Tools That Work to Stave Off Enshittificaton

Enshittification never slows down. Microsoft. Meta, Google, Amazon – the trillion-dollar giants – keep reinforcing the battlements of their evil walled-garden ecosystems. Interoperability is dying. Open standards are disappearing. Even editing a plain text file on a phone is now impossible. In 2019 Martin Kleppman, famous for Design of Data Intensive Applications,  wrote a white paper defining the concepts of "Local First Software" that is aligned to the privacy manifesto of Max Schrems and that portended Corey's book about how terrible the tech industry is becoming.

In the first half of 2025, U.S. GDP crawled at 0.1 % per year, if we ignore the AI hype bubble. Yet Microsoft found the energy to shove Copilot into every menu, activate Recall to screenshot and watch everything you do, and push Edge into every corner of Windows. The privacy invasion is deeper and more aggressive than anything Meta or Google have tried lately. My blood pressure rises and my life expectancy declines every time I open the Start menu.

Sooner or later I will flatten every Windows machine in the house and install Linux. Microsoft completely bricked a few devices with updates so they are now running Linux. Our 2011 “Kitchen” laptop still limps along on Windows 11 Server – the only edition Microsoft still allows on old hardware.

Until the final upgrade, three simple, well-maintained tools keep the worst of the poop away. They install in minutes and need almost no attention afterward.

• RemoveWindowsAI One click removes Copilot, Recall, and every built-in AI component. If I want AI, I open a browser tab. I do not want it welded into the operating system. Download → run as admin → reboot → silence. https://github.com/zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI

• Sophia Script for Windows: One PowerShell command turns off telemetry, ads, forced OneDrive sync, sponsored apps, and hundreds of other unwanted connections! Every change is well-documented and reversible. https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows

• PowerToys (yes, from Microsoft itself): PowerToys Run (Alt+Space) – launch files and programs without Edge https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N0DX20HK701 
  

Five minutes of setup gives back hours of calm. Keep most of the Microsoft proctological surveillance and pain away (for a while).

Use them now, while they still work. Remember: Linux is waiting.