18 March 2026 - As my iPhone SE is no longer supported, I bought a refurbished Pixel phone and installed GrapheneOS, a ‘private and secure mobile operating system with Android app compatibility’. I use Nextcloud for syncing. Below I describe some of the steps involved. This is not meant as technical advice, but merely to give a general idea of some of the things one might want to think about when considering a similar switch.

7 January 2024 - As per tradition, I’ve created another Google search volume chart suggesting that people not only make New Year’s resolutions to quit smoking, but also to delete Facebook. This time, I’ve also included a line for people searching how to delete Twitter (as yet, few people seem to search for ‘delete X’).

3 January 2023 - A number of Dutch municipalities target specific neighbourhoods for surveillance, which may include house searches. An analysis shows that targeted municipalities tend to be among the poorest neighbourhoods in the municipality they were selected from, and among the neighbourhoods with the highest share of people with a non-western background.

30 December 2021 - Every year when it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, there’s a spike in google searches for ‘quit smoking’, but an even bigger spike in searches for ‘delete facebook’. An update.

31 December 2020 - At the end of every year, when it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, people seek help to quit smoking - but even more people try to figure out how to delete their Facebook account.