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Imagine having to live your life with this irrational paranoia that your email is so important that you make irrational decisions of making your email less secu
by meta_ai_x 1y ago
Imagine having to live your life with this irrational paranoia that your email is so important that you make irrational decisions of making your email less secure(by trying to host it yourself), more hassle (setting personal email servers).
To what end? Unless you are in the top 20,000 or so people who are actively being snopped on, it's just a waste of life to spend so much time to de-google, de-openai, de-meta, de-microsoft your life.
But of course this is a highly unpopular opinion on HN, but I have yet to see a single instance of a person whose life dramatically changed because they hosted their own email server instead of just using gmail. (unless you sell those services to other paranoid people and make money)
- mtillman 1y ago[flagged]
- jowea 1y agoThere are a few other reasons to degoogle than paranoia. The most obvious reason are the surprise bans.
- alganet 1y agoNope, Google is a friend. It keeps my records outside of reach of possible lower actors. If it turns out to be an enemy, then everyone's screwed either way.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoNo, not everyone, just random people who suffer false positives by the abuse sensing algorithms
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago> irrational decisions of making your email less secure(by trying to host it yourself) data-less attack on some very widely used open source software.
- user3939382 1y agoWe need more people that are willing to stand on their principles not less. Often these measures are a rational reaction to unethical companies that don’t deserve a relationship with us however convenient that may be.
- alganet 1y agoSimplest explanation is often the most accurate. A big company wants my data, or is it just an idiot who cloned my hard drive? Just an idiot who cloned my hard drive is the most likely scenario.
- plsbenice34 1y agoYou are really claiming that Google doesnt want your data? And claiming that big companies in general don't want your data? It's so absurd that i am not sure i understand your comment correctly. It is an absolute 100% guarantee that Google wants your data
- alganet 1y agoThey want some statistics. Not my personal information (I have nothing of value). Maybe they want it for a good cause, who knows? Would I really trust a random interneter over a company that has a reputation to keep? You overestimate my political biases.
- plsbenice34 1y agoAdvertising companies including google make many billions by gathering, using, selling the personal information of people just like you
- amclennon 1y agoI think the person you're replying to is trying to make the point that people are generally OK with this, as long as it does not have an adverse impact on their personal lives. The hacker cloning the hard drive is likely to leverage this data to defraud or blackmail them, but Google et. al are not.
- 31337Logic 1y ago[flagged]
- xyzzy123 1y agoI think of it more of an aesthetic preference. While I use gmail today I don't negatively view people who choose to self host. Some people are militant about editors, others are "discerning" (snobbish?) about operating systems or ONLY using free software. It takes all types and they help keep the world going. It's like a high maintenance garden feature. It signals a few things about you: high technical capacity, unusual amounts of free time, unusual priorities.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- spacedcowboy 1y agoI mean, it's not that hard to "de-google, de-openai, de-meta, de-microsoft your life" - Don't use gmail - Don't use chatGPT - Don't use facebook - Don't use windows That's pretty easy if you use a Mac, and I qualify for all of those just because I don't want to use any of the above. I also don't use Twitter, so bonus! Not that my email is of any value to anyone other than myself, but just not liking any of the services above is sufficient...
- jay_kyburz 1y agoerr. apple should be on that list.
- slater 1y agoerr, no it shouldn't.
- thfuran 1y agoThat's not a very compelling argument.
- slater 1y agoNeither was the other person's.
- jay_kyburz 1y agohere you go.. found this in another thread about the signal fiasco. Just one small example. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi-complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv... Apple puts on a good face, and I will admit I think there are probably better than the rest. But they sill put you in a walled garden that can be a little difficult to step out of.
- 1y ago
- skupig 1y agoSome people choose to have principles and live by them. Self-hosting email isn't really worth the hassle IMO, but switching to a smaller provider is (I moved to Fastmail).
- abc-1 1y agoAll the comments reacting with hate because they know, deep down, it’s true. They’re not the main character. Nobody cares about their hyper encrypted nix home server with the perfect firewall setup. And they’re certainly not getting those hours of their life back.
- nothrabannosir 1y agoI can downvote this with a clean conscience because I don't have a home server but aside from that you almost got me 100%.
- npunt 1y agoWhen the panopticon eventually processes all if its collected data, and winds up scoring you as above some threshold of having the wrong opinions, or being associated with those who do, you may come to a different conclusion. We're now very much living in the time when this kind of thing is likely to happen, it's no longer theory or paranoia anymore. Why would powers that be stop at snooping on 20k when we can now basically do it to everyone? I mean, look at the present news cycle and think for a second.
- rhelz 1y agoIndividually, yes, our email doesn't amount to much. But when you can aggregate it, feed it into an LLM, etc. Kind of like how individually, our little lives and our circle of boring friends doesn't amount to much, but Facebook is one of the most profitable companies in history. The flip side is that no one person can really do anything about it. If I delete my facebook account, so what? There would need to be aggregate and mass action--against which there are so many prisoner-dilemma-esque barriers that its never going to happen.
- stephen_g 1y agoYou don't have to have paranoia or self-host, I think it's enough to just use a smaller email provider to try and keep some diversity in the ecosystem, so I use Fastmail instead of Google Apps (now Workspace or whatever) that I used to use.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nuker 1y ago> just a waste of life to spend so much time to de-google, de-openai, de-meta, de-microsoft your life. Glad you did not include "de-apple". iCloud is now my only email provider, I moved to it many years ago. With my own domain too.
- recursive 1y agoDon't have to de-apple if you never appled.
- RockRobotRock 1y agoIt's nice to feel like you have some semblance of control in your life, even if it's in a very small way. Everyone has to draw the line between security and convenience somewhere, but I still feel catharsis when I see someone taking a stand and doing the hard thing, even if I myself choose not to do that.
- cowmix 1y agoOh thank god Google has stayed so principled under political pressure! Even with the threat of being broken up, they’ve been a rock. And rest easy—your Gmail definitely isn’t being quietly indexed and funneled into some RAG system to help certain friendly agencies flag “disloyal” citizens for... let’s say, enhanced oversight. As for “Don’t be evil” disappearing from their core values? Totally normal. Just streamlining the brand, I’m sure. And of course, I hardly know anyone who’s lost years of email, only to have Google’s famously responsive support team leap into action and do absolutely nothing to recover it.
- nobody9999 1y ago>Imagine having to live your life with this irrational paranoia that your email is so important that you make irrational decisions of making your email less secure(by trying to host it yourself), more hassle (setting personal email servers). >To what end? Because my business is my business and not that of some corporate entity for whom I am the product to be sold. Yeah. No.