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Dont just drop Google and switch to another large company or service. Take the chance and set up your own infrastructure! One reason why our web became so succ

by M0r13n 6y ago

Dont just drop Google and switch to another large company or service. Take the chance and set up your own infrastructure! One reason why our web became so successful is Decentralization. But, in recent years I feel like we are heading to more and more centralized web, where only a few big companies control the entire ecosystem. Take email and instant messaging as an example. Everybody can maintain it's own, independent mail service, but everybody can still communicate with each other. On the other hand there are very few messaging services that are totally incompatible to each other. Depending on where you live, you might only use iMessage, Whatsapp or WeChat. Even tough it may be technically possible to use other services like Signal or Threema, you are most definitively going to experience a lot inconveniences. In my personal bubble only very few use these apps and as if that were not enough, these few users are also distributed across a wide variety of different services. If it were like mail, everybody could use his/her preferred messaging system and still talk to each other. Thats only one example and I dont want our web to be like Whatsapp in a few years from now. So I encourage everybody to try and use his own infrastructure. You are also going to learn quite a bit while doing so. If you are unsure about where to start, here is a nice list of awesome self hosted services, that are relatively easy to deploy: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

StreamBright 6y ago
>> Take email and instant messaging as an example. Everybody can maintain it's own, independent mail service, but everybody can still communicate with each other. It is easier said than to be done. I was hosting my own email for a long time and with the current state of play it is not as easy to provide the same UX as Gmail or Outlook. Even AWS struggles to provide an email solution that is worth switching over.
- sildur 6y ago
  It’s been ages since I used GMail web interface. It feels slow and cluttered. I prefer a local email client.
- M0r13n 6y ago
  Yes, thats definitely right. But you could also switch to a paid service, that is caring about you and your data. Then you still need to trust that service and the people behind it, but it may be better than Google and co. I use Protonmail with a custom domain (my name) for example. I pay a few dollars every year, but in return I get state-of-the-art encryption for all my mails, data protection, more privacy and I also trust the people behind it.

by M0r13n 6y ago

StreamBright 6y ago

>> Take email and instant messaging as an example. Everybody can maintain it's own, independent mail service, but everybody can still communicate with each other. It is easier said than to be done. I was hosting my own email for a long time and with the current state of play it is not as easy to provide the same UX as Gmail or Outlook. Even AWS struggles to provide an email solution that is worth switching over.

sildur 6y ago
It’s been ages since I used GMail web interface. It feels slow and cluttered. I prefer a local email client.
M0r13n 6y ago
Yes, thats definitely right. But you could also switch to a paid service, that is caring about you and your data. Then you still need to trust that service and the people behind it, but it may be better than Google and co. I use Protonmail with a custom domain (my name) for example. I pay a few dollars every year, but in return I get state-of-the-art encryption for all my mails, data protection, more privacy and I also trust the people behind it.