The greatest part of reading HN is finding out that my distrust of apps and their developers is not weird. It does make me question my abilities as a dev for refusing to partake in these reindeer games. Clearly, I am not the right type of person to do well in big tech.

> I find myself uninstalling every app unless I really need it and use it. It's amazing how many apps just sit around in your life over time. get them off your phone

That's the thing they don't just sit around, they all have run at start up and for Android I blame Google for not giving users the ability to block run at start up.

Same here. I use Firefox for everything, and uninstall all the junk via adb. Also low power mode not only for battery efficiency, but to prevent most background services from running.

I’m not opening it… can it do anything on iOS?

I do this as well — I also have DNS level blocking via a NextDNS profile and prefer PWAs if possible.

I do this. I also block the ad ecosystems on the device (root, adaway).