As a single independent developer, I build my apps with one clear priority: people, not numbers. My commitment stems from seeing how platforms often degrade.
The Problem: Fighting Against Enshittification
You’ve likely seen it happen: a great online tool slowly degrades in quality, becoming frustrating, cluttered, and manipulative. This process, often called enshittification, happens when platforms shift focus, moving from serving their users to aggressively extracting value from businesses, and ultimately, from users themselves.
I fundamentally reject this model. I do not design my apps to maximize engagement, screen time, or growth charts. I design them to be calm, respectful tools that help you keep track of the books, movies, music, or games you care about.
Platform Ethics: Why I Choose Privacy Over Data Mining
Most modern apps are funded by advertising or data. This creates the structural pressure that drives platform decay: collect maximum information, measure every click, and adjust the design around what keeps users hooked, rather than what respects them. This philosophy is the root of enshittification.
My stand against this decay is simple: Your data stays on your devices.
- Your library, your notes, and your reading statistics are stored locally.
- If you enable sync, your data is copied only through your personal iCloud account, managed securely by Apple.
I do not run servers that store your library data, I do not build profiles about you, and I do not sell or share any of your information. There are no ads, no hidden trackers, and no third-party analytics watching what you use. The app should feel like a private notebook that happens to be digital.
Privacy Is Not About Having Something to Hide
A common objection goes like this: “I have nothing to hide, so why should I care if an app collects my data?” But privacy was never about hiding wrongdoing. It’s about who holds power over the details of your life, and what those details might mean in a context you cannot predict today.
Consider what happened in the United States. For years, millions of people logged the most intimate facts of their lives into period and fertility tracking apps, treating that information as harmless. Then the legal ground shifted. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, data that had felt trivial, like the timing of a cycle or a sudden gap in the log, suddenly became information that could place someone under suspicion. Privacy advocates and regulators warned that this intimate data could be subpoenaed and used against the very people who created it. And the fear was not theoretical: in Nebraska, prosecutors obtained a teenager’s private messages and used them to bring abortion related charges against her and her mother.
The point is not which app or which law. The point is that you cannot know in advance how your data will be used, by whom, or under which rules. Information you share freely under one set of circumstances can be turned against you when the circumstances change, and you have no say in it once the data has left your hands. “Nothing to hide” assumes the rules will never change and that whoever holds your data will always have your interests at heart. History keeps proving both assumptions wrong. It is also worth remembering that these companies are not always careful custodians: the FTC once penalized a popular period tracking app for sharing users’ intimate health data with Facebook and Google.
That is why I treat your data as something that should never leave your control in the first place. A book you read, a note you took, a private thought about a story: none of it seems sensitive today. But the safest place for it is the same place it has always belonged, with you. Privacy isn’t about hiding. It’s about not handing strangers the power to decide what your own life means.
The Anti-Enshittification Business Model: Direct Support
Without the revenue from advertising and without selling data, the only way to keep these apps alive and actively maintained is simple: the direct support of users who find them valuable.
When you choose to purchase the full version, you make a philosophical choice: you support ongoing maintenance, fund new updates, and help the app stay independent and aligned with your interests, not with those of external investors or advertisers who demand continuous degradation.
Digital Wellness and No Manipulative Tricks
To further fight platform decay, I actively avoid the manipulative tricks that turn peaceful tools into sources of anxiety.
You will find: no manipulative notifications, no fake urgency, and no design that pushes you to open the app when you don’t need it. My goal is to give you clear, solid tools and then stay out of your way.
My Part in Building a Better Internet
In short, my apps exist because I believe software can still respect people. I believe we can build a better internet, one app at a time, that operates on trust and fairness.
Your data remains yours, your attention is not for sale, and every decision I make is guided by a simple question: Does this truly help you, or does it only help a metric on a screen?
Thank you for choosing to support this necessary stand against digital degradation.