How to Escape the Platform Industrial Complex

Author's Note: I published the following piece on March 25, 2025, then updated several sections throughout the summer of 2026.

In November 2023, when I secured representation from a kickass literary agent and my novel writing endeavors graduated from sad midlife crisis to unsustainable commercial enterprise, I decided to descend into the darkest depths of Digital Hades.

The idea was straightforward yet suspect: When Leverage gets published on August 19, there's a 0.07% chance I'll become super famous, and back then I wanted to create a digital foothold so I could connect with—and obv monetize—my legions of adoring fans.

[Update: I did not get famous.]

Owing to my previous lives in Academia, Corporate America, and Wall Street, however, I'd only ever created and sustained a moribund LinkedIn account.

To get hella famous online, I'd need to build from scratch, and about eighteen months ago I embarked upon a virtual misadventure which followed three distinct phases: 1) experimentation, 2) consolidation, and 3) capitulation.

In tandem with my ill-fated scheming came the rise of copyright theft rebranded as "artificial intelligence." Not only was I wasting my precious time failing to build a social media following, I was also feeding the stupidest possible doomsday devices and enriching the saddest imaginable techno-eugenicist douchebags.

Worst of all, I was being a hypocrite.

My entire brand of comedy revolves around eviscerating cynical corporations and excoriating corrupt politicians, and yet here I was making thirsty, unwatchable Reels for Cuckerberg's grossest platform.

I certainly exhibit erratic and inconsistent behaviors from time to time—I'm only human—but I try hard to practice what I preach, and I work hard to rectify errors when I haven't. Being a stubborn, principled, absolutely intractable sociopath helps a ton in this regard.

All of which is why, beyond jettisoning my toxic social media accounts, I've also launched a crusade to ditch as many cynical platforms and exploitative technology products as I can. Throughout the rest of this post—which is hella long but thoroughly entertaining—I've provided a blueprint for how you, too, can escape most of the Platform Industrial Complex.

Pragmatism >>> Idealism

Before we dive into specifics, allow me to make a few quick concessions. First, this list is not exhaustive and only addresses platforms I've used. Second, this exercise is more diagnostic than prescriptive, i.e., I feel strongly about my recommendations, but you should of course do what works best for you and your family. And finally, as much as I'd like to see all the Big Tech platforms implode, practical constraints require us to utilize some of their tools most of the time.

Think of this guide, then, as a heuristic which will help you decide which devils to indulge. For example, my family's fully entrenched in the Apple ecosystem and breaking free just isn't realistic. In the lose-lose matchups between Apple and Google and Apple and Spotify, I merely chose what I believed to be the least bad options.

With that in mind, let the liquidations begin.

Alphabet: Android OS, Google Chrome, Google Search, Google Workspace (e.g., Gmail, Google Calendar), YouTube

How I'll Escape: I've been itching to abandon Betabet for years but it's no easy feat. In fact, I'm still not fully free, but I'm close.

After nearly a decade using Android-based smartphones, I pivoted back to an iPhone in 2020 (see Spotify section below). Since then, as mentioned above, I've fully entrenched myself in the Apple ecosystem: iPhone, MacBook, iPad, Apple Music, Photos, iCloud storage, etc. The upshot is I extricated myself from Google's mobile OS—though I still use Google Maps on my iPhone because Apple Maps sucks shit.

Regarding Google Chrome and Google Search, I've been using DuckDuckGo (or its browser plug-in) for years. Funnily enough, when everyone started complaining about how Google's "AI" was destroying online search, I found myself little fazed. DuckDuckGo's privacy-heavy features have always generated subpar search results. A minor price to pay for major privacy.

Google Workspace (e.g., Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Meet, Google Photos, etc.) is by far the hardest part of the ecosystem to escape, but over the past several weeks I've mostly pulled it off. Mostly.

Now, there are a lot of details and esoterica related to this undertaking, and there are myriad ways you can approach this problem. I'll keep the solution I used simple and step-wise.

1. To escape Gmail, I first bought a custom website domain (e.g., www.amrangowani.com). I used Squarespace, but there are numerous online purveyors.
2. I created a Proton Mail account and subscribed to the "Mail Plus" pricing tier. This lets users create up to ten additional email addresses, including one custom domain email (e.g., emailaddress@amrangowani.com). Context: Proton Mail is a non-profit organization built by the physicists at CERN. Every message is end-to-end encrypted, which is increasingly important for creative people whose work is vulnerable to the thieving hands of "AI" crooks such as Google and Meta. Moreover, your data is protected by Swiss privacy laws, i.e., the ones impenetrable enough to have helped the Nazis hide their European plunder for generations. If you want to give Proton Mail a spin, please click my referral link HERE.
3. At this stage, a sane person would simply set up email forwarding from their Gmail account to their Proton Mail account and call it a day. But that would mean continuing to receive boatloads of trash in your fancy new inbox and maintaining a Google account. Also, what about my personality or demeanor suggests I'm sane? Over the course of several days, I spent a dozen-odd hours gutting my Google account—deleting old messages, unsubscribing from unwanted marketing emails, consolidating contacts, removing photos, etc.—and then manually updating all of my personal accounts across the interwebs. This was a laborious but worthwhile endeavor, as it allowed me to clean up my digital presence and ensured my most important accounts were secure.

Alas, in spite of all this effort, I haven't yet deleted my Google account.

First, I'm continuing to monitor my Gmail inbox to make sure I didn't forget to update a crucial account that could end up causing problems.

Second, my middling YouTube channel is linked to my Google account, which means if I nuke my profile I'll lose access to my horde of subscribers—61, to be exact. Nonetheless, I long ago liquidated my old YouTube content because it was...fine. Not awful, not great, just fine.

For now, I'm taking a wait and see approach, but all of my material has been removed and my inbox volume has plummeted. I'm in a solid position to whack Google when the time's right.

Finally, some of you might be wondering why I bothered to set up a domain email, especially since Proton Mail allows me to create multiple addresses. This stems primarily from my unique needs as an author and "content" creator. Namely, I wanted to establish consistent branding for my writing endeavors.

There's a longer-term benefit, too. If Proton Mail folds, or becomes a tool for nefarious actors, or whatever, I can take my unique domain email to another provider without breaking the existing links to my online accounts. Being stuck with an @gmail.com address, or the like, is just another way the Big Tech companies keep you trapped in their ecosystem.

Benefits and Consequences: While I haven't completely dipped, dumping nineteen years of Gmail-related baggage and knowing my new email addresses are airtight feels fantastic. I've flirted with the idea of creating more YouTube content down the line, but if I do my Google account would solely be used for that project. If I insisted upon a totally clean slate, I could also create a brand-new Google account on the spot.

The downsides of entirely leaving Google, beyond the YouTube issue, would be an inability to edit shared Google Docs and Google Sheets and a loss of whatever media I've purchased over the years (e.g., Google Play content). I could live with the former and the latter's not significant.

All told, I haven't yet achieved escape velocity, but I'm gaining speed.

[Update: I've pretty much escaped and I feel glorious.]

Extraction Pain Score: 10/10.

Amazon: Audible, Goodreads, Kindle, Music, Prime TV

How I'll Escape: Ironically, until last year, I'd been Amazon-free for half a decade. Last fall I jumped back into Audible and this January, in a fit of post-election fatalism, I re-upped my family's Prime membership.

That said, I don't need any of this shit and I could easily move on and never look back.

[Update: Canceled again!]

Shopping-wise, my Amazon test is simple: If I can't procure the same or a similar item at Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, or a local grocery store, I don't need it. To be clear, excepting Costco, those other retailers are also corporate villains. But the bottom line is I can skip Amazon for online shopping, as evidenced by the very recent past.

Content-wise, Thursday Night Football is the absolute worst the NFL has to offer, Amazon Music is clunky and aesthetically unpleasing, and I never got into reading on Kindle. My wife would miss the shows she likes (e.g, Reacher), but that pain would be trivial compared to the misery of being legally bound to me.

The biggest hurdle would be extricating myself from Audible. I have about 100 audiobooks and a dozen more "credits" to spend this year. Some cursory research suggests there's a "jail break"-style piece of software which could sever my titles from Audible's DRM-based clutches. Worst case, I'll simply accept those audiobooks, like life itself, are fragile and fleeting and write them off. For a far less evil replacement, I plan to test run Libro.fm, a fast-growing service which supports independent bookstores.

[Update: I'm done with Audible and I used a service called OpenAudible to save DRM-free versions of my audiobooks. I created a Libro.fm account but have yet to purchase any books—I'm still working through my Audible backlist. I'm also planning to leverage Libby and Hoopla, via my public library, in future.]

Benefits and Consequences: Telling Uncle Jeff to eat shit and die is always a good decision.

My soul already feels purer.

Extraction Pain Score: 2/10.

Apple: iPhone, iPad, iOS, Mac, Mac OS, Arcade, iCloud, Music, News+, TV+

Escape? LOL!: I have not escaped Apple and at this rate I will never escape Apple. I'm not a partisan fanboy, but of the pitiful choices available I consider Apple's products and services to be the least awful—though unfortunately they're also the most expensive.

Plus, while I know the tech-savvy crowd has plenty of qualms with Apple's hardware and software, the shit just works. One of the many reasons I willingly re-entrenched myself in their walled garden was because I had a two-year-old Microsoft Surface and a two-year-old Samsung television shit the bed while I was editing Leverage and my kids were on holiday break.

Benefits and Consequences: I will escape Apple when Thanatos pays me a visit.

Extraction Pain Score: 10,000/10.

Bluesky

How I'll Escape: One day I'll simply log in to this deeply unserious platform and say sayonara to the deeply unserious people who populate it. Can't wait.

[Update: Deactivated!]

Benefits and Consequences: I'll miss some good tweets from my literary and comedy peeps. Being able to DM other authors does come in handy, but there's this archaic and unkillable technology called email which I could always fall back upon.

Extraction Pain Score: 0/10.

Discord

How I'll Escape: This is an interesting one. As social media platforms continue to fragment and push farther and farther toward celebrity-take-all extremes, a platform like Discord becomes increasingly appealing to me.

I have an account but only visit Jane Friedman's server when I have publishing hot takes to share. In theory, I'd like to cultivate my own community on Discord and move entirely away from algorithmic-driven platforms. But I keep running into one minor problem: Who TF would hang out there?

Benefits and Consequences: When I invariably delete my account, I'll once again be reminded that, starting with my very own father, nobody has ever cared whether I was alive or dead.

Extraction Pain Score: 0/10.

"Mainstream" Media: NYT, WaPo, LA Times, WSJ, etc.

How I Escaped: For my money, so-called mainstream American media is its own type of "entertainment platform" and has been cooked since Dear Leader Reagan deregulated the news industry. Alternative facts, anyone?

After the New York Times incessantly hyperventilated about Hilary's emails throughout the 2015-16 election cycle—and heavily contributed to the ongoing decimation of our country—I refused to read their dogshit newspaper ever again. Ditto the Washington Post.

Ten years later I'm still going strong.

I only read the Wall Street Journal articles that are available via Apple News+, and while I can never keep up, I enjoy perusing Wired, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker when I can (again, many articles are included with an Apple News+ subscription).

Even still, I strongly encourage everyone to abandon the U.S. newspaper business altogether and buy a subscription to The Financial Times. I used to be a diehard Economist reader, but the quality has dropped precipitously over the years—or maybe I've become even more of a woke, DEI-loving, leftist cuck. Either way, while the fact-based regional reporting is superb, the paper's overall editorial slant is pickled rubbish.

I ponied up for The Financial Times in February 2025, which is expensive AF, but the quality is outstanding and the paper has become my primary information source. The plebe version of the FT is called FT Edit and only costs $5 per month—a monster deal.

Benefits and Consequences: My brain has been much healthier than the average Democratic voter's since November 8, 2016.

Extraction Pain Score: -10/10.

Medium

How I Escaped: I joined the algorithm-obsessed writing platform in December 2021, immediately realized it was a walled garden jam-packed with low-quality listicles, and easily envisioned the platform getting smoked by Substack within a year.

Jumping ship was simpler than signing up.

Benefits and Consequences: After leaving the platform I completed an awesome novel and secured a Big Five book deal. Is that correlation or causation? I can never remember.

Extraction Pain Score: 0/10.

Meta: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp

How I Escaped: Way back in 2010, after I'd been accepted to business school, I met a future classmate with a pronounced paranoid streak. She said she'd never used—and would never use—social media, and she also cautioned against the risk of what today we'd call "cancel culture."

I found this utterly ridiculous person utterly ridiculous, but took heed of her fear-mongering and nuked my Facebook account within the month. Zero regrets and many bragging rights followed.

In early 2024, in what must've been precipitated by trace amounts of mercury in my Pop Tarts, I decided to give Instagram and then Threads a whirl. It went as well as you'd expect.

Within six months I remembered I was not the type of user who appealed to middle-aged pedophiles and pulled the plug on the entire operation. The coup de grâce came when I revealed the totally kickass cover for Leverage on IG and gained zero new followers.

Two weeks later I ethered both accounts and haven't lamented one second of my Cuckerberg-less existence.

[Update: In January 2026, I returned to Instagram for networking purposes. I don't post content, nor do I consume content, but I do engage with influencers and authors who comment on Leverage. Trust me, I'm just as disappointed as you are. Also, follow me HERE.]

Until a few days ago I had a WhatsApp account and recently I'd joined an interesting channel run by professionals in the Chicago area. While I'm bummed to miss out on everyone's updates, I can also periodically hang with these peeps IRL. You know, how we monkeys did for hundreds of thousands of years until smartphones were invented.

[Update: I may need to rejoin WhatsApp for parenting purposes, but for now I'm holding the line.]

Benefits and Consequences: I feel cleaner, and prettier, and have experienced stronger, longer-lasting erections.

Pain Index: -∞/10.

Microsoft: LinkedIn, Office 365 Suite (e.g., Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), Xbox

Why I Won't Escape: Next to Apple, Microsoft is nearly impossible for me to abandon. First, as a bona fide Author Guy, whose agent and publisher use Word, I'd be inviting major headaches. While I've heard several writers evangelize for Scrivener, I'm not sure if my business partners have access to this product or compatible software.

Worse, as a bona fide Finance Scumbag, I'm quite proficient with Excel and use the program on a daily basis. The clearest alternative is Google Sheets, which kind of sucks and forces you back into the Betabet universe. Apple's proprietary program "Numbers" could serve as an emergency replacement, but in my superficial dealings it's proved close to worthless.

Microsoft's stickiness now extends beyond these two major programs as well. I use OneNote while brainstorming and drafting my novels and back up some files in OneDrive.

With all this said, I could break free.

I could ask my agent which word processing alternatives would be suitable. I could suck it up and use Apple's shitty spreadsheet software. There's no shortage of note taking apps available for download. And after I upgraded to the "Unlimited" tier of Proton Mail, I gained access to 500 GB of Swiss-secured cloud storage.

But, in totality, these steps would be pretty ball-busting. And I actually kind of like Microsoft Office. Yes, the cloud-based annual subscription model is a cynical cash grab and yes, Microsoft Surface is a chintzy POS which totally fucked me. On the other hand, Microsoft's software integration with Apple's hardware has come a long ass way, and both Big Tech behemoths have proved predictable and reliable.

If I really wanted to murk a member of the House of Gates, the best I could do is kill off LinkedIn—which I've strongly considered.

The lamest conceivable social network produces pure cringe and induces pure rage on a daily basis. In theory, the platform should align nicely with my interests and expertise, but the site's users and algorithms don't exactly celebrate or promote my vicious one-liners.

Exhibit A:

To be fair, I can't expect a cadre of corporate drones to dap me up for telling them their jobs are total horseshit and their employers are society's villains.

Also, since I spent most of my adult life working for heinous corporations, most of my connections reside on LinkedIn. I have over 1,200 "followers" on the site which, while small, is still the most I've accumulated across the various platforms I've used.

Again, I could kill LinkedIn, but I'd remain firmly lodged in other parts of the Microsoft ecosystem, so why bother? An alternative approach would be to delete my existing account and start from scratch, which is an idea that came to me while writing this piece and one I'll thoroughly entertain. The vast majority of my current connections don't pay attention to me and the rest will soon be in prison for accounting fraud.

My family has an Xbox, but my kids prefer Nintendo Switch and we only have one television—thanks for nothing Samsung! The powerful gaming system is little more than an expensive bookend and could be discarded anytime.

[Update: In summer 2026, I played the Mass Effect trilogy with my kids and reaped some value from the Xbox!]

At least Microsoft finally did the humane thing and put Skype to sleep.

Benefits and Consequences: Trying to ditch Microsoft would create unnecessary hassles and needless burdens and, for me, isn't a battle worth fighting.

Extraction Pain Score: 10/10.

Spotify

How I Escaped: In May 2020, when Spotify went all-in on the Meathead-o-Sphere, I was like: Nah.

In fact, I was so insistent my subscription fees would not fund Covid-19 disinformation, anti-vax lunacy, and stupidity masquerading as masculinity, I bought an iPhone just so I could rock Liquid Swords sans Spotify.

[Update: I took Spotify for a spin again in December 2025 to try out the service's new audiobook feature. While the interface is slick, the algorithms and "AI" slop made the platform unusable. I bailed after two months.]

Benefits and Consequences: I'm proud to be supporting sweatshop labor instead of conspiracy theorizing, and I'm glad to know my pitiful payment fees still impoverished every musician not named Taylor Swift.

Extraction Pain Score: 1/10.

Streaming Entertainment: Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Prime TV, etc., etc., etc.

My Wife Absolutely Cannot Escape: This exercise would be easy for me and unthinkable for the rest of my family.

In my view, television's the most bloated and least effective storytelling medium ever invented. As the olds used to tell me when I was young, I'm pretty sure it also rots your brain.

Of course, my wife—who's much smarter and far more financially successful than me—is a total TV junkie who streams over 1,500 hours of content each year. So it's possible my claims don't hold water.

Regardless, if it were up to me, I'd terminate every single one of these crappy content mills with extreme prejudice. But, since my wife pays the bills, she calls the shots. #shareholder-primacy

[Update: Around the time I published this post I discovered The Criterion Channel. I've since used it as my main source for streaming films and it's fucking awesome. I also started watching programs on PBS Passport, which are underrated gems and support public broadcasting. Subscribe to the best and ditch the rest.]

Benefits and Consequences: Despite my wife paying for basically every single streaming service, I hardly watch any of them. Icing your accounts would be a lot easier than you realize, and the downstream health benefits would be immense.

Just think: With no brain-scrambling reality shows to binge, you might find yourself reading more books, getting more exercise, going to more events, and having actual sex with actual humans.

Extraction Pain Score: 0/10 for me; +∞/10 for my family.

Substack

How I Escaped [Twice]: There are two elements to this equation: 1) escaping as a writer and 2) escaping as a reader.

Let's look at the writer side first.

After years of watching the emailable blog platform devolve into a full-blown social media site, whose Useful Idiot executives willfully misinterpret the First Amendment during their annual self-inflicted crisis, I decided it was time to get gone.

[Update: I decamped for Ghost in February 2025, but then missed the network effects on Substack and returned to the platform in February 2026, but then remembered how much I fucking hate Substack and decided to throw in the towel on my newsletter altogether. These days I run my author website through Squarespace and this old school blog through Ghost. Eventually, I make good choices.]

As a Substack reader, abandoning the platform would be simple but self-defeating. While I love to dunk on the worst aspects of the service, there are many, many, many more great writers than grotesque shitheels on the platform. I don't want to sever my writerly relationships or miss out on the platform's powerful network effects.

Of course, if you've read this far, you know I despise social media platforms—which Substack decidedly is—and the day will come when I tube my profile and cancel all my subscriptions. Afterwards, I'll clandestinely resubscribe to my favorite newsletters using a Proton Mail burner address and read everyone's posts in my email inbox, the way the Internet Gods intended.

[Update: I nuked my subscriptions and wiped the slate clean. I am Substack free.]

Benefits and Consequences: After migrating to Ghost, I shed the stink of the Substack brand, but ultimately lost out on the service's powerful network effects. After remigrating back to Substack, I remembered how much I hate social media and quickly realized the platform's best days were behind it. Eventually, I abandoned my email newsletter altogether and my sanity levels spiked.

Extraction Pain Score: 7/10 as creator; 7/10 as reader.

Twitter

How I Escaped: Because I like to make bad decisions, I lumbered onto late Twitter during the Spring of 2022.

By year's end, the Maker of Overpriced Cars and Rockets Which Always Explode had decided to buy the affection of tens of millions of incels for tens of billions of dollars and Twitter's imminent decline became all too obvious.

Because I like to say "I told you so," I bailed in March 2023.

Benefits and Consequences: I had fuck-all following to lose, and I felt a weight lift from my shoulders the second I stopped logging on to the pathetic platform.

Extraction Pain Score: -44,000,000,000/10.

Managing Your Data and Raging Against the Machine

I'll conclude this treatise with some philosophical thoughts.

Whenever you decide to escape an online platform, it's good practice to download your existing data first. I did this with Google and my various social media platforms and I wished I'd done so with my Substack content before I started ripping everything up last fall. The latter certainly would've made my roundtrip journey to Ghost—and back again—smoother.

At the same time, I don't for one goddamned femtosecond believe these shitbag tech platforms purged my valuable advertising fodder from their servers. With their newfangled "AI" models to "train," they have even less incentive to respect anyone's data or privacy.

But, by bouncing, I'm at least depriving them of my future data—or at least forcing them to blatantly steal my information from other sites. In theory, this could expose these nihilistic fucksticks to legal recriminations. We just need the Big Five publishing houses, a deep-pocketed law firm, and Lars Ulrich to go full Napster against the tech industry.

Furthermore, while decluttering decades of digital detritus, I found myself less and less sentimental about all the "important stuff" I'd saved. Of course the items related to my family remain priceless to me, but most of the junk in my litany of Gmail folders looked like digital hoarding.

We're all gonna die one day—perhaps sooner than anyone thinks given the state of the world—and we can't take any of this shit with us. Moreover, as the immortal Tyler Durden once said:

I've taken both of these ideas to heart over the past twenty-five years and they served me well during my digital cleanse. To escape the world's most evil tech companies, all you need to do is log in and let it go.

Godspeed.