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I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that
by gervase 9y ago
I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation.
You can get a pretty good system set up with rsync, ZFS, RAID, etc. distributed between multiple machines and multiple sites, and have good security at a low price at the cost of a high knowledge bar.
Alternatively, you can have a pretty simple cloud backup system through Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc., which should provide good security to people with relatively basic technical knowledge, but at a non-negligible cost (compared to free).
Finally, you've got the current cloud "ecosystem" players like Apple, Google, FB, etc., who can offer good technical security (ignoring the "we have locked your account" arguments) to absolutely all skill levels, with zero perceived cost.
That being said, I think the kinds of people who (A) actually even think about the privacy of online services, and (B) care enough to do something about it, probably have sufficient technical skill to choose other options. They can decide how important that privacy is to them, in terms of investing time, money, or both to solve these problems.
- bargl 9y ago> I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation. That's what I was trying to show. It's hard to not rely on some sort of third party service in life. I think a lot of people here just don't like Facebook. I should probably create a Flex server at home to do this for my friends and family who aren't technical, but again if I host that on Amazon then I'm again relying on someone else.
- icebraining 9y agoThere are differences between relying on the existence of a commodity service/product or of a unique one. If my VPS provider boots me off or shuts down, I just move to another. I won't lose a single email, and just a few IRC messages during the transition. Meanwhile, if FB boots you off, you lose everything, and must hope they at least allow you to create a new profile.