# Yeeting Oligarch Tech (YOT)

Inspired by Dr. Molly Tov, I want to work harder on yeeting oligarch
technology. 

gemini://drmollytov.smol.pub/2025-05-10

This page serves as both a pledge and a semi-credible proof of work.
Semi-credible because you have to trust me that I actually yeeted the
service that I list here. But in general, I am a pretty trustworthy
guy.

I will have to start slowly, carefully considering each step, because
I have been using some of these services for decades. But I am
determined and I seriously detest some of the services attached to
them. I will also limit my efforts to web technology at first because
there you will find the most nasty companies.

# Yeetings

Not all of these are really corporate technologies in a strict sense.
Some of them are actually small companies. But (a) if they persist,
they are usually bought by Meta, Google or some other big corp in the
long run, (b) cram their previously good products with AI nonsense
without a way to deactivate that, or (c) are companies in what can
nowadays only be assumed as a hostile country to Europe (the USA).

- Google Mail - 
I didn't use GMail for anything meaningful for years now, but I now
deleted it completely and imported all mails into my Proton Mail
account. Calendar and contacts are in a self-hosted Baikal server now.

- 1Password - 
I replaced this by a self-hosted Vaultwarden. In my opinion, 1Password
charges a lot of money for a rather simple service (both me and my
wife used it) and Bitwarden works nicely on all our devices. 

- iCloud - 
I used iCloud mainly for photos and document synch. The photos part
got replaced by a self-hosted Immich and I use a Samba folder for
documents I need to share with my wife. For collaborative editing,
Proton Drive works quite well nowadays and my university offers an
Overleaf account for more serious writing.

- Notion - 
This used to be a good app for notes and was my brain for years now,
but they crammed AI into every last corner of that app. Now they
literally marked it as "where your teams and AI agents capture
knowledge, find answers, and automate projects". Yuck. This one got
replaced by a self-hosted Outline, which is pretty much Notion without
the bad stuff.

- Audible - 
I extracted my Audiobooks from Audible and now use Audiobookshelf for
listening to DRM-free files. I cancelled my account there and switched
to libro.fm, which I can only recommend to everyone interested in
buying audiobooks. They support local book stores. Also, and I cannot
stress this enough, use public library apps (Libby, etc.)! Getting a
library card is almost free and with the apps, you can listen to many
audiobooks without paying anything but your membership. In my place,
that's 10€ per year. Sure, they don't have the newest stuff, but a lot
of interesting choices.

- Netflix - 
This one I just cancelled. We didn't use it much anyway. 

- Apple -
My iPhone got replaced by a Fairphone 6. I am looking into alternatives
to my MacBook and I think it will be a ThinkPad with one of the newer
Linux versions.

To be continued…