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I think the only way to break the cycle is to selfhost. Google will not scan your mails, will not scan your drive. Microsoft will not scan you drive. Apple wil

I think the only way to break the cycle is to selfhost. Google will not scan your mails, will not scan your drive. Microsoft will not scan you drive. Apple will not process your pictures. Twitter will not control your speech. NSA will not see if you were at a protest, or went to a medical facility to perform a surgery of any kind. "But does it matter if NSA sees me at a protest?" asks somebody. We will see. We will see. Maybe in a year. Maybe in two. Maybe never. Let's hope so. Most of things you can self host. Probably the biggest problem is to selfhost videos, as they are heavy. "But it is difficult to self host, and dangerous" says somebody. Yes it is. Yes it is. "But I will not be able to talk with my friends" complains somebody. Let's wait how it all pans out. Maybe corporations and governments will not see and control everything we do. Maybe they will. They have all the money they want. They can make all the money they want. They have a machine, they can make all the money. It's not about money. It's about control, it's about their vision of how they wanna see the world.

bt4u 3y ago
Self hosting is not sufficient. We saw that with the kiwi farms website. I didn't follow their story too close but it's wild how not just Cloudflare dropped them but also how big ISPs were willing to drop routing to them. You can self host. It helps. Won't help you if major ISPs decide your self hosted ip shouldn't exist online.
- deathbypenguin 3y ago
  I would argue that the vast majority of self-hosting business-cases/needs are not as 'edge' as KiwiFarms.
- uselpa 3y ago
  True, but only if you threaten their business model, which is unlikely if you selfhost for yourself and relatives.
- danaris 3y ago
  There's a huge difference between some random techie self-hosting their own website and email for personal use, and a server full of people who spew hate and actively attack others. If you're worried about getting the same treatment as KiwiFarms...maybe don't spread hate or dox and stalk people??
  - renegat0x0 3y ago
    https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html Governments make the same arguments. If you want encryption you are either a terrorist, or extremist. Everybody should be able to self host, and nobody should be looked down upon for selfhosting. It is not a bad thing that somebody wants not to rely on any centralized government or corporate system, or want their data to be private. Centralized bodies are prone to abuse power. We should work towards decentralized systems, and towards self hosting.
    - danaris 3y ago
      I mean, I agree that we should both promote and support self-hosting, but it does not at all follow that what happened to KiwiFarms was in any way an injustice or a cautionary tale about the horrors of centralized power. If the ability to self-host came, without exception, at the cost of being able to prevent groups like KiwiFarms from bullying, harassing and abusing people, then it would not be worth it. Fortunately, that's not the case! We can have a middle ground, where people who treat each other with respect and dignity can self-host without fear, and people who abuse the system to actively harm others can be taken offline. This is a feature, not a bug.
ChatGTP 3y ago
How can people honestly self-host though? Mail for example, is hard to self-host, I do wonder though if this is a good use for something like (calm down) blockchain? Where we all just run a light weight piece of kit like a rasberry pi and host a hub which runs a mesh network and messages are passed over that automatically encrypted with your private key which can also be retrieved over the network.
- kulikalov 3y ago
  It seems possible to create separate tiny devices for different applications and sell them prepackaged. The installation process would look like plugging it into electrical outlet and connecting to your local Wi-Fi. Redundancy can be achieved using close friends and family devices of the same class.
- renegat0x0 3y ago
  I am running a set of SBCs, but I read that it is better to use one server [1]. I suppose one could go with a VM, or portainer, or Yacht, or some other software to visualize everything. Right now I am using a set or solutions: * email * [2] * files * using NextCloud * blog * using Hugo * news * using my own RSS reader * pihole * to filter things What I consider to use in the future * pictures * using photoprism * citadel * I found some sort of suites like citadel. Not sure if that works, if it is good, or if it fits my needs at all [3]. At the first glance seems like a fun project. Links: [1] https://specbranch.com/posts/one-big-server/ https://specbranch.com/posts/one-big-server/ [2] https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz [3] https://www.citadel.org/ https://www.citadel.org/ All in all it is time consuming to setup up, and update regularly.
  - adql 3y ago
    For me it was mostly one time setup cost and once-every-2-years Debian upgrade. unattended-upgrade does the security upgrades and I occasionally upgrade the rss reader (as it is not packaged) mail was pretty much fire-and-forget postfix+dovecot on file config, no DB for list of accounts + some catchalls. If I had to pay say $5 for each of those services vs pay myself to manage that it would more less come out the same, minus ability to fix any little annoyances I had directly vs hoping cloud provider gives an option for it. I do use syncthing for file sync so no annoying dealings with PHP apps
austin-cheney 3y ago
100% What if you could self host on all your devices and they were all seamlessly connected to each other like a single distributed OS without any kind of server in the middle? Then when your data is abused you have nobody to blame but yourself and all your data is always available so long as your devices are connected. No ads, no weaponized personal data, no spam, no extra expenses. Its just your hardware, your internet connection, and just the right software solution.
- RamenJunkie_ 3y ago
  The problem there becomes bandwidth. Its better, but upload speeds are still not great and sometimes I think that its intentionally done to help funnel people to using monitizable web services instead of just self hosting everything.
  - austin-cheney 3y ago
    In asymmetric networks this is true, however as asymmetric bandwidth is an old trend that is dying out. That is good. On high bandwidth networks, 300mbps+, everything is symmetric. For example my home network connection is about 860-920nbps up and down where the upload is generally quite a bit faster than the download. The reason why networks used to be symmetric is because ISPs believed users downloaded far more frequently than they uploaded and therefore a greater percentage of the pipe was dedicated to download channels. That increases QOS on bandwidth constrained pipes but comes at a traffic management cost. Now IPS figure if the network is already fast and the user wants it to be even faster then they can just pay for a larger pipe and everybody's happy.
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
>Google will not scan your mails Except the ones you send to people using Google...
- twelve40 3y ago
  so you punish your lazy "friends" like, i dunno, your real estate agent by refusing to read emails from them because they sold their souls to Gmail. This is so absurd.
- hosteur 3y ago
  Arguably then it is no longer your emails.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
afpx 3y ago
Why can’t a non-profit with a community board run these types of services? Like Wikipedia.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  They can. People just have to give up higher pay to work on that instead. But I think this basically exists and is called indieweb?
- sph 3y ago
  This is the order of preference to store my personal data (i.e email, files, etc.): 1. Self-hosted by me 2. Stored by a for-profit company I am paying 3. Stored by a megacorp 4. Stored by a non-profit -- 2 and 3 have an economic incentive not to lose my data, and have money to pay for decent engineers. 4 is basically having my data stored on a crappy Core2 Duo server under a staircase, managed by a teenager
  - adql 3y ago
    I'd agree on that about e-mail but honestly wouldn't care for chat, as long as I can keep logs locally. > 4 is basically having my data stored on a crappy Core2 Duo server under a staircase, managed by a teenager ... isn't 1 the same then ? Aside from teenager part
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      See my comment, but I have some terrible trenched stories with how non profit run service. A last one : I was ask to pry open the personal windows of a freshly dead employee because apparently a bunch of critical informations were stored on it ( payroll, bunch of passwords to Linux boxes running stuff ) I refused, then asked to get permission of family. Then I learned that the plan was to basically reclaim that personal laptop of a dead employee because migrating stuff was too hard. I told them I was busy. I think they stole that laptop containing private correspondance and still use it today. It’s a NGO you heard off. Running on most continents. My take : IT and security are a distant thought in those places and you need strong top down directions and training to enforce basic hygiene
uselpa 3y ago
I do selfhost as well, but unless your partner or child is also a nerd, digital legacy can become a problem.

bt4u 3y ago

Self hosting is not sufficient. We saw that with the kiwi farms website. I didn't follow their story too close but it's wild how not just Cloudflare dropped them but also how big ISPs were willing to drop routing to them. You can self host. It helps. Won't help you if major ISPs decide your self hosted ip shouldn't exist online.

deathbypenguin 3y ago
I would argue that the vast majority of self-hosting business-cases/needs are not as 'edge' as KiwiFarms.
uselpa 3y ago
True, but only if you threaten their business model, which is unlikely if you selfhost for yourself and relatives.
danaris 3y ago
There's a huge difference between some random techie self-hosting their own website and email for personal use, and a server full of people who spew hate and actively attack others. If you're worried about getting the same treatment as KiwiFarms...maybe don't spread hate or dox and stalk people??
- renegat0x0 3y ago
  https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html Governments make the same arguments. If you want encryption you are either a terrorist, or extremist. Everybody should be able to self host, and nobody should be looked down upon for selfhosting. It is not a bad thing that somebody wants not to rely on any centralized government or corporate system, or want their data to be private. Centralized bodies are prone to abuse power. We should work towards decentralized systems, and towards self hosting.
  - danaris 3y ago
    I mean, I agree that we should both promote and support self-hosting, but it does not at all follow that what happened to KiwiFarms was in any way an injustice or a cautionary tale about the horrors of centralized power. If the ability to self-host came, without exception, at the cost of being able to prevent groups like KiwiFarms from bullying, harassing and abusing people, then it would not be worth it. Fortunately, that's not the case! We can have a middle ground, where people who treat each other with respect and dignity can self-host without fear, and people who abuse the system to actively harm others can be taken offline. This is a feature, not a bug.

ChatGTP 3y ago

How can people honestly self-host though? Mail for example, is hard to self-host, I do wonder though if this is a good use for something like (calm down) blockchain? Where we all just run a light weight piece of kit like a rasberry pi and host a hub which runs a mesh network and messages are passed over that automatically encrypted with your private key which can also be retrieved over the network.

kulikalov 3y ago
It seems possible to create separate tiny devices for different applications and sell them prepackaged. The installation process would look like plugging it into electrical outlet and connecting to your local Wi-Fi. Redundancy can be achieved using close friends and family devices of the same class.
renegat0x0 3y ago
I am running a set of SBCs, but I read that it is better to use one server [1]. I suppose one could go with a VM, or portainer, or Yacht, or some other software to visualize everything. Right now I am using a set or solutions: * email * [2] * files * using NextCloud * blog * using Hugo * news * using my own RSS reader * pihole * to filter things What I consider to use in the future * pictures * using photoprism * citadel * I found some sort of suites like citadel. Not sure if that works, if it is good, or if it fits my needs at all [3]. At the first glance seems like a fun project. Links: [1] https://specbranch.com/posts/one-big-server/ https://specbranch.com/posts/one-big-server/ [2] https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz [3] https://www.citadel.org/ https://www.citadel.org/ All in all it is time consuming to setup up, and update regularly.
- adql 3y ago
  For me it was mostly one time setup cost and once-every-2-years Debian upgrade. unattended-upgrade does the security upgrades and I occasionally upgrade the rss reader (as it is not packaged) mail was pretty much fire-and-forget postfix+dovecot on file config, no DB for list of accounts + some catchalls. If I had to pay say $5 for each of those services vs pay myself to manage that it would more less come out the same, minus ability to fix any little annoyances I had directly vs hoping cloud provider gives an option for it. I do use syncthing for file sync so no annoying dealings with PHP apps

austin-cheney 3y ago

100% What if you could self host on all your devices and they were all seamlessly connected to each other like a single distributed OS without any kind of server in the middle? Then when your data is abused you have nobody to blame but yourself and all your data is always available so long as your devices are connected. No ads, no weaponized personal data, no spam, no extra expenses. Its just your hardware, your internet connection, and just the right software solution.

RamenJunkie_ 3y ago
The problem there becomes bandwidth. Its better, but upload speeds are still not great and sometimes I think that its intentionally done to help funnel people to using monitizable web services instead of just self hosting everything.
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  In asymmetric networks this is true, however as asymmetric bandwidth is an old trend that is dying out. That is good. On high bandwidth networks, 300mbps+, everything is symmetric. For example my home network connection is about 860-920nbps up and down where the upload is generally quite a bit faster than the download. The reason why networks used to be symmetric is because ISPs believed users downloaded far more frequently than they uploaded and therefore a greater percentage of the pipe was dedicated to download channels. That increases QOS on bandwidth constrained pipes but comes at a traffic management cost. Now IPS figure if the network is already fast and the user wants it to be even faster then they can just pay for a larger pipe and everybody's happy.

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

>Google will not scan your mails Except the ones you send to people using Google...

twelve40 3y ago
so you punish your lazy "friends" like, i dunno, your real estate agent by refusing to read emails from them because they sold their souls to Gmail. This is so absurd.
hosteur 3y ago
Arguably then it is no longer your emails.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

afpx 3y ago

Why can’t a non-profit with a community board run these types of services? Like Wikipedia.

sanderjd 3y ago
They can. People just have to give up higher pay to work on that instead. But I think this basically exists and is called indieweb?
sph 3y ago
This is the order of preference to store my personal data (i.e email, files, etc.): 1. Self-hosted by me 2. Stored by a for-profit company I am paying 3. Stored by a megacorp 4. Stored by a non-profit -- 2 and 3 have an economic incentive not to lose my data, and have money to pay for decent engineers. 4 is basically having my data stored on a crappy Core2 Duo server under a staircase, managed by a teenager
- adql 3y ago
  I'd agree on that about e-mail but honestly wouldn't care for chat, as long as I can keep logs locally. > 4 is basically having my data stored on a crappy Core2 Duo server under a staircase, managed by a teenager ... isn't 1 the same then ? Aside from teenager part
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    See my comment, but I have some terrible trenched stories with how non profit run service. A last one : I was ask to pry open the personal windows of a freshly dead employee because apparently a bunch of critical informations were stored on it ( payroll, bunch of passwords to Linux boxes running stuff ) I refused, then asked to get permission of family. Then I learned that the plan was to basically reclaim that personal laptop of a dead employee because migrating stuff was too hard. I told them I was busy. I think they stole that laptop containing private correspondance and still use it today. It’s a NGO you heard off. Running on most continents. My take : IT and security are a distant thought in those places and you need strong top down directions and training to enforce basic hygiene

uselpa 3y ago

I do selfhost as well, but unless your partner or child is also a nerd, digital legacy can become a problem.