The second invasion of Ukraine, the descent of the US into a techno-fascist state, and the long bloody entanglement of the US, Russia, the UK and some members of the EU, in the brutal occupation of Palestine, have all contributed to a long overdue decision. Boycotts & Divestments. (I’m not in a position of power, so I can’t force any sanctions.)
This month, January 2026, I finally began the long, laborious, but ultimately satisfying task of moving all of my accounts, data, and business out of the hands of the Turd Reich, and its allies. I’m going to try to keep this post updated with a table including the services, proposed dates, finalised dates, and any brief notes on why a particular decision was made. For larger decisions, like email for example, I may do an individual post, to document my thought process on it.
There are two things I’m not decided on, and I really would like people’s input on them. Please do let us know what you think. :
- When you come across a bot, nazi, terf, etc, online, is it better to block or just hide the user? Hide leaves them shouting into the void. Block informs them they’ve been blocked. Which is better? Which costs them more? I’m not clear on this, and I’d like to inflict as much damage as possible to the bots and malign influences that have ruined the internet.
- When you remove all your data from a social media site – is it better to leave your account open with a message detailing why you left, and leave it inactive,
OR is it more effective to just delete it altogether, leaving no trace of its existence?
Ultimately the tech giants are judged on their stats. Does it hurt them more to remove your account, or leave your account occupying space and showing up as another of millions of increasingly inactive accounts?
| SERVICE | CURRENT | NEW | DATE MOVED | NOTES |
| Email – Tigercooke.com / tadhgcooke.com | A Small Orange | Mailbox.org | Jan 2026 | I’ve used ASO for website and mail since approx 2003. They were cheapish and served me well. But it was limited. They’ve also just been purchased by Network Solutions, who also own Register.com, so I have no guilt about abandoning them. |
| Email – Android generic email | Gmail | Mailbox.org via POP & Mozilla Thunderbird | 26/01/2026 | 80,000 emails approximately. Gmail was once obligatory if you had an android phone. You don’t need to have one now, but it’s a bit late for this. The market capture is there, and it’s a pain to change – so most people won’t do it, unless they’re really motivated to do so. The Turd Reich has done its job, so here we are. More notes on how to migrate from Gmail below. |
| Domain Registrars | Register.com | Register365 | Jan 2026 | I’ve had tadhgcooke.com with register.com since about 2003 too. I just moved it to Register365 because they’re European, and it’s handier to keep everything in one place. They were bought by a UK company called Namesco – so I need to check on these. Choice is limited. |
| Browsers | ||||
| Short Form Posting | Twitter / Threads | |||
| Photo Blogs | ||||
| Old style social media | ||||
GMAIL MIGRATION NOTES
- Firstly, and most importantly, set gmail to forward all new emails received to your new account.
- Download ALL emails to an email client on my laptop (eg Thunderbird). This can take days.
- Set your gmail account to allow pop mail.
- Set your thunderbird account to check for mail every 3 minutes (you might get away with 1 or 2 minutes, but I was trying to avoid being blocked)
- Clear / delete / remove junk and emails you don’t want
- Transfer any sorted email that you want to access via the cloud into your new email account. (You may wish to keep most of the emails in this pop account as an archive, and delete at a later date.)
- Download and archive large files to hard drives and back them up.
- Ensure the gmail mailbox is clear. Some items may stick around, so you’ll have to do some jiggery pokery :
- Google Chat – You can export any old google chat conversations via google takeout, download as a zip, and then delete the conversations in gmail.
- Drafts – You can send these to yourself, or delete them. Either method works.
- Make backups of the gmail pop account that’s been downloaded to your laptop. (Otherwise if anything happens with the laptop – your mails are gone forever.)
- When you’re happy you’ve got backups, you can empty your bin or archive on gmail. That should see all the disk space occupied by gmail in your google account vanish.
- Ongoing Task :
Monitor for a year to keep it empty, and make sure I have picked up all the necessary stray info, and unsubscribe / change emails on all your accounts.
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