Anyone Can Do It Again

If you are a frothing luddite that hates how your android phone treats you in 2025

• Your life is out of control. Your phone is a chaotic mess, your mind is a chaotic mess, this tool you use every day has grown a life of its own, and the life it lives is disguting. It is time for spring cleaning.
• Go through the list of apps on your phone that you don't use and delete them.
• Reorganize your home screen. Put apps into folders, put them into new and different folders. Give up on finding a perfect organization system, this sucks. Wait actually, it's not you who's wrong, it's your phone. You need help. You need a different experience. Install Niagara Launcher.
• Set up your home screen apps and now your home screen is organized. You will now orient your phone identity around Niagara Launcher.
• You should be able to see Today's date, today's weather, the current time, and your favorite apps all from your home screen. How can you do that? Niagara Launcher + widgets. Get the Yr weather app, and set your Niagara widget to Yr weather.
• You should be able to use your custom widget for other things, actually. Purchase a Niagara Launcher Pro subscription, or a Pro Lifetime subscription, enable weather, uninstall Yr, free up the widget slot. Your phone probably has step-counter widget - put your step counter on there - I don't care.
• Fiddle with Niagara pro features and organization until you are happy.
• Now you are free.

• Actually, you're not free. You still have apps on your phone, and the apps on your phone have too much control over your life. Instagram is a chrome browser that has trapped you in a walled garden. Discord is a chrome browser that has trapped you in a walled garden. Twitter is a chrome browser that has trapped you in a walled garden. This is hell. Fuck this.
• Install Firefox Nightly for Android
• Now, with firefox nightly for android, go around to the different websites for all the apps that you use.
• Did you notice that on instagram when using firefox nightly for android, you can view a chronological feed of users' posts?
• It turns out that the phone browser version of a lot of sites is less hostile than their apps. Explore the various sites you like, and delete the corresponding apps on your phone if you can. You will now access those apps via firefox nighly for android.
• While checking out websites, take note of the fact that you can pin your favorites. Pin your favorite ones. This will make it easier to click on them whenever you want.
• Your phone has fewer apps on it now. You are free.

• Actually, you're not free. When you go to youtube, you still see ads. When you go to instagram, you still see ads. When you go to facebook, you still see ads. When you go anywhere you still see ads. Ads are the enemy. Ads are the devil. They are actively stealing time away from you and reducing your quality of life. You can make websites good. You just have to kill the ads. You will kill the ads.
• In Firefox Nightly for Android navigate to extensions.
• Navigate to extension manager.
• Scroll all the way to the bottom and click "find more extensions".
• Search for Decentraleyes and install it
• Search for Ghostery and install it
• Search for Privacy Badger and install it
• Search for uBlock Origin and install it (uBlock Origin. Make sure it's uBlock Origin).
• Your war on the ads is fought and won. Fuck the ads. You are free.

• Actually, you're not free. When you go to all your favorite websites, they are foisting an endless feed of suggested content upon you. They have all of these various hostile features that are designed to suck your life-force out. They want you to sit on the website staring into oblivion. You deserve better. You will harness the power of the websites, and remove the chaff. Fuck the websites. They hate you. You will carve out only the pieces that are useful to you.
• In firefox nightly for android navigate to extensions. Navigate to extension manager. Scroll all the way to the bottom and click "find more extensions".
• Search for "SocialFocus: Hide Distractions" and install it
• It's made by some Russian guy, but who gives a shit, this is your lifeblood we're talking about, this man shares your ideals, let him into your home.
• Navigate to the settings for SocialFocus, and review the settings for every site you frequent, and turn off all the hostile shit. You will no longer see the hostile shit.
• For tumblr, do the same with "xKit rewritten"
• And so on.
• The internet is your's to control. You are free.

• Actually, you're not free. You read webcomics. You want to stay up to date with your webcomics, but it's so hard. You have to visit so many different websites and you don't know if they will update. Augh! The agony. Or maybe it's not webcomics. Maybe it's the news. Or maybe it's recipes. Or maybe it's whatever the fuck who gives a shit, you're sick of going to different websites and checking different feeds. You will consolidate the feeds.
• We have had the power to do this for ages, and it's really fucking easy, it's called RSS.
• Install an rss feed reader, there are so many, here's a free and open source one that looks good.
• "Wait, what is f-droid?" you ask. It's like google play store, but for apps that don't have ads. It's good. You like it.
• Anyway, start putting all the websites that you go look at on the regular into your RSS feed aggregator. They'll have a little button with a symbol on it, I don't know you're smart you'll figure it out.
• Now you are in control of the feed. You are free.

• Actually, you're not free. There is some shit that advertisers and ISPs and big monolithic motherfuckers at the top of the food chain are doing in the background of your web searching. They want to feed you ads. It all comes back to ads. They are trying to put ads in the water, on the sky, they want to put ads on the ads. Everywhere you look there's more fucking ads, you need to keep your phone pure. You need to know you will be safe. You will enable DOH (DNS over HTTPS), and you will select a DNS Gateway for browsing. You will kill the ads.
• We'll follow these instructions to enable DOH & add an ad-filtering DNS
• • In Firefox Nightly for Android, go to about:config in the url bar
  • In the config search bar, type network.trr.mode
  • Change the value to 2
  • You are done now, but for bonus points you can do some extra credit
  • In the config search bar, type network.trr.uri
  • Change the value to one of the ones located on this github list of reputable DNSs
  • AdGuard is reputable enough, and you are an adult that looks at pornography, so use this one: https://dns.adguard-dns.com/dns-query
  • Alternatively, spend a lifetime researching and arguing over the best DNS to use, it doesn't matter, use your time how you want to.
• Now that you have enabled DOH and optionally selected your own DNS gateway, you have done everything an unreasonable human being can reasonably be expected to do to stop the enemy. You are not free, but you are freer than you have ever been before.