Ask HN: How to become less privacy obsessed?
It all started innocently enough by installing uBlock origin. That made casual browsing faster in addition to a better experience. At this point privacy wasn't a big concern.

Adblocking extensions didn't work well on my mobile device, so I set up a pi-hole on my home network. Again, that made browsing the internet seem faster and extended the "better experience" to any device on the network. I think this is what really planted the seed: look at all this information I _had been_ leaking to my DNS provider! At least now I had a local cache that would work across my entire home network and reduce 99% of external DNS lookups. And this was the first cost: others on my home network would complain that "links don't work anymore" (ads), so I had to explain how to temporarily disable pi-hole. Eventually, browsing on guest wifi like hotel was bad enough that I doubled down and run a pi-hole in docker on my laptop in addition to a home network pihole.

After watching "Social Dilemma", I got a bad taste in my mouth for megacorp surveillance capitalism. I stopped using Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, and Google Search. There's definitely a cost associated with being a little less reachable, but the privacy + mental health gains from reduced social media justified it for me.

One night, I was watching an instructional Youtube video and considered Liking it to save it for later. But then I caught myself: does Google _really_ need to know how much I value cleaning my shower drain? Almost immediately, I realized that hovering over the Like button was probably enough for Google to track this. As a software engineer, I know that it's common to log _everything_ as analytics events and let data scientists/PMs sort it all out later. This level of tracking would have seemed absurd to me 20 years ago, when I was on a 56k dial-up modem. Can you imagine Print Artist, Wordperfect, or other desktop apps "phoning home" on you several/hundreds of times a minute?

This led me down the route of self-hosting. I bought a used Intel Nuc and, using Kiwix, I started hosting a copy of Wikipedia locally. Not because Wikimedia is anywhere close to the worst offender, but because it was a) turn key easy and b) one of my most frequented Internet properties. Next, I tried using NextCloud, ran into issues, and decided that a) vim was fine for text and b) Google can keep tracking my packing lists via Sheets if they want to. I have schemes to self-host Open Street Map but I haven't invested the time. As a compromise, I switched to Apple Maps over Google Maps even though it's objectively worse as a map, and only nebulously better privacy-wise (Apple sure has good privacy marketing). More recently, I've been trying to use my car's built in Sat Nav when possible, and look up routes/turns ahead of driving so that I don't need to rely on my phone for guidance. I also started using my car's MP3 CD player so Spotify can't track my location (and sell it, I presume) and can keep my phone turned off during trips.

And most recently, I'm playing with hostapd to build a home network just for IoT devices to drastically limit their connectivity, Because it's really important to me that Google doesn't know when I raise or lower the thermostat by a degree. /s

This is a huge list of more privacy-focused solutions, but to be honest I reached the point of diminishing returns 20 steps ago with just the pi-hole. But I can't stop! The more conscious I am about my internet/computer use, the more I think I should be blocking. My tinfoil hat is so large that it's causing me neck strain, and I'm sure the time spent on this could be better spent practicing an instrument or reading a book. Also, I acknowledge that despite my best efforts, I've probably only blocked 10% of how I'm being tracked online.

Has anyone else struggled with this? Any tips for how can I learn to stop worrying and love surveillance capitalism?