excipiō (present infinitive excipere, perfect active excēpī, supine exceptum); third conjugation iō-variant

  1. to take out, extract, pull out
  2. to except, exempt from, exclude
  3. to rescue, release
  4. to host, accommodate, welcome

Let me start by establishing some ethos here, which I think might be important: I deleted my Instagram account in 2013; my Facebook account went in 2015 (well, technically only 2016 because it turns out that I had only “deactivated” it at first, but oh well); I don’t use Spotify, Netflix, or any other streaming service; my phone, even though it’s Android, has Google Play Services disabled for 95% of the time; I run my own e-mail server, self-host my blog, don’t even use Google (or an AI) for searching anymore. Oh, and even though I’ve mentioned this in the about page, I’ve used Linux full-time on my desktop and servers for pretty much 20 years at this point - I’ve an allergic reaction to Windows.

Now, I think this was an important introduction for you to understand that I do have a lot of personal interest and have committed a lot of my own time to investigate and implement solutions that try and ameliorate the problem at hand, namely: that we’ve been losing more and more autonomy in our relationship with the digital and online world. I remember how Windows XP was lambasted when it came out, and now is remembered fondly because of what came after it; there are many such cases. It’s now normal to call this process enshitification, but I think it’s worse than that. It’s not only that products have decreased in quality, but that they’ve become adversarial, and went from at least feigning to deliver at least some advantage straight into evil territory: you’ll use this because you have no other alternative.

The default effect is an especially strong force in tech, and when it’s intertwined with platforms that don’t interoperate and make their darned best to keep you locked in (not in the sense of concentrated, but rather a prisoner), it’s relatively normal that they’re bound to devolve into what we’re seeing now: full of AI slop, with ads being more prominent than connections, outrage and negative engagement more important than well being, and let us not get started how they know that they’re harming people and still choose to proceed anyway.

So, what now? Good question, and I don’t necessarily have an answer to this. But let’s face it: the easy answer is to turn into an hermit, but this isn’t a course of action that’s available to the vast majority of the population. But this doesn’t mean that it’s the only solution, just that it is bound to take some effort from our part. And, honestly, if I had to start this journey now, it would be quite the daunting experience. I was lucky that I started it some 20 years ago, when the surface of attack was much smaller, and built from that. Unfortunately for you, this isn’t the case anymore.

This is where I think this project fits. I love helping people, and I do think that helping people to break free from big tech to be a worthy goal. This is the main motivation here. Will you care to join? Then let’s talk! Start by scheduling a free call with me!