Intro

Recently, I’ve been trying to remove algorithms From my life. Well, the ones that cause an addictive downward spiral So the corporations can show me more ads.

In recent years, the corporate world has moved towards infinite growth and appealing to shareholders instead of customers. This concept is referred to as Enshittification*. My hope is to remove many of these algorithms from my life as much as I can. So I can control what media I consume, not what Corporations want me to consume.

I watched a video on YouTube. That has completely inspired this post. Ironically, I found this video through the algorithm.

The first step, YouTube

My first step in removing algorithms is YouTube. It’s one of the algorithms I use most. Over the past few years, it has gotten quite good at recommending videos. Because I remember when I first started using YouTube 15 or so years ago, the algorithm was shit. You basically needed to find videos yourself. But now, there is absolutely no need to do that, the algorithm has gotten that good. But there are times when I’ve completely gotten burnt out on it. I’ve come up with a term called YouTube fatigue. Meaning, where you look at your recommendations and nothing looks interesting mostly from being on youtube for an extended period of time. But the point of this is to get rid of all that. So, I’ve set the bookmark on my browser to the subscriptions tab. This has changed a lot of things.

Life without the YouTube Algorithm

• It’s helped me clean up my subscriptions tab. I have a lot of subscriptions and there’s some I don’t want anymore, so I unsubscribed from a bunch of channels, and now I really like my subscription feed.
• I’ve used the search bar a lot more. I remember like 10 or even 15 years ago by this point. I used to use the search bar a lot. And it feels nice returning to that.

Music

One of the things I got rid of a long time ago was using streaming services to listen to music. I’ve actually been self-hosting my music service for a while. Recently I think I’ve wanted to take a different approach.

As of a few days ago, I bought a music player off of Amazon. It was like 30 bucks. So it doesn’t break the bank. I kind of wanted to try out if I would actually use a mp3 player. Mostly I just want a distraction free of listening to music. If this works out, and I use it a lot, I’ll probably upgrade to a better one at some point.

But one of the biggest challenges is going to be the music library. I already have like a thousand songs. But compared to streaming services, which have basically all the music ever created by man kind. My library looks quite small. Hopefully, I can change that by buying CDs and stuff from Bandcamp.

Even with that all said, I’m still using my local music library way more than any streaming service. But I would still like to expand my library.

Note-taking

In the video, the guy recommended buying a notebook, which I don’t see as a good idea for me because I really like taking my notes on my phone. Because I use dictation to basically write everything. I’m using it right now to write this blog post. But I also really like using the app Obsidian, which is also what I’m writing in right now. It’s a wonderful note-taking app. I’ve been using it semi-regularly for the past few months. I feel like there also might be a dedicated device I could buy for this too. Called the boox Palma. It is a phone sized e-reader with an e-ink display. So, honestly, it kind of blends the natural note-taking of a notebook With the e-ink display not emitting any light, I think would be quite pleasant on the eyes.

Conclusion

I’m not saying you should follow my footsteps, but you should really think about how much you use your phone, and how it’s impacting your life, and how these algorithms can, in a way, control us.

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