Privacy and data sovereignty journey
02-11-2025

The journey to a Privacy richer life and digital independence can become overwhelming very easily. Someone like me, who tends to dive into things a bit obsessively, can easily get completely lost in it. Spoiler alert: that’s exactly what happened.

I've started with the simple goal to reduce my screen time, which turned into a full-blown adventure between Don Quixote and Indiana Jones: a quest for lost privacy.

I'm proud of how far I've come and how much I've learned in the past few months. But if I could go back, or help someone else take the same path, I'd probably do things differently. Let me be clear: I don't think my choices were the best possible. In fact, I would change many of them with the knowledge that I have now. But sharing helps to put things in perspective and gives different thoughts and new meanings. Also, I would love to hear your opinion or impressions.

The post will be published in two languages: one episode at a time in English (since translating takes me a while, and I'm not good at it), and as a single post in Italian. The content will be mostly the same.

The order follows more or less the steps I've taken along the way. I really didn't plan ahead (and that is a thing I would have done differently). As I went deeper in the rabbit hole, I came across all sorts of topics, some of which I explored more than others. There is no right or wrong order: that's just how my journey unfolded.

Where did this long (and probably never-ending) journey take me? Hope on board to find out!

Episode one: the break-up with Meta.

Getting rid of my social media accounts was the first step to gain back my digital independence. Faced with the depressing reality of my screen time, I could no longer pretend nothing was wrong.

It wasn't easy: in the past, I had tried to delete Instagram and TikTok...but after a few weeks, I always fell back into old habits.

And it’s not that spending hours on social media made me feel good — on the contrary, it left me with a sense of wasted time, a bad mood, and often even anger and frustration.

Life is already challenging, and defeating corporations that have as their primary goal to keep your attention hooked for as much time as possible...it's hard!

But this time, I was determined, no more scrolling and no more algorithms. Deleting the app and only using social media on a browser wasn't an option; for someone with stronger willpower, this might work, but for my neurodivergent brain, which craves "easy dopamine", it hadn't worked in the past. Repeating the same action while expecting a different result is not a smart move.

A picture of an old Siemens A35 , my first cellphone. This bad boy didn't try to stole my attention all the time. SMS was a true meditative experience...

The first to go was Tiktok: easy and painless.

Facebook had lost its appeal a while ago. There is nothing left from the Facebook of the early days. I remember how fun it was when it was all new and shiny. You could get in touch with so many people, and now it's just an advertisement company. I hadn't installed the app on my phone since 2023, the year I switched from Android to iPhone.

Instagram was harder: even though I hadn't posted anything in almost a year, I still used it often to contact people and organizations.

For a few weeks, I noticed a feeling of anxiety and loss – when I picked up my phone and had nothing to scroll through. It was like an automatic movement. When someone mentioned a new trend or meme, I felt a little left out. FOMO, I guess. But within a month, I just stopped thinking about it, and I was truly surprised by how much time I regained. Relearning how to be bored was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Now that I don't scroll and I have an empty moment, I just look at my surroundings. I daydream a lot, like I used to do when I was younger. I write notes in my little notebook. It's fun.

The hardest part was WhatsApp. Here in Italy, it's the default messaging app: it was hard to let it go, and I cannot deny that this affected my social life, because that would be a lie. Moreover, deleting years of chats with loved ones was almost painful: through WhatsApp media, I could relive the good moments we had shared. Deleting it was tough.

My family switched to Signal, and even some of my closest contacts did too, but I lost many others. Now, to reach me, people can use SMS (not private, I know, but I had to make it work for now), Signal, or email. Let's just say that when staying in touch with someone requires a little more "friction", you end up realizing who truly wants to hear from you and who was just using messages to pass the time – and the latter usually disappear.

I've become much more mindful about my social life and make a conscious effort to nurture connections: it takes energy and intention. After informing almost everyone in my contacts that I would be leaving the platform and doing a complete backup, I went to the settings and deleted my account.

From a messaging perspective, WhatsApp is secure: end-to-end encryption ensures that only the people in the chat can access the messages. The problem, however, lies in the vast amount of metadata the app collects on the device and the user: it’s alarming. (See WhatsApp vs. Signal: Which Messenger Is Better for Data Protection)

If I could go back, what would I do differently?

I’d do this part the same way, but perhaps I’d make sure I already had an alternative digital home in terms of email, a website, and the Fediverse before saying goodbye to all my contacts. And remember... backup is your best friend! If you're starting out, you can check out Reclaim your brain from the Guardian. They have a really nice wallpaper that tells you how many days you've spent on your screen based on your daily screen time – that helps a lot to put things in perspective. (And freak out a little.)

A great piece of advice I took from them: use a real alarm clock, not your phone. The phone is not allowed in the bedroom. Now I have a lovely Sony ICFC05IP from 2010, found on Vinted, and it works like a charm.

A very well-done site: The Opt Out Project, nice to read and very complete!

See you in the next episode!