Incogni is a personal data removal service that automatically removes your information from data broker websites, significantly reducing your digital footprint. Anyone can get instant access to personal data online—Incogni makes sure it stays private.

I was curious and headed to their website, where you can enter your email address to test the service. The problem is that, according to their ToS and privacy policy, they collect email addresses this way so they can bug you with promotions and all that. I find this against their value proposition and it weakens their credibility. People willing to pay for such a service are probably protective of their email address, and yet, this is the first thing Incogni collects. If they offered a way to test the service, albeit in a limited way, while saying they don’t collect email addresses to perform these tests, it would be quite another matter, and I would be more willing to test and maybe even subscribe! But no. Bummer. I’ll pass.

“Most native apps collect far more data than their website equivalents ever could. They request permissions to hardware, sensors, and background processes that browsers deliberately restrict. The third-party software embedded in these apps frequently transmits your location, device identifiers, and behavioral data to third parties before you even see a consent prompt. This data is in tandem bought, sold, and aggregated by brokers. It has been used to out individuals, track immigrants, and enable prosecution over reproductive healthcare.”

While this is true, refusing to use native apps is surprising advice. One might think the App Store submission process that every developer is subject to prevents bad actors, but it doesn’t. Coupled with the developer’s ordeal with the App Store review process, some developers are suggesting focusing development efforts on web applications instead. And finally, vibe coding might be another factor driving a move toward web application development. Yet the web is a jungle where user tracking is a standard “feature” that mines the browsing experience with bloated web pages that sell you ads and lead you to forced engagement.

I wondered if installing the X app would make the experience more tolerable. The login / signin screen scared the shit out of me when I started remembering all the bad things about social networks, Musk, etc. but then I started thinking that even if things like the dark web is bad, some people still need to visit this place for investigation. Was I investigating this morning when opening up X? I certainly was looking to understand something.

Having to create a new X account, then being exposed to ads, tracking, etc. killed my desire to understand. It’s ok not to understand everything. I’m a happier ignorant.

As an experiment and out of curiosity, I provided the context to Claude AI and sought advice. Overall, the experience was very insightful. My issue isn’t unique and is likely common and well-documented in management literature. After this session with Claude AI, I felt uplifted and more prepared to confront today’s challenges. It’s not easy, and the project may be full of pitfalls and surprises, but I believe it will help me grow.

I’m wary of one-person services like EchoFeed. Another example is FeedPress. I like this service a lot, but I think there is only one person behind it, and it’s owned by a parent company which I know nothing about. It’s not entirely clear from this post what their mission is. What happens if this guy decides, or the parent company says, it’s no longer viable? Moving off EchoFeed might be a pain for people who need cross-posting capabilities. I highly doubt these people are willing to move to Buffer.

The same could be said about moving off FeedPress. It would be a pain in the ass to reconfigure all my feeds. The same torment applies to Micro.blog itself (or Scribbles.page, for that matter!). What is the future of Micro.blog if something bad happens to its founder? What is the continuity plan? Micro.blog has done everything it can to enable data portability and ownership, but moving things around, even if you own most parts, is not as easy as it sounds. In today’s world, nothing is permanent, and planning for this is mandatory.

“Most Micro.blog sites are digital ghosts, invisible to the search engines and professional networks that matter. We are going to fix that by engineering a high-authority ecosystem that ranks on the first page while keeping you in total control. Stop shouting into a void and start building a discoverable hub.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth.