Content-Type: text/shitpost

A few months ago I noticed that they keyboard app on my Android phone was getting slower and slower. Every time I wanted to type something, I would have to wait a couple of seconds for the keyboard to pop up. And it kept getting updated with new awesome bells and whistles. Oh boy, a button for automatically inserting an animated gif, <sarcasm>what a great idea </sarcasm>! Oh boy, today it's taking up precious screen real estate to show me the Google Doodle of the Day.

Fortunately there is an option to revert the app back to the pre-installed version. I did that and right away it was faster! There was one feature that I used that it lost, but I don't remember what it was, so it couldn't have been important. My keyboard app is now 19 weeks behind and everything is much better.
The keyboard pops up right away, evey time! As Geoff Pullum observed so long ago, “upgrade” actually means “downgrade”.

I also stopped updating any app I don't actually use. Obviously updating such was never more than a waste of time, but there is an additional benefit to not doing it. Updates might add useful features or perhaps even performance improvements (ha) but they might also add changes that the owner considers a feature that have negative value for me, such as enhanced passive snooping. If I don't use the app, the useful features have no value. Perhaps I can't get the app off my phone entirely (why the hell not?), but at least I can prevent the owner from enhancing their passive snooping.

I do tolerate the awful Uber app on my phone, just barely. But

[ Author's note: I forgot I had been writing this, but it popped up when I was about to publish the following post, three weeks later. Okay! I think I will finish the thought: The Uber app gets slower and worse and less reliable with every update, and since the first version I downloaded does what I want, namely, call Ubers, I see no reason to update it. Every update makes it more likely that it will fail at a crucial moment. So I downloaded it once onto my current phone, and never since then. It's probably been spying on me since I got it, because Uber is evil, but at least I have opted out of any new spying that they have thought of since then. ]