I really thought this article was going to offer a <i>solution,</i> not just enumerate the problems. I'm already all too familiar with the problems.<p>I like what Umbrel[0] is doing. They're essentially expecting that just like computing was able to move from centralized mainframes to homes, servers are poised to make the same migration.<p>I think they really need to solve redundancy, though. If I'm to self-host anything important on a home server, I need to know I'll have some way to use it even if my home server fails, especially if I'm not at home when it happens.<p>I'd love to see some kind of system where I could partner up with other Umbrel users for backups/the ability to restore connectivity. If I knew that in an emergency, I could call my friend in town or my brother out of state and there was <i>some</i> procedure that would allow me to connect to an encrypted backup of what I'm needing, I would feel a lot better about taking responsibility for my own system.<p>[0] <a href="https://umbrel.com" rel="nofollow">https://umbrel.com</a>
I've used <a href="https://adnauseam.io/" rel="nofollow">https://adnauseam.io/</a> for years. It's great.<p>First, it hides (most of) the ads making the internet more tolerable. Then it "opens" them in memory and clicks on ALL of them making your profile worthless.<p>The last time I pulled up my Google profile, it said I was a 18-99yo, both male and female, and was interested in EVERY topic they listed.<p>It works in both Brave and Chrome but isn't available in the Chrome Extension Store for some reason.. ;)
I agree with the author's assessment that we have a societal problem first and foremost. However, a key component of that societal problem is that most (99%+) do not care about surveillance to the degree that they would change their behavior.<p>Almost all my friends who use social media are aware the apps spy on them. They all have an anecdote like they were talking about X with their friend and when they scrolled Instagram/Tiktok an ad for X showed up, and they all say (unprompted) that it's creepy. When I suggest to them that maybe they should stop using Instagram etc, or at the very least use it on the website, to prevent this, the reaction invariably an excuse to keep using it. You can't tell these people to use Nextcloud or whatever over iCloud. They would never do it. The only thing that'd get them to switch is to offer more convenience/greater network events.<p>Benjamin Franklin's famous quote goes "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.". With tech, the same maxim applies, if you replace safety with convenience.
> Data can become irrecoverable<p>This seems to be becoming less and less of a drawback when compared to Google where exactly the same things can happen when people seem to get arbitrarily banned from their account with no recourse. Not to mention the recent push for passwordless keys that can be lost with the device.<p>Sounds like it would be better if anything because at least you have to pay for the data hosting, and so being encrypted there's no way for them to block you for entirely opaque policies or decide one day that their abuse heuristics don't like you any more.<p>In reality the primary friction to adoption with any of this entirely plausible tech is inertia. It's going to take something colossal fuck up to convince even a large minority to bother using non-free alternatives.
I think for self-hosting as a service to take off you need to persuade people that it's 10x better for non-privacy reasons. That's hard to do because the biggest value prop for most folks would be media, but unless you already have a collection it's hard to legally get your hands on DRM-free digital media.<p>When I look at the things I self-host it's mostly media (beets/navidrome/jellyfin/etc) and privacy/longevity-focused alternatives (photoprism/miniflux)<p>Only a few (huginn/archivebox/rmfakecloud/llamacpp) are for general usefulness, but the applications are pretty tech-heavy and not for the average person.<p>I wonder what applications would knock the socks off a non-technical person.
Wait, the paid tier of a service that has a free tier almost never means they're stopping data collection at the free tier of users. This article seems to confuse that with switch to a different service provider that is paid only.<p>It then goes into self-hosted, but wait why don't you just pay someone to self-host for you?<p>Bad article.
As a possible solution we can decouple data storage from data services. For data that doesn't need expensive computation, we can further decouple key owners from data storage. Users always own their data, they can choose which data services, storage, or key manager to use and they should all interoperate.<p>This is already a pretty common pattern in the cloud, just the same business entity owns all three. You basically need legislation that says business entities must interoperate with different data storage or key providers.<p>So you can subscribe to gmail from google and they store your data in Amazon or maybe EFF's data storage provider. You can then get fine-grained audit trail of how and when your data is accessed.<p>We can then come up with standard rules like maybe your data is only accessible without your end-user credential (i.e your computer+password) for law enforcement or limited operational activities described by the provider and approved by you(or your delegate).
My 2cts about Nextcloud and why *I* think it's not viable as an alternative for the average user:<p>I host my own nextcloud since a few years.<p>I mostly use it as an alternative for google photos/icloud photos, basically backing up all the images from my smartphone.<p>Hosting the instance is one thing, but setting up the automatic upload on your phone is another thing.<p>The automatic photo upload feature in the official nextcloud app is most of the time broken and slow.
And on iOS you need to keep the nextcloud app open and the screen unlocked, otherwise it won't upload.<p>That's why I use FolderSync on Android, but I don't think the average user wouldn't want to set this up and might even misconfigure it, which could just delete all images.<p>And Nextcloud itself is just very slow.
With google photos you can just scroll through thousands of images and easily find the image you took 3 years ago.<p>If i do this in nextcloud, I already had the following stuff happen:<p>- Your browser freezes<p>- The Nextcloud server (php-fpm in my case) OOMs (it used around 15-20G of RAM)<p>(The OOMs also often happen when syncing with FolderSync.)<p>I definitely wouldn't recommend it as a google photos alternative.<p>I'm not complaining as I didn't pay a penny for nextcloud itself (only the cost for the dedicated server I rent). And I still use it, as there is no better alternative.<p>But for the "mass" there is no convenient and comparable alternative to the "surveillance capitalism" services.<p>Nextcloud is good enough for me, as its the only viabke option, but IMO it doesn't cut it for leaving the other services at scale.
This is so true and one of the reasons why (shameless plug coming in) I made our project management tool Goleko.com able to self-host without any connection to our main servers.
"We used to rely on software installed locally on our computers, and are now shifting towards a model based on services and companion apps, sometimes with free tiers and subscriptions."<p>Everything I rely on is local. No reliance on remote services or companion apps.<p>It is not like I haven't tried.<p>I tried apps. But I failed to become addicted.<p>I always end up accessing the endpoints from a laptop instead of a phone because it's easier and more flexible.<p>I find a UNIX-like OS I can modify, compile and control paired with full-size keyboard and display to be more versatile. I still use offline storage.<p>When it comes to the prognostication of so-called "tech" bloggers/journalists, "we" is not me.<p>There was a story yesterday on HN about a school that does not allow smartphones. It described a multi-day school trip where no phones could be brought. After a short time, the article suggested none of the students missed their phones.<p>This is how I see "services" and "companion apps". After a relatively short time without, people would forget about them.<p>Whereas I am not going to forget about a UNIX-like OS that I can control and jump on to some new trend where I cede control to someone else. I rely on being able to control the computers I own. Giving away control is not an appealing proposition. The people marketing these "solutions" are certainly not ceding away any control. Instead they are gaining it over other peoples' computers in spades.
> Self-hosting, but as a service<p>This is the way. As more and more ai is adopted, company and private data becomes more exposed. Businesses' intelligence getting stolen and shared with others is a no go for many rational business people. Self hosting is the way if you wish to keep your secrets. People too - you don't want your personal pictures, emails, and messages leaking into someone's prompt.
I'm of the opinion that 'surveillance capitalism', as described in this article, is a problem of policy/legality, not technology.<p>Technology minded individuals keep looking for a technical solution to this problem. I'm hesitant that a technical solution exists.<p>Unfortunately, I also don't expect Congress to promptly pass new legislation that competently addresses the problem. (I am more optimistic about the efforts by the EU and individual US states.)
Honestly I'm not so much worried about using Google Photos. However I'm worried that I now can't easily leave due to the amount of photos we have. So here's my wish: I wish there is a service that can copy my photos in Google Photos to Amazon Prime Photos or iCloud. But without consuming my bandwidth or time. So like here's $20 or $50 and you duplicate my photos between the two and let me know when it is done. Perhaps I would do that once a year so needs to be incremental obviously.
Might be a tangential question, but does trying to escape surveillance matter? I somehow made myself believe that even if I self-host everything, avoid all the tracking, yada yada, unless everyone I hang out with does the same, the data brokers technically will get some information about me.<p>Realistically, you have to be very tech-savvy to properly avoid tracking, and pretty much avoid any modern social life. That already excludes most of the people in this world. And I, for sure, don't want to live a bunker-basement family life, with no outside fun. In the end, I'm not sure how to solve it, and probably making it worse with my pessimism. But is this actually a winnable battle?
> As Molly White said, “there are never purely technological solutions to societal problems”.<p>I agree. It's Conway's Law on a national scale. In our advanced capitalist society, most governance is done by corporate hegemons (finance, insurance, real estate, marketing, etc), sometimes using the de jure government as a proxy. Our digital organization reflects exactly that!<p>It is revealing that the best form of digital identification for each person are (secret) profiles created+sold by digital surveillance companies, rather than a robust + transparent digital citizenship that is managed strictly by a public entity and the subject themself.<p>Some people react to the status quo by "running into the wilderness", either literally, or metaphorically by self-hosting everything. Either way, they often become digitally isolated and maintaining their personal kingdom becomes a lifelong task. It's not fixing the underlying societal dysfunction, just avoiding it.
I've yet to read a clear explanation of how "surveillance capitalism" is any different than regular capitalism with computers. As long as people are trying to make money they're going to try and crunch data to do it better. The only way I see to effect a real change in how companies collect and use data is with regulation.
A slight change of subject but not too much.<p>An hour ago I walked into a Post Office somewhere in Scotland. I was immediately greeted with a screen hanging down from the ceiling.<p>Onn the left 75% portion of the screen a bunch of different camera feeds and on the right portion, running vertically - still photos of my face and other customers faces who were currently in the shop.<p>…And next to these still photos were things like:<p>Age: Middle aged male
Emotion: …
Glasses: No
Etc.<p>I asked the shop keeper why they were showing this, and I was met with arguments like ‘these are everywhere’, ‘airports have them too’.<p>I replied that an airport is understandably doing this, due to being a terrorism threat. But this was a small Post Office in a tiny village town in the countryside. So like comparing apples to toilet paper.<p>I asked why the camera was trying to guess my emotion. To which I was replied to ‘if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about’.<p>Society has been so conditioned into the assumption that what we have today we will have tomorrow. Except in a world of potential Trumps, Xi Jinping, Putin and more… we are setting ourselves up for the complete unknown of tomorrow.<p>This 1984 Scotland is now a place I feel like the reason to live has been dwindled down to just pure existence. I don’t think I had ever felt quite like this before this trip to the Post Office today. Life doesn’t feel like ours anymore. It’s someone else’s. The people behind the surveillance and the conditioned people who normalise it.<p>Just because the technology exists, shouldn’t mean it needs to be used. When will people ever start respecting other’s privacy? And when will people ever give a damn about it.<p>If this is already where we’re at in 2024, where are we all going to be by 2030? Is life as full of the same point today than what it was 10 years ago. And will it be less full of point by 2030.<p>Edit: typos
My current understanding is that the cost of "surveillance capitalism" has been more personalized advertising, but maybe I was under a rock for the last 20 years and missed this sensational story. Have people been discriminated against based on surveillance data? Are vehicle insurance companies going to be allowed to adjust insurance policies based on smart car surveillance, or health insurance companies adjusting policies based on consumption and behaviors? Are employers discriminating against people based on surveillance data describing their political ideologies? What's the big picture for 2023 in terms of what surveillance data is being used and how it's being used?
Anyone ever thought of creating a drop in "cloud" machine that could host self hosted services with minimal technical knowhow? The biggest technical achievement that would make this intriguing for me would be family distributed backups. If I could buy like 3 or 4 of these and have it magically do multi site clustering and backups and have some sort of app store it might solve most of the issues.<p>The provider of such a machine could also provide technical assistance in the form of:
- DNS / domain registration
- Host OS Updates
- Encrypted cloud backups
- Specialized router/firewalls to make it even easier to expose on the internet safely
- Accessories like media archival equipment
- Hardware upgrade kits<p>I mean really just <a href="https://oxide.computer/" rel="nofollow">https://oxide.computer/</a> but for consumers.
I think anything done "at Scale" eventually resembles "Surveillance Capitalism" since most of the advantage of what is often referred to as "Capitalism" is people finding valuable uses for the refuse of others.<p>An alternative more practical guide is Derek Siver's "Tech Independence" which as other's have noted has many dependencies.<p><a href="https://sive.rs/ti" rel="nofollow">https://sive.rs/ti</a>
The problem is government.
Even Trumps private twitter messages had been seized. If a former president can't protect his privacy...who can? Should you expect to have your personal communications just taken by a government bureaucrat any time they want.
I think the problem id deeper than technical, it's a political and moral problem.
Companies will cave and do what government tells them
to comply.
It seems to me, that the Starlink 10GBit connection is almost designed for someone to put a server farm aboard a ship that only sails in international waters.<p>Re: Escaping Capitalism<p>I've encountered the communal experience which feels magical, like "everything is made out of love." Here's the thing about that. Scale matters. Alignment of incentives matter. The communal experience is going to start breaking down at around 450 members or so.<p>The old Inca empire was an example of a large scale political organization which apparently worked. However, it also seems likely this also involved the killing of those who didn't cooperate.<p>Perhaps superintelligent AI will enable an alternative to Capitalism, as envisioned in Ian M. Bank's <i>Culture</i> books?