Have you ever experienced something that you knew intuitively but it took a while for you to actually “learn” it?

Something I learned in 2024 was that I use the Internet almost completely differently from a lot of people. In the last couple of decades, we’ve become reliant on services provided for free on the Internet. Over time, many of these services follow an unfortunate pattern known as “enshittification”, which, in short, goes like this: service starts up, attracts a lot of users with its usefulness, then eventually realizes it needs to make money. This income usually comes in the form of selling ads. On the surface, this seems like a fair bargain, but an underlying change that goes unnoticed is that now the ad buyers are the actual customers - not the users. This gives a financial incentive to the service to improve things for advertisers, not the users. Over time, the service itself becomes worse and worse as the way of making income is separated from the actual service. Pick any popular web service - Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc - they’ve all followed this pattern.

“But I don’t care about ads” many people say. “I have nothing to hide, so privacy isn’t important” it goes. But once you realize the Internet doesn’t have to be that way, things start to look a little different. How many times have you seen an ad online and swear your phone is listening to you? It isn’t - but combining information from numerous services enables these highly targeted marketing initiatives. All of these little paper cuts add up over time, but there are things we can do to improve our experience.

Here’s how I use the Internet:

Reading, News, Media

Exhibit A of enshittification by Google is the beloved but defunct Google Reader. This was a service that allowed you to follow feeds from blogs, websites, and other online sources easily. It was hard to monetize, so Google killed the product entirely, much to the dismay of many of its users. The good news is that others came in with successor products. I use one called Feedbin, and it costs $5/month. Rather than scroll endlessly through Facebook’s algorithm-generated feed for interesting links, I’ve setup Feedbin to follow feeds from websites that publish news and information I’m interested in. It tracks what I’ve read and what I haven’t to save my spot and I can easily bookmark and share articles. I follow blogs, news sites, and even some email newsletters easily in Feedbin. I have feeds setup for Disney fan sites, tech news, travel and “points” sites, local news sites, and even a few YouTube channels.

Search

Now bear with me for a second, because I’m about to suggest you try something pretty unheard of. Google is so embedded in our culture that “Googling” is a verb used to mean “to search the Internet”. And Google certainly provides a lot of value, but their search product is so bogged down with sponsored links and AI-generated junk content that finding what we need is not nearly as fast as it used to be.

For those old enough to remember the card catalog at a library, this is like every 5th card in each drawer being an advertisement.

If we take sponsorships, ads, and other junk out, what would a modern search engine look like? What features could be developed if users are the customers, and not the sponsors? A startup called Kagi is working on this with features to make searching fun and quick again such as:

  • the ability to focus your search on different types of websites - for example, to search forums or discussion boards, or on sites by independent creators rather than large media firms

  • adjust the search to favor certain sites or completely block others

  • automatically compiling all of those “listicle” sites that show “Top 10 ” into a short, easily bypassed list

The whole thing is designed to make searching fast - find what you need and quickly move on.

Here’s the tricky part though. Building and running all that is expensive. Rather than sponsorships, Kagi makes money the old fashioned way: they charge for use of their service. There are a few plans; they start at $5/month. If Kagi wants to keep making money, they need to make their service really good for their end users - and it is hard to compete with the “free” service from Google. But this means their needs and ours as users - a good, fast, private search engine - are aligned. Give it a try for a month, setup their extension to make it your default browser, and you’ll start to see how being bombarded with sponsored search ads was wearing you down.

Messaging

Thanks for sticking with me so far with the thought of paying directly for services. Here’s a free one: Signal. Signal is a messaging service like texting, WhatsApp, Messenger, etc. “But wait, I thought you said free services eventually become crappy when they have to make money?!?”. This is true - of commercial services. Signal, however, is owned and managed by a non-profit organization, and is funded by donations. As a result, they are very focused on privacy and security - all messages are completely encrypted; no one at Signal has any way of seeing your messages, your contacts, or who you communicate with. And because of their non-profit status - there are no advertisers who can glean that information either.

Security note: plain old text messaging, while convenient, has slightly less security than a postcard. Even the FBI is suggesting Americans stop using it. Signal is an easy, safe, and free alternative.

If you’ve read this far, it probably won’t surprise you that I pay for email, too. Sure, there are plenty of free email services, but hopefully by now you see the conflict there - email provides a huge amount of personal data and I’d rather it be managed by a company incented to serve me and not advertisers. I use Fastmail ($5/month).

Cleaning up

One really common annoyance is all of those cookie pop-up notices. A free browser plugin called Consent-o-Matic can store your cookie privacy preferences and then automatically accept the notices on many websites. Just one more paper cut that you shouldn’t have to deal with while getting things done online.

Aside from sometimes being obnoxious, many online ad platforms introduce security or privacy issues, take up bandwidth, and can slow down your browser. On Apple platforms, I use Wipr 2 to remove these annoyances. On other devices, uBlock Origin is a great free alternative that will speed up your browser and end the bombardment of ads while surfing.

Putting it all together

I started using each of these services over time, and I didn’t set out to specifically reject Google, Facebook, and other popular services entirely. They’ve revolutionized how we connect and find information, and they remain valuable tools for many people. Rather, it’s about recognizing that alternative models exist that better serve my (and maybe your) needs. The services mentioned here (Feedbin, Kagi, and Fastmail) total about $15 monthly - roughly the price of a streaming service subscription. While that might seem unnecessary when “free” alternatives exist, consider the real cost of those free services: your privacy, your time wading through ads, and your attention being sold to advertisers. By incorporating some services that answer directly to users rather than advertisers, you can build a cleaner, faster, and more enjoyable internet experience. The internet doesn’t have to be a single ecosystem dominated by ad-supported services - it can be a diverse landscape where you choose the tools that work best for you.