Decluttering your online life: how to get your digital house in order and protect your data from AI
TL;DR
The average person spends 40% of their waking hours online. Clearing out digital clutter can minimise environmental impacts and boost productivity Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian. com Many Australians worry about datacentres swallowing up local land and energy but we rarely look closely at our own digital trails.
Nauti's Take
For AI workflows, start with a digital inventory: review old cloud files, duplicate media, unused subscriptions, and automatically synced data. The emissions figure comes from a single source and is only lightly contextualized in the article, so verify it before making broader sustainability decisions.
The practical question is which data you keep indefinitely and which AI services are allowed to process it.
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