· Consumer Review · 4 min read
Saying Goodbye to Rightwing Tech
With the prevelence of fascism in the United States, it's a good time to reconsider the tools we use on the day-to-day.

I Have Been a Busy, Busy Bee
Lately, the news can’t keep up with the malarkey happening within the government of the the United States. Access to data has become the new currency and techbros are racing at the opportunity to exploit all of us.
So, how can I resist? The most obvious answer to take back control of your data. I know we hate homework, but you should probably do your due diligence and read all of the terms of service that you agreed to on basically every internet service that you use.
Moving Forward
I took several personal steps to safeguard my privacy: Firstly, I deleted all of my Meta accounts (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) as well as X in favor of BlueSky and Mastodon. The differences in services are that Mastodon and BlueSky do not centrally maintain all of our data. In short, we are responsible for our own data and the protocols of the aforementioned services handle the moderation without some anonymous techbro saying what stays and what goes.
Meta Was Shit Before The Election
I’m no stranger to the moderation team at Facebook. My account was tagged on several occasions for so-called “Hate Speech against white people and men”. The whole situation is laughable for anyone who’s read any Social Sciences book ever, but I digress. Computer Science taught me that using a remote server is like boarding a vessel on the ocean. If I don’t want to be subject to the rules of the vessel, I’d best not step foot on the boat to begin with.
I Never Really Warmed Up To Twitter
Sure, I had an account, but I wasn’t really active. As soon as Elon Musk started making a fool of himself during the purchasing and rebranding of Twitter, I knew there was no room for good faith participation in a digital coup.
Liberating my Site From the Grip of Github and AWS
My site was built using Continuous Integration and Deployment, and the toolchain at the time was Github to Netlify. Github is owned by Microsoft and Netlify relies on AWS for cloud services. I wanted to break free from that particular dynamic to maintain complete control over my site, but alas I still use Netlify to host site. Gitlab is currently hosting my source code, but I’m looking at self-hosting Gitea over on DigitalOcean until my dream server is built, and I am able to self-host (2025/2026 goal?). In the meantime, I’m in the market for cloud storage that integrates with Astro.
Don’t Give Google Your Good Graces
I’ve been using alternatives to Google services for well over a year now. DuckDuckGo makes a fine search engine, PeerTube offers self-hosting alternatives to Youtube, and Magic Earth is a fine alternative to Google Maps. There are options, and while some take a little elbow grease. It’s worth it to keep your network of friends safe in fascist times.
My Big Picture Plans
With the recent failing of my 15-year-old Desktop PC, I’m looking to build my own rack server to mainline to my ISP with the goal of hosting my own clients. With most of my tech getting smaller and portable over the years, I feel like a rack server would better suit my needs.
I’ve taken a lot for granted these past couple of decades as the internet has gone from popular face-rating apps like Face The Jury, The Dilly, Myspace, or Facebook, but my giant techie brain is looking for something more meaningful than judging other people based on digital appearance in honor of turning 40. Don’t make it that easy for them to track and monitor everyone by using one service. Spread out and get creative.
I intend to keep the share links on my site that refer to X and Facebook because I don’t mind my articles ending up on their servers. From the bottom of my heart: Fuck them.