God, I could have written most of this post myself. I made a few different tech choices - bought a projector instead of trying to un-smart a smart TV, and my IS

God, I could have written most of this post myself. I made a few different tech choices - bought a projector instead of trying to un-smart a smart TV, and my ISP thankfully provides me with a static IP for free so I can easily access my Pi over the internet. But the core self-hosting and privacy tools are the same - LineageOS, Nextcloud, F-Droid, Pi server, Linux desktop. Same cursing when Nextcloud slows down or raises nonexisting conflicts. Same confusion/annoyance from my friends or dates when I send them a slow self-hosted link instead of just sharing via Whatsapp. Same asking myself why am I doing all of this, as I am no dangerous dissident or whistleblower (yet!). One big difference between me and Mr. Lawson is that I'm not entirely opposed to running hostile apps. I do use WhatsApp because I live in Western Europe where not doing so would, sadly, cut me off from 90% of social life. I still use Google Maps because I need business contact / opening hours / restaurant menu information far more than I do accurate GPS navigation (but I would freeze it and whip out OSMAnd+ if I needed to navigate to my local dissident society meetup). And I use GBoard because it's just smoother than Anysoft or Floris or other OSS keyboards. However, I consider them hostile apps so while I choose to run them, I don't want to let them run unrestricted; I sandbox them as much as possible. GBoard has no internet access, period; neither does Google Translate (after downloading the language files I cared about). My phone doesn't have a built-in Google Account, so Google Maps runs in anonymous mode (I send bookmarks to Joplin); it constantly brings up a popup complaining that it can't run without Play Services, but immediately proves itself a liar by running perfectly anyway. For other apps, TrackerControl forbids them from connecting to any domain I don't explicitly allow. Insular prevents them from accessing my local data. Thankfully, the only data-hoovering apps that I need to janitor in such a way are WhatsApp and Tinder; everything else either has a FOSS client, or runs as a webapp (my browser, of course, has an extensive and very very clunky suite of privacy addons). Most importantly, I have a simple rule of not doing or writing anything on WhatsApp that I would be embarrassed to see plastered on a billboard in front of my house - thankfully that encompasses 99% of my everyday life. For the remaining 1% of content, I find people are more understanding when I tell them 'mind if we discuss this over a phone call or Signal?'. One last thing, since I mentioned the TrackerControl app - although I try not to be a tech vegan and simply say that I have a passion for tinkering and a bit of a paranoid streak, I've found most people's eyes to light up a little up when I open TC and show them how a random innocuous app is connecting to a half-dozen different social media websites. It's not enough to convert anyone - and I wouldn't try anyway, given how cumbersome even a plain LineageOS installation is to maintain - but it does give them pause, and they at least claim to understand why I may care about this stuff.