Please recommend a boomer friendly photo sharing service that is also privacy conscious…if such thing even exists.<p>Looking for easier/better alternatives than doing Nextcloud, ownCloud, etc.
Personally I don't trust anything that I don't self-host. With Hetzner I chose full-metal instead of VPS. I pay €40 for 4 TB (2x4 TB mirrored to be precise) shared among a large number of services, including Minecraft servers for kids. The load is very low and the maintenance is a pleasure. Plus I love tinkering with and learning new things, so this part of mine is fully satisfied. I learned with Hetzner that every 3 years or so a hard drive dies but they replace it within half an hour so I just let the RAID rebuild itself and that's all.
I have always used Mega[0]. It's real end to end encryption.
I would argue it also has a superior user experience across all the others.<p>[0] <a href="https://mega.nz/" rel="nofollow">https://mega.nz/</a>
I have been using (the open source) Syncthing for both personal things and business for many years. You don't need to set up a central server, just share folders via other clients.<p>If you do, however, set up a server, you can centralize your data and easily run all the backup jobs from it.
I have not found a good option yet, but next on my list is: <a href="https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism</a><p>Doesn't look like it's available as a paid service, unfortunately.
You want an end to end encrypted cloud provider like ProtonDrive or Sync.com. You can also consider using rclone or Cryptomator to encrypt data before adding it to a consumer cloud sync solution. All come with the usual caveats (do you really trust Sync.com to withstand a state actor?) and user experience compromises.
This was on Ars Technica really recently. I have not used it myself yet:<p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/foss-mobile-app-stingle-wants-to-privately-securely-back-up-your-photos/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/foss-mobile-app-stin...</a>
Yogile[0] has been built with shared albums in mind and doesn't touch your photos other than for rescaling.<p>[0] <a href="https://yogile.com" rel="nofollow">https://yogile.com</a>
You don't have to "do" Nextcloud yourself if you don't want to. Find a hoster[0] that does the work for you.<p>The client apps and the user interface are super boomer friendly.<p>[0] <a href="https://nextcloud.com/partners/" rel="nofollow">https://nextcloud.com/partners/</a>
Nothing come close to icloud photos for me. Because everyone else is using iphone which make icloud shared photo album the easiest way for old people to interact.
What would be the problem with the old school back up with 3 encrypted USB drives or small SSDs?<p>One at home, one at office and one on key chain.<p>Cheap, secure, highly available and offline.
ArsTechnica did a run down of various options recently.<p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives-to-google-photos-showdown/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives...</a>
I’ve been looking strongly at Plex’s photo support. The images are self hosted, but the service acts like a DDNS, so you can easily get to it. I run our current Plex system off of our NAS, but have been thinking about moving it to a dedicated RasPi.
I like Mylio[0] - it's local only but syncs p2p style across local network. Or obviously you can sync folders with Whatever Online Service you choose, Mega or whatever.<p><a href="https://mylio.com" rel="nofollow">https://mylio.com</a>
NextCloud that runs in my own personal server.
Been running it for a few months and I have 0 issues with it.<p>It may not have the same integration options but it's better than the alternatives.
just siasky.net or <a href="https://skygallery.hns.siasky.net/#/" rel="nofollow">https://skygallery.hns.siasky.net/#/</a>
I've got my family putting photos into a little web-app I made (a few PHP scripts) and it's long-term storage backed in rsync.net.<p>My "boomer" group have Google devices, so once they auth to my service I can pull their photo albums for import.
Have always used Google Photos. Haven't had any issues and its easy to get others to understand.<p>I realize this does not meet your criteria of privacy conscious but does meet boomer friendly. Sorry
I would be classified as a pedo if my pictures were on iCloud... even if some of the naked kid is me... I also have pictures of my kids playing in the bath.
Dropbox does automatic photo backups on Android and iOS. It also allows you to share files and folders, though I'm not sure how it compares to Apple Photos for "boomers"