I have been trying to clean up my digital spaces for quite some time now. By cleaning up of digital space, I mean inboxes, G-Drive, Photos and all sort of clutter that have accumulated over a prolonged period of time. As the generation that got to grow along with the unfettered growth of internet and memory, most of the digital spaces occupied by my generation is cluttered with data from which no one can make heads or tail.
The first space to be taken out was google photos. I took a backup of all google photos from takeout and then simply said goodbye to it all. Even for deletion, google makes life difficult for you. There is no option to delete forever. This means you will have to slowly and painfully go through your entire archive to delete them all. Talk about reducing friction! However, I was determined to see google photos go and therefore, sat through for 3-4 hours and deleted every single photo that was backed up ( A total of 1 lakh photos!). Bye Bye Google Photos.
The next to go was Facebook. Yet another legacy platform for which I no longer find any use. I again went ahead and deleted the account. Apparently, they allow deletion only after 30 days of deleting it, which means if you login within 30 days into your account from the date of deletion, your account is restored! The ways these data companies scramble to make sure you, the data milking cow, is attached to them! I never returned and the account got deleted.
Google Drive was much easier. I synced all data to a harddisk and simply deleted all the files. The problem was with the files that were shared with me. They took a longer time to delete from the account.
Now coming to the data dragon:- G Mail. G Mail was probably the second google product that I started using after search. Years of newsletters and what not! My inbox was flooded with tons of them and there was no way I could go through them and sort them. So the way forward that I have found is to again backup and delete. It should sort of reset my digital life for me.
I have laid down a complete plan to detox and rejuvenate my digital presence. Ill keep sharing the updates as and when they happen.