital social experience is, well, more social and less "someone is wrong on the internet!" Rather than yelling into a bottomless void, we're whispering into our own shared void, and that's wonderful.

standalone password managers

Prior to my shift away from Big Tech, I stored my passwords in a mix of labelled GMail messages and the Google Chrome password manager. Smart of Chrome to offer a password manager: it makes the browser extra-sticky as a platform!

While it wasn't hard to move my passwords into Proton Pass, and then to change my email address in over 400 different places, it was time-consuming: I'd estimate it took 8-10 hours in all. Having done it, I wish I'd jumped on the standalone password manager bandwagon earlier. (Proton Pass is just one option: there's 1Password, LastPass, etc. You can check European Alternatives if having something non-US-based matters to you.)

Why? Well, in-browser password managers are great when you need to log into websites. They're less seamless when it comes to logging into apps. The standalone approach has also made it easier for me to organise my passwords into work vs. personal, and to share a vault with Valkyrie for our shared accounts. All in all, it's a much better experience across all the devices and services that I use.

Finally: I can lock down my password manager further - require an additional password to open, for instance. I wouldn't normally do this, but it can be useful to protect against intrusive digital border searches.

a panoply of surprising and welcome features

DuckDuckGo has OneBox-style results for calculators, weather, hex colours, flights, even currency exchange. Their search results are basically as good, and without all the sponsored crap. I'm not a huge fan of Duck AI, but you can easily disable that.

My new Fairphone has a fingerprint reader, which means I can do passwordless login on many apps.

Note-taking app Obsidian just launched Bases, which was the last feature preventing me from switching away from Notion. Excited to make the switch over the next couple of months (I expect this will be a gradual effort).

Ubuntu has gotten a lot better since I last used it. xorg.conf issues seem to be a thing of the distant past, there's better UI around package managers, out-of-the-box driver support is vastly improved. Granted, I hadn't used it in over a decade before getting my Framework 16 - but still, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that open-source projects are leveling up on usability.

OpenStreetMaps (OSM) coverage of foot and bike paths is surprisingly better than Google Maps. Here's the OSM view of a park near my apartment in Copenhagen:

Not only are main paths marked, but so are the smaller paths that connect them. There's also features that might help you plan a hike: picnic tables, forests, fences and other enclosures. For comparison, here's Google Maps:

It's more streamlined, sure - but much of the useful detail is gone, even with active transportation layers turned on.

The most immediately obvious consequence is that I find OSM-based services better for pedestrian and cycling navigation.

the complaints section

Of course, it hasn't been all rainbows and nyan cats. I'll list a few of the hiccups along the way. Truly ugly surprises are left for the next section: this section is more for less serious misadventures.

Facebook

If you have at any point developed Facebook apps, you might run into a strikingly unhelpful "something went wrong" error. The solution was to delete all the apps registered on FB Developer Portal first - but I came very close to filing a formal legal complaint, as under GDPR's Right to erasure companies processing the data of EU residents have an obligation to delete data when users withdraw consent.

Here in Denmark, you do that through Datatilsynet (the Danish Data Protection Agency). If you're based in the EU, your country will likely have a similar national agency. Other jurisdictions have their own processes - for example, here's the CCPA Complaint Form for California residents.

maps

Despite OSM-based services being better for pedestrian and cycling navigation, it's hard to find a good overall substitute for Google Maps! I've settled on a mix of Organic Maps and HERE WeGo, which gets about 80-90% of the way there. It's enough that I rarely find myself opening Google Maps these days, but rarely isn't never.

I also take public transit frequently, and Organic Maps fails hard at navigation here. It only offers one route, and struggles to handle multimodal navigation - for instance, bus to train to bus. HERE WeGo mostly works, with usability and reliability close enough to Google Maps to suffice.

There are other features I've come to take for granted, of course. Opening hours and website links - some locations in OSM have these, but many don't (though Organic Maps does allow you to easily edit OSM data!) Saved pins - Organic Maps does offer this, but there's no easy way to sync across devices or share saved pins with others. Map permalinks - I've had a few people ask "what's this weird link you sent?", since Organic Maps links look different from Google Maps and open in an unfamiliar app.

videoconferencing

I had planned on using Jitsi Meet, since I'd had good experiences with it when I tried it out a while back. Turns out that in 2023, Jitsi started requiring authentication for their hosted version. Fair enough - open platform abuse is A Thing - but they only offer Google or Github as authentication options!

Even as a tech geek, I don't necessarily want to be the sysadmin of my own Jitsi Meet instance. It's not a big deal, fortunately - I can get by with Signal and Discord video chat for most purposes.

biometrics

I like having biometric authentication as an option on my Fairphone - and miss it on my Framework laptop. I might have to pick up a Framework Fingerprint Reader Kit and install it. (Framework: if you're reading this, offer this module as an option in your order flow!)

the ugly

I've saved this section for ugly surprises. In some cases, public agencies and private companies that should know better actively make it harder for you to switch away from Big Tech.

device integrity: the new vendor lock-in

Denmark is a highly digital society. Each resident has a digital identity through a system called MitID. This system is used for everything. Log into your bank? MitID to use your banking app. Renew your driver's license? MitID to make an appointment. On sick leave? MitID to check messages from the municipality.

So it came as a rude surprise that MitID doesn't work on my de-Googled Fairphone. In the ostensible name of security, many banking and digital identity apps around the EU have integrated with APIs such as the Play Integrity API, which allow app developers to block users from running their apps on devices that don't pass a device integrity check.

So what does it take to pass this check? Internally, the Play Integrity API calls other Google proprietary libraries. If those libraries aren't present on the phone, the check will fail. It also fails for rooted devices.

Put another way - unless you're running a Google-approved Android device, or an Apple-approved iOS device, you can't run the MitID app and will instead need to get one of these MitID code displays:

To be fair, I actually don't mind the code display flow. You press a button, enter a password (which I just copy from Proton Pass), and voilà.

But still. This smacks of anti-competitive practices: why require that I choose between two US-based operating system vendors to run a national digital ID app in Denmark? And why block users from rooting their phones? This (admittedly unscientific) poll estimates that 20% of Android users root their phones:

Who roots their phone? Developers, yes - but also non-technical users who just want to remove pre-installed bloatware apps they'll never use.

I also ran into this with MobilePay, which is a digital payments app used everywhere in Denmark. In my experience, more places accept MobilePay here than cash - even local flea markets accept MobilePay. (For Canadian readers, it's like Interac e-Transfer. Unfortunately, unlike MitID, there's no good alternative option.

lip service to data portability

Big Tech puts minimum effort into data portability, likely because they don't actually want you to take your data elsewhere. Google Takeout, Facebook Download Your Data, and other similar Big Tech data export features are notorious for practices like:

• delivering data in difficult-to-process formats
• linking to their own services in exported records (which you're trying to leave)
• omitting useful metadata (e.g. colours / categories of map pins)
• heavily throttling downloads (I've seen 30 KB/s from Google Takeout!)

say it again: emails are not good primary keys

As part of migrating from GMail to Proton Mail, I needed to update hundreds of accounts with various services. 95% of the time, this was straightforward - nothing more complicated than confirming the new email address.

But that other 5% - well, there were a few services that would not let me update my email address. After contacting support, I'd usually get one of three responses:

1. "We can't do that for you in our system. You'll have to create a new account."
2. "We'll need to contact our developers, and they're busy - we'll get back to you in X days."
3. "Can't you just update your email in your profile settings?" (after explaining in my ticket that I could not, in fact, just update my email in profile settings.)

My best guess as to why? They probably used email address as the primary identifier for user accounts. You shouldn't do that.

It risks disclosing user email addresses, plus your users will change email addresses. Maybe their name changed. Maybe they were on a family AOL plan (heh) and moved off. Maybe they were being cyberstalked and wanted to switch addresses. Maybe they mistakenly tied their account to a corporate email address, then left the company.

show me the money

Last but not least: there are no open-source mobile wallet implementations. GNU Taler might eventually change this, with the help of research and development backing through Horizon Europe, but I'd estimate 5-10 years before we see widespread adoption.

So what do you do if you're on a non-Google, non-Apple phone and don't have access to Google Wallet or Apple Pay? If you're in the EU (or the UK) there's Curve Pay. I've been using it for a couple of months now - it works well enough for personal payments in Denmark, but extra fees on business cards makes it a poor fit for jugger club purchases, and their currency exchange fees make it less desirable for travel purchases.

still looking for

I haven't found good alternatives for these use cases yet - so if you know of one, let me know!

• Github Copilot: I briefly played around with ollama, but without a beefy GPU on hand I'm limited in the size of model I can run - and the drop in quality is noticeable for the smallest models.
• Google Voice: if there's a relatively inexpensive VoIP / virtual phone number provider out there, let me know. In my case, I do need a US-based number for certain services that I use - one of the challenges of cross-border expat life.

closing remarks (whew!)

Some have even called for utilities like search engines to be considered public goods. This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds: computerised public library catalogue search has been around since the 70s. What if a bunch of municipal library systems cooperated to build a publicly funded search enging? Properly supported and promoted, this could be a powerful tool against disinformation, an excellent way to support local organisations, and a natural extension of existing digital catalogues.

The idea of choosing digital tools based on your values and ethics is definitely not mine. Digital sovereignty has been floated as a concept in the EU: digital services are part of the critical infrastructure of modern democracy, and having critical infrastructure be profoundly dependent on platforms subject to the whims of tech billionaires and mercurial presidents is an unwise strategy. Digital veganism is an approach to selecting technologies akin to veganism: you exclude tools and platforms that violate your personal ethics from your "digital diet". Digital mindfulness focuses more on the attentional and psychological factors of a world where persuasive technologies are everywhere, and how you can use both digital and non-digital techniques to regain control over your mind.

My preferred lens to think about this is digital agency. The technologies I choose to use should serve my goals, aspirations, and values - and not the other way around. If they stop doing that, I should be free to leave - and not locked in to a single platform.