FOREWORD

Are We in Paradise Yet?

 

Imagine your town has a public square. It isn’t perfect…there are no fancy fountains or ice cream stands, but it’s a pleasant place to hang out with your family and friends.

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The city sells the square to a few large companies, who rename the area “Paradise Square.” They upgrade the bathrooms, add athletic fields, and install the fancy fountain and ice cream stand the place was missing.

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For a while everything is great. The ice cream is so cheap! The toilets in the bathrooms have heated seats!

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Then things start to change. The businesses that own the square install retina scanners at the ice cream stand, bathrooms, fountain, and athletic field. Whenever you use one of these amenities, information ranging from your name and address to your physical attributes and income is sent goodness knows where. Not only that, but the ice cream stand starts selling knockoff treats.

 

You start noticing more and more that something is off. Before you do so much as sit on a bench, you have to sign a waiver that’s too long and complicated to actually read through. The company that installed the bench tells the ice cream stand what kind of pants you’re wearing, and the ice cream people use that detail to parse out what kind of ice cream you like best, so they can hawk it to you the next time you walk by. (Ooh, those Dolce & Gabbana cargo pants must mean you’ll spring for extra sprinkles!)

 

Each time you sign a waiver and sit down, you’re beset by dozens of skeezy salespeople who all seem to know your name. Sometimes they're already there when you approach the bench, and there are so many of them you can’t even sit down. You even start seeing them outside the park—on billboards lining the highway, at the movie theater, topping taxicabs.

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A few times, your wallet is stolen. You notice people hiding in the bushes with recording devices. For reasons unknown, they’re recording your conversations with your friends.

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The ice cream stand goes out of business. The park had required them to charge such low prices, the owner couldn't pay their employees sustainable wages. 

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Even worse, you have nowhere else to meet your friends and family. Thanks to all the cheap goods and formerly fine amenities, so many citizens flocked to Paradise Park that the other parks quietly closed down.

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As you sit on the rigged bench, hungry, mikes in your face, salespeople circling, you ask yourself: “Is this really Paradise?”

 

INTRODUCTION

The Power We Didn’t Know We Have

 

If you’re reading this, you’re probably intrigued by the idea of disengaging from Big Tech and the internet, but are not really clear on why you’d want to do it…and how to make it happen. Especially if you’re already busy, you know, living life!

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Read on to learn what inspired me to write this book, discover our secret power, and get some important caveats out of the way before we dive in.

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The Origins of This Book

 

When I started my career as a freelance writer in 1997, most of my business was conducted in the library and post office. Over time, however, the internet became my go-to for researching magazine article ideas, finding and contacting expert sources, researching markets, sending pitches and sales letters, and marketing my classes for writers.

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Even this early on, I was uncomfortable with the ubiquity of ads and how they seemed to follow you wherever you went. In 2000, I started The Bad Ads Weblog, where I highlighted instances of ads showing up where they shouldn’t be: inside the holes on a golf course, on urinal cakes, in schools. (See it here in the Internet Archive!) The website garnered some attention, but I shut it down when I became too overwhelmed with paying work to keep it up.

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The spirit of BadAds lived on

 

As an entrepreneur online, I tried so hard to work within the system that had been set up for us. I joined every social platform that popped up, took marketing gurus’ advice to heart, and subscribed to the whole “rise and grind” mentality.

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But the spirit of the Bad Ads Weblog always lived in me:

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• I was an active member of SPAM-L, a listserv of mostly software types who parsed out the headers of spam emails to report the senders to their Internet Service Providers.

• I went to a conference for online business owners, and felt like a total weirdo when I raised my hand in front of the fawning audience and asked the internet-famous presenter, “You brag about being available to answer questions from clients at 4 am. How is that…scalable?”

• When a business coach I’d hired asked what style of business owner I wanted to be, I answered, “I want to just do good work and have people who need it, buy it. Is that so wrong?”

• A friend and I started Renegade Writer Press, which published books for freelancers about how to make a good living by breaking rules.

• I stopped offering mailing list sign-up incentives and chopped our list from 10,000 lurkers to 800 readers. Why pay to reach people who didn’t care?

 

I despised having to keep up with the ever-changing whims of social media, internet marketing gurus, and Google-pleasing content formats in order to stay afloat. (Micro content! No, longform content!)

 

Outside of business, I was tired of finding my personal information where it shouldn’t be, and having my private details compromised in data breach after data breach. I hated that marketing companies were privy to intimate details about my family, income, spending habits, hobbies, voting record, and real estate—which they used to sell me solutions to problems I never knew I had. I resented being forced to buy from megacorps because the products I needed were no longer available anywhere else.

 

Even more, I hated the idea that my content, labor, dollars, data, and attention were feeding these companies and helping them grow more powerful.

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Finally, I couldn’t remember what it felt like to move through the world without a sense of being constantly watched—without worrying, for example, that an unfortunate slip would be caught on someone’s doorcam and end up on social media. Yet I experienced the irresistible pull to check in online all day long, lest I miss the chance to attract attention.

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Reclaiming our power

 

But what could I do about it? I started researching and reading about surveillance capitalism, monopolies and monopsonies, chokepoint capitalism, the decline of common spaces, and other relevant topics. It was disheartening to get to the end of a book only to learn that the solutions were always structural…because structural problems require structural solutions.

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I get it. We clearly need to push for better privacy legislation and stronger antitrust laws. But I didn’t read all those books and do all that research because I wanted to learn what other people could do about the problem. I wanted to know what I—a middle-class, middle-aged lady who doesn’t like politics, protesting, or public speaking—could do about it.

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Not to mention, it took 40+ years to get into this mess. Even if we work full-speed ahead to undo it, we will have to live under this system for many years. What can we regular humans do to protect ourselves until all the right societal changes finally kick in?

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Here’s the great news: We individuals do have some power we can wield using the time and resources we have right now. That power is in:

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• Our data

• Our content

• Our labor

• Our participation

• Our attention

• Our dollars

• Our permission

 

These are the lifeblood of the businesses destroying the internet, and we can all withdraw at least some of them to some extent. We can subvert the system in small ways. We can refuse to be profiled, pigeonholed, pinned down.

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We can disengage.

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This is why, in the spring of 2023, I embarked on an ambitious project: I wanted to drastically reduce the amount of time I spent online, shrink my digital footprint, and reclaim the sources of power I listed above.

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The purpose of this guide is to share what I discovered on this journey, in case it might help others the way it helped me. There are no from affiliate links in the guide, and it’s free. I don’t track who downloads the guide. Please share it!

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What You’ll Learn in This Guide

 

Disengage offers my experiences and advice in the following areas.

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PART 1: Why Disengage?

Here, I quickly discuss the concepts of surveillance capitalism, chokepoint surveillance, and the exploitation of our common spaces. You’ll also discover the side benefits to opting out of Big Tech, and get a reality check on how much of our power we can reasonably reclaim.

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PART 2: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Data

Here, we’ll tackle how to control your online accounts, secure your phone and email, remove unwanted photos and personal information from the internet, get your details removed from data broker lists, and much more.

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PART 3: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Home

You’ll keep strangers from peeking into your home by hiding your home address, removing interior and exterior photos of your home from real estate sites and street view apps, and keeping smart home products from tracking and sharing your (very) private data.

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PART 4: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Content

Did you know that your unpaid content is the very backbone of Big Tech? You’ll learn how to rein in content you’ve already posted, how to quit social media, and how to make your content labor work for you…plus how to keep your data secure on social media if you don't want to (or can’t) quit.

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PART 5: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Attention

All day long, we’re pulled in different directions by the whims of the internet and the hypercapitalist companies that have taken it over. This section will share advice on how to annihilate ads (pop ups, video ads, and the rest), as well as ideas for ditching the most distracting gadget ever created: your smartphone.

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PART 6: Disengage By…Quitting The Big 4

Hopefully, the previous sections prepared you for the biggest challenge: kicking Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft to the curb. This section includes alternatives for the most popular products provided by these companies.

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PART 7: Live Your Life

Here, I offer encouragement as you continue your journey, more ideas on topics to pursue, and appreciation that you took the time to read—and hopefully take action on—this book. 

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FURTHER READING

These are the books and websites I read as I researched this book. Since I could barely scratch the surface in this short guide, I hope you’ll delve into these amazing resources.

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At the end of this text version of Disengage, you'll find a long list of sources I used to inform this guide. The PDF has much nicer footnotes. :)

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The Requisite Caveats

 

This guide isn’t meant to be the final word in disengaging. If you feel you’re in danger of any kind—for example, you’re being stalked, in an abusive relationship, or being doxed—you’ll likely need stronger methods than the ones I outline here. While these guidelines can help increase your privacy, they’re mainly meant to improve your lifestyle and to fight back against surveillance capitalism (which we’ll talk about later in this guide).

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While I did my best to cover as much ground as I could, I can’t possibly include every single detail I uncovered in my research. For example, Google tracks us in so many ways, it would take another book to describe them and offer instructions on how to revoke access for every single case.

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Why are you dissing my local grocery store?

 

You’ll notice that the content in this guide ranges beyond the internet at times. Why am I covering direct mail, smart products, and store loyalty programs? It’s because I’m attempting to choke off the flow of data traveling from online to offline and vice versa. The less of your personal data of any kind flying around the world, the less there is to fall into the hands of those who would abuse it.

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How technical is this going to get?

 

I consider myself a “medium techie” person; I’ve been on the internet since the early 1990s, and built my first website in 1997 using an HTML guide I found in a phone booth. Having run a business that required me to be online most of the time, I’ve picked up strong skills in some areas. I’ve even created a Reddit bot!

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At the same time, I don’t want to have to get a Ph.D. to minimize my online footprint, increase my privacy, and subvert Big Tech. So I generally use—and recommend—solutions that don’t require a lot of technical knowledge.

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If I happen to know about, or have used, a more tech-heavy solution for some of the issues in this guide—like syndicating your website content to social media, installing a privacy-forward operating system on your phone, or using emulators to play video games—I’ll mention them and offer outside resources where appropriate, but I won’t go into too much detail. If you’re interested in any of these tactics, please look up how to implement them.

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A note on privilege

 

I’m in the very fortunate position of having the time to spend plugging away at this endeavor, and the available cash for products and services—within reason, of course—that take care of some of the related tasks for me. I also have no disabilities or medical situations requiring online solutions, and don’t belong to a marginalized group that can find support only in online communities.

As you’ll see throughout this guide, you can change up this process as needed to make it work for your particular situation. For example:

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• All of the products I recommend are free or have free alternatives.

• You decide how much time you want to put into this project.

• You get to pick and choose whatever tactics make the most sense for you.

• It’s up to you how strict or lenient you want to be in various areas to account for your job, schooling, family situation, medical and financial needs, and so on.

 

Even a small amount of effort or resources can make a difference; for example, installing a free anti-tracker extension, changing your phone settings, getting a “burner” email address, or switching your book buying from Amazon to independent online booksellers will offer some benefit with little time and money spent.

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Even better, most of the effort required is front-loaded. Once you get your chosen systems set up, they should run as smoothly for you as you old ones (or even more smoothly!). For example, it takes a good amount of thought and effort to switch from Apple Music to SoundCloud, or to change your default browser and search engine—but once you do it, you won’t have to think about it again.

 

PART 1

WHY DISENGAGE?

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The biggest threats we’re fighting against in this guide are surveillance capitalism, chokepoint capitalism, and the exploitation of our common spaces; you may have also heard of concepts like Big Data, Big Tech, and the attention economy, all of which play a role here. After reading about these systems, you may decide that you no longer want to participate in them.

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CHAPTER 1

WHAT WE’RE FIGHTING AGAINST

 

Much of the villainy we’re going to discuss is perpetrated by just a handful of massive internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon. While I will give a brief overview of the ills created by each one, I won’t get into lengthy critiques of them in this book, since the resources I cite have already done it so thoroughly.

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Surveillance Capitalism in Under 200 Words

 

Here’s how Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, describes surveillance capitalism in the Harvard Gazette:

[It’s the] unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. These data are then computed and packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral futures markets—business customers with a commercial interest in knowing what we will do now, soon, and later.

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In other words, businesses track us and collect our data in order to build psychological profiles they can use to predict what we’ll do or think...so they can sell us stuff we didn’t know we needed. Zuboff points out that surveillance capitalism is like a one-way mirror, where the companies know everything about us, yet we’re not privy to how they track, use, share, and sell our personal information.

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Chokepoint Capitalism in Under 200 Words

 

To put it simply, chokepoint capitalism is when a business inserts itself between buyers and producers, extracting money without adding any value like a troll on a bridge.

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Consider Apple: They not only control which apps you’re allowed to install on a phone you bought and own, they also claim a hefty portion of the fees you pay to the app producers. Or Amazon: You buy their e-reader, but can only use it to read e-books you purchase from Amazon. Once you do that, you’re locked in; the price of switching to another e-reader is too high because your entire library of books is now on your Kindle.

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This is a very, very simplified description. The history and methods of chokepoint capitalism are fascinating, including how businesses buy up competitors, and even parts of their own supply chain, to create inescapable monopolies that affect smaller businesses, workers, and creators. I highly recommend reading Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, as well as subscribing to Doctorow’s ad-free, non-tracking newsletter.

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The Exploitation of Our Common Spaces in Under 200 Words

 

 

The hypercapitalist businesses we’re railing against here also exploit the places we go to socialize and connect. In other words, they’ve created a monopoly over how we fulfill some of our most basic human needs.

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So many of our friends and loved ones are on Facebook, for example, to leave it means we may have to sever some of those relationships. This is by design. We’re forced to check in frequently, have our conversations on the platform, and share our news there—giving Facebook more and more of our most intimate data.

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Surveillance capitalism, chokepoint capitalism, the exploitation and mining of our personal spaces and relationships: We are nurturing the businesses to blame for these societal ills by constantly feeding them with everything they need to thrive.

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CHAPTER 2

HOW DO WE RECLAIM THE INTERNET BY FLEEING IT?

 

How can I call it taking back the internet when I’m recommending we disengage from it?

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It’s because we are the freaking internet.

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When we leave, we take everything with us: our data, our content, our attention, our money. Without all this, the exploitative businesses that have taken over the internet can’t survive. In other words, when bigger players are pushing you around the court, you take your ball and leave. When you go off and play with nicer people, the bullies are left with nothing.

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The Side Benefits to Disengaging

 

Maybe it’s wishful thinking to believe we can do enough damage to make these megacorporations change their invasive and exploitative practices. But even if we lose this battle, we can still win the war by claiming important side benefits.

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Side Benefit #1: We protect ourselves against identity theft

 

The more places storing your data, the more opportunities there are for that data to fall into the wrong hands. It seems like every month or so, I get an email from some company I did business with a decade ago letting me know their databases were breached, exposing my personal information to bad actors.

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Cory Doctorow writes in Medium:

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Like spies, online fraudsters are totally dependent on companies over-collecting and over-retaining our data. Multiple services have suffered breaches that exposed names, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, sexual tastes, school grades, work performance, brushes with the criminal justice system, family details, genetic information, fingerprints and other biometrics, reading habits, search histories, literary tastes, pseudonymous identities, and other sensitive information. Attackers can merge data from these different breaches to build up extremely detailed dossiers on random subjects and then use different parts of the data for different criminal purposes. 

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So it makes sense that the less data of yours is available, the less likely criminals will be able to use it against you.

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Side Benefit #2: We become harder to find

 

As I mentioned earlier, this guide isn’t meant to help readers evade stalkers or protect themselves from doxers. However, making yourself harder to find online can help dissuade bad guys from targeting you. Someone who’s mildly pissed off at you, for example, may not bother to send you anonymous threats if it takes too much effort to find your phone number, email address, or home address.

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Side Benefit #3: We protect our mental health

 

We’ve all seen the news about how social media contributes to anxiety and depression, how being online too much can affect our sleep, and how email, texting, smartphones, and social media are designed to be as addictive as possible. The sounds, the colors, the three dots when someone is typing out a reply to our text, the little vibration when we download an app! How can we not remain glued to our devices? 

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Then there’s our tendency to think social media represents the real world, and to compare ourselves to what we see in highly staged posts. (Which is as it’s meant to be.) We see photos of a well-groomed mom with a perfectly dressed and clean baby and wonder what’s wrong with us that our lives don’t look like that. We see images of an incredible family vacation and feel like a failure because our toddler cries at Disney. We watch a video by a fitness influencer who tells us he looks the way he does because he lives on protein shakes, and feel like losers because we don’t have the strength of will to follow his “simple health plan.”

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What we don’t see:

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• The pile of dirty clothes the mom shoved into a corner before the shoot.

• The three hours she spent on her hair and makeup.

• The baby’s diaper blow-out ten minutes earlier.

• The family fights on the sweaty vacation.

• The hefty check the family received from sponsors of that vacation.

• That the fitness influencer straight-up lies about his eating habits because he's sponsored by a protein shake company...and also that he works out six hours per day and takes steroids.

 

That’s why, for some of us, disengaging can be an exercise in protecting our own mental health.

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Side Benefit #4: We do better work

 

Our jobs, businesses, and schooling are important to us, and the internet is making these things harder—not easier as we were once promised—because it puts a crimp in our ability to focus and be creative. According to a Microsoft survey:

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We’re all carrying digital debt: the inflow of data, emails, meetings, and notifications has outpaced humans’ ability to process it all. And the pace of work is only intensifying. Everything feels important, so we spend our workdays trying to get out of the red. Nearly 2 in 3 people (64%) say they struggle with having the time and energy to do their job—and those people are 3.5x more likely to also struggle with innovation and strategic thinking.

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Of course, those of us who are in careers, businesses, or school often aren’t in a position to simply drop off the internet. But we can scale back enough to regain the crucial life and business skills we’ve lost.

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Side Benefit #5: We live our lives through our own eyes

 

So much of online life is about seeking validation from others. After all, is there anyone alive who posts their thoughts, images, or personal details on the internet and doesn’t care about how many likes or comments they get?

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This causes us to live life through the lens of a camera—even if it’s only a mental camera. When I was full-on bound by the internet, no matter what I did, I would unconsciously start to put together a social media post about it in my mind. How can I make this thought sound more insightful? What hashtags should I use? How should I phrase the post? How should I frame the photo?

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Once I scaled back, I started being able to enjoy my life for myself. I can now watch a sporting event, see a movie, read a book, or go on vacation without feeling the need to share it with the world. I can have a brilliant idea or laugh at a joke I heard and keep it to myself. 

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If I have a thought I really, really want to share, I put it up on my own website and trust if anyone is interested, they’ll find it.

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Side Benefit #6: We rebuild our decision-making skills

 

Sometimes we rely on the hive mind of the internet so much, we forget what we want. When I was on Instagram, Reddit, and various online forums, my first instinct when I couldn’t figure something out was to head to one of these sites to ask other members for their input. Do the colors in this painting make sense? Would it be stupid to pay off a debt faster instead of investing the money? Are these jeans age-appropriate? The alternative was to ask Google, and get answers from a company with a stake in the answer. 

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And I got answers aplenty—no thought required on my part. But were the choices really mine when I crowdsourced them?

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The system was built this way. When I wrote an article for a client about voice search, my expert source mentioned that businesses were noticing that many searches started with “Should I…?” My source rejoiced over people turning to faceless corporations to help make life-altering decisions—and offered up ways to take advantage of this fact by providing answers promoting a product or service.

 

When I started to disengage, I had to rely on my own instincts, tastes, and preferences. Which is actually a good thing, because these are my possessions, my money, my clothing. I’m allowed to do whatever I want. I can paint in whatever colors are pleasing to my eye because I’m hanging the paintings in my own house. I can invest my money in whatever way makes sense to me, even if it’s not approved by a bank or investment firm.

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Now if I have a question or problem, I research it on my own, take my own preferences into account, and make my own decision. Did you know you can do that? I didn’t, because the internet makes it so easy to ask for advice and validation, my decision-making muscles had withered into nothingness.

Opting out of the internet—to whatever extent you want to do it—helps you relearn your own likes, dislikes, needs, and wants so you can make decisions that work for you.

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Side Benefit #7: We stop supplying free labor to for-profit businesses

 

 

Did you know you’re a content producer? Everything you post online is used by social media companies, retailers, publishers, travel agencies, supplement sellers, and other businesses to gain legitimacy, engagement, and, ultimately, more eyeballs on whatever it is they’re trying to sell. Not to mention, they use that content to gather data from you and from everyone who engages with it.

 

When you post an inflammatory remark on Twitter—sorry, I just can’t call it X—the firestorm of outrage benefits the platform and its advertisers, while impoverishing you and your followers. The comment you post on a news story brings more readers to the page, partly because Google’s search algorithm rewards pages with more content and more frequent updates.

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These businesses need your content in order to survive…and you don’t even get paid for it! In Chapter 16: Say Sayonara To Social Media, we’ll talk about alternative homes for content for those of us who make a living by building audiences and selling our products and services online.

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Side Benefit #8: We save money

 

It’s true! Even if you choose to purchase tools to help you disengage, you’ll make up for whatever you spend by:

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• Learning to think about a purchase before running to Amazon the instant you decide you need something.

• Freeing yourself of your Amazon Prime subscription, encouraging you to look for lower prices elsewhere. (As you’ll learn later in this guide, Amazon actually does not prioritize good deals.)

• Purchasing cheaper alternatives to overpriced smartphones.

• Seeing fewer ads enticing you to shop, shop, shop.

• Earning more in your business because you aren't spending your time on ineffective social media marketing.

• Buying fewer apps (which also saves you a bundle on in-app purchases).

• Turning to free, open source software in place of some of your subscription-based software.

 

Who knew disengaging could put more dollars into your pocket?

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Side Benefit #9: We inspire others…and ourselves

 

When you make choices different from what most others are doing, it stands out. And people want to know about it! For example, many people have asked me about my weird-looking non-smart phone. Even my optometrist asked about it.

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This gives me the opportunity to say, “I felt like I was getting addicted to my iPhone. So I switched to a non-smart phone as an experiment, and feel like my attention has improved. I don’t even miss it anymore.” People usually respond by sharing their own experiences with divided attention, constant interruptions, and feeling tracked. Maybe some of them will wind up, if not ditching their smartphone altogether, at least deleting the most distracting apps or turning on the privacy controls.

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So when someone asks you about your strange-looking email address or why you don’t shop on Amazon, it’s an opportunity to—quickly, non-judgmentally, and non-pedantically—explain your choice and hope it gets them to think differently about these things.

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On top of that, each action you take to withdraw your attention, data, content, and dollars from Big Tech requires a little effort, which strengthens your will to take even bigger actions in the future.

 

CHAPTER 3

GIANTS IN THE DARK

 

Maybe you want to scale back a little, or maybe you want to break up with the internet and never look back. Consider this guide an idea book; it’s a list of strategies you can pick and choose from depending on your wants, needs, resources, and abilities. 

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However, we do need to consider the forces working against our desire to disengage:

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Force #1: The Enemy Is Overpowered

 

Thousands and thousands of smart people are working hard to gather our data, make sense of it, and use it for their own gain. They’re deploying powerful software and using every tech tool at their disposal to make this happen…while we’re too busy working, caring for our families, or generally living our lives to fight back with the same intensity.

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First of all, these businesses have taken over the internet in a way that makes them hard to evade. “Amazon, Google, and Meta (formerly Facebook) have become pillars of the modern internet infrastructure, and are impossible to completely avoid,” according to PCMag. “Even if you deleted all your accounts and never used them again, they'd still probably be able to harvest data on you.” For example, Amazon Web Services hosts 6% of the sites on the web—50 million live sites, more than any other web hosting service. (Google is in second place.) Chances are, you will be on an Amazon-hosted site today.

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Second, these same companies have engineered their products to become essential tools for connecting with other people. They then exploit our personal relationships to encourage us to share, like, post, and comment—in other words, to generate content that produces more and more data about us they can capture and use in a never-ending cycle. Meanwhile, they work to make their products as addictive as possible, literally using the science of addiction to keep us glued to our screens, so they can keep pumping us for data.

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These data capitalists then combine the data they harvest directly with data they get from third parties to form a complete profile of us as individuals. And we can’t stop it! Just check out this gem of a clause from the privacy policy of a school yearbook company, of all things:

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Please note that we may combine information that we collect from you and about you (including automatically-collected information) with information we obtain about you from our affiliates and/or non-affiliated third parties, and use such combined information in accordance with this Policy.

 

Dare so much as to buy a yearbook and they’ve got you. So, yeah…we’re fighting against giants in the dark.

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Force #2: We Have to Use the Internet for Routine Tasks

 

It’s now nearly impossible to do banking, buy concert tickets, plan a trip, pay bills, gather home repair quotes, or take care of many other common tasks without going online.

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Force #3: Even When We’re Offline, We’re Online

 

Surveillance capitalists don’t track you only when you’re sitting at your laptop or scrolling on your phone. When you buy running shoes from an athletic store, for example, the transaction—including what you bought, how you paid, and your demographic details—ends up in a database somewhere in the cloud. When you visit your doctor, the details of the appointment are, you guessed it, logged into an online database.

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Force #4: It’s Like Trying to Hold Back the Tide

 

Even if you were to wipe the slate clean, it would fill up again before you managed to shut your laptop. For example, say you somehow manage to magically clear all your data off the internet…and then your kid joins a sports team. The team might require parents to communicate via an app, upload medical forms to a portal, and use yet another platform to volunteer at the concession stand. Suddenly, three more businesses have your info, not to mention all the third-parties they share your info with.

 

Or maybe you get a job that requires everyone to have accounts on Slack and Zoom. And they publish personal details in your staff bio online. And you have to sign up for a special system to receive your paycheck via ACH. And your boss expects you to extol the company on LinkedIn. Boom! Your data is now in four more places online.

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Force #5: We Never Know If Our Efforts Are Working

 

One of the hallmarks of surveillance capitalism is that the businesses know what data they’re collecting from us, who they’re sharing it with, and how they’re using it—but we are kept in the dark.

 

This means you can, say, ask YouTube to stop tracking your viewing history, and they’ll say they’ve stopped. But you’ll never really know if it’s true, or what other types of tracking they may be doing that you don’t have control over.

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Force #6: Many of Us Make a Living by Being Visible

 

Finally, if you’re a public figure or business owner of any kind, you’ll probably never be able to disengage altogether. If you’re a member of the school board, a bakery owner, or a stand-up comedian, some details about you will appear on review sites, booking sites, order sites, and even your state business authority’s website…at least if you want to keep your job! 

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In other words, it’s difficult to stay offline if your livelihood depends on your being visible online. I spent over two decades authoring books, selling courses, and writing for magazines both print and online. I marketed on social media, did interviews with the press, joined business and writing groups online, was a guest on podcasts, and had my face and name on a screen in Times Square. I can never get all the toothpaste back in the tube now that I want to scale back.

 

All that said, disengaging as much as we can is still a worthwhile endeavor. Small efforts, when compounded by thousands or millions of people, add up—and we still reap benefits from anything we manage to accomplish toward this goal.