coryd.dev
Become worthless (to tech companies)
Tech companies and their executives have, broadly, moved to align themselves with investors and adopted a posture of, often, disdain or outright hostility towards their users and employees. If tech companies don't value you, why provide value to them? If they back political positions hostile to your interests, why not return that hostility?
I'm not arguing for boycotts, I know that people are bound to different platforms for different, compelling reasons. What I am arguing for is that, given the opportunity, you try and reduce the value they can extract from you. That's very often your data, but it can also be a direct financial relationship.
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Signing up for a service? Well, your birthday is January 1, 1970.
Your email address? Give them a throwaway or use a different alias for every service. Your name? Do they need it? Maybe it's James Smith. Or John Smith. Or Mary Smith. Or Patricia Smith. Phone number? 321 is a valid area code. Throw it and seven other digits in. Don't need the account long term? Delete it. Make all of your privacy settings as restrictive as possible. Turn off AI features. Opt out of everything that defaults to opt in.
Live in California? Request your personal data—you may not need it, but you do need them to waste their resources handling the request. Delete yourself from data brokers with the state's Delete Act platform.
Block their ads as best you can. Your cookie preferences are "Reject All", always. It's their responsibility to improve their product(s), it's not your responsibility to provide them with personal information that they claim will help them do so. Install ad-blockers for your friends and family and teach them how to use them. Block at the network level—Pi-hole, AdGuard Home, NextDNS—pick one.
Block their crawlers as best you can. Do you have to use or choose to use AI products? Why not use every single one of those tokens available to your subsidized subscription? Did your search engine build in a "free" AI product? Ask it as many useless questions as you'd like. Getting emails from AI agents? Why not chat with them and lead them on until they hit a billing wall? You can block their whole TLD when you get bored.
Cancel your streaming services. Buy music again. Get a library card and check out Blu-rays and DVDs. Maybe you rip them, maybe you don't. Buy ebooks from any vendor that doesn't apply DRM.
Use tech platforms based outside of the US. Self-hosting things? Use a provider outside of the US for that as well. Support indie developers. They're more responsive and charge a fair price for great software. Buy subscriptions on the company's website and don't let the app store get a cut.
Wait as long as you reasonably can between hardware upgrades. Run an open operating system (if you can—and not one developed by a fascist). Buy refurbished or used hardware. Repair what you can.
Do you have to use a big social platform? Click on all of the ads you see or click on some of them, but don't buy anything. Want it? Open your browser and buy it without the attribution from the app.
Subscribe to RSS feeds. Publish RSS feeds. Post on your site first and send links out to platforms.
See someone or a business using AI art or branding? Gently let them know that it looks like a caricature of a _Men's Health_ cover. Did you get an AI agent when you called a business or open a chat? Ask them about programming questions or chat them up—get those vendor costs up—and then ask for the person you wanted to talk to in the first place. Tell that person that the chatbot sucks.
Is your healthcare provider taking notes using AI? Opt out of that and explain why.
Opt out of arbitration (many terms of service let you do it via email or a letter within 30 days of signing up).
Use virtual cards if you can. Cancel any subscriptions you can. If they give you a retention offer, take it and then cancel as soon as it expires.
Don't sign in with Google or Apple or Facebook. They get data out of it and lock you into their platform.
Don't do unpaid labor for platforms. Was this helpful? Don't bother answering that. Skip the survey, reject the review request and don't rate anything.
Use the website, not the app. There's less telemetry, fewer permissions and no push notifications.
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Your worth to these companies is determined by what they can derive by exploiting you. Be as worthless as you can.
