On the third DI Day, I am parting ways with Apple’s proprietary Maps app and switching to CoMaps as an alternative.1 After two confirmation prompts, the app was quickly removed from the phone. Screenshot of removing the Apple Maps app on iOS For quite some time, I have been frustrated with Apple, not just in terms of privacy and digital independence. It is also the steadily declining user experience. As an iPhone user since 2007, I was originally convinced by thoughtful details and clean design. Today, I see the same lack of care and the same aggressive data collection as with other big tech companies. Read more

Second DI Day in the still young year of 2026.1 This time I parted ways with another US-based service: Automattic. Not a Big Tech giant, but still highly relevant on the web. It is the company behind the well-known site builder WordPress and the Gravatar service.2 For nearly 18 years, one of my photos has been tied to my email address across countless forums and websites through Gravatar. Looking back, that feels like a relic from a more naive phase of the internet, when the idea was to put a face to a name in chats and forums. In the age of surveillance capitalism,3 AI-generated images, and fake identities, that original purpose has largely disappeared. If anything, it has become a disadvantage to lose control over your own image online. Even if someone only uses an avatar, a centralized US provider can still track where and when that avatar is requested. Automattic’s terms explicitly allow broad data sharing with third parties:4 Read more