Unsubscribe

Unsubscribing today can feel like you’re doing something wrong. Companies bury the button under a plethora of pages. Buttons are misdirecting, making it easy to click the back button. Warnings asking if you’re sure. Threats that you’ll do something (even if they don’t know what that something is themselves).

Recently, I went through and compiled a list of everything I subscribe to (AI was wonderful at helping me create it). And the list was longer than I had suspected. So, I started slashing. Taking note of which companies were treating humans as dignified beings with autonomy and which ones were screaming, “Don’t leave!”

It’s liberating. And I think it’s worth taking some time to see which services you actually use and which are just gimmicks.

There are good political reasons to do this too.

Companies must earn our trust and attention. And it’s worth thinking about why we have five different television apps, Amazon Prime when you have a store on every corner, unnecessary auto-completes in the age of AI, and so on.