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We need to rewild the internet

noemamag.com

111–120 of 273 posts

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking today that I should just start posting my stuff on a personal site. Photos, blogs, life updates, etc. It gives me that control that I want, and I don't have to worry about Meta, etc trying to monetize it. Plus I get to unplug from those "n liked your post" dopamine hits.

Yes, but does it give you the validation you deserve as a member of society?

Nobody is owed validation. We want it, but we are not owed it. Learning to cope with that desire is one of the chief signs of maturity and wisdom.

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#112
post #33
post #2

More people should be tending their "digital gardens" just to have something to curate and share. Bring back the weird, the odd, the deep-dives into topics you never imagined having such detail, bring back the strange animated GIFS, the websites always "under construction", give me your weird, give me your odd, this should be everyone's place to be free.

I remember when they were on the agenda path to eliminate gifs. You'd see posts on hacker news written by Giffy, a company seeking to make its existence justified by getting rid of gifs, all over hacker news. When I would say: This is a terrible idea, they just want to control and own the content. a gif you own, a gif you can download and so what ever you wanted, etc. boy was I down voted into oblivion. One of the re…

It’s the opposite. Being contrarian is free karma, generally. The downvotes come from picking unpopular positions, whether you’re wright or wrong. I used to get downvoted a lot when talking to people about privacy, but now those sorts of posts get upvotes. Times and prevailing opinions change

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#113

There aren't any operating systems capable of withstanding the internet for a year without updates and/or active management. Until this becomes possible, and widespread, the idea of self-hosting is going to remain niche. Furthermore, because no browser is totally secure, users are going to avoid non-popular links, perpetuating the walled gardens they already use. I fear our monoculture of operating systems has to be…

> monoculture of operating systems

There are several widely-used OS, one of which (Linux) has plenty of very different versions depending on your usecase. I'm not really sure that counts as a "monoculture"

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#114
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to personally notify every California resident of the breach, and California's Attorney General. And if one doesn't?

The state can get an injunction against you, fine you, and in some situations creates a private cause of action for the people whose information was breached to individually sue you with statutory damages available.

I'm in Canada. Can they still do that?

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking today that I should just start posting my stuff on a personal site. Photos, blogs, life updates, etc. It gives me that control that I want, and I don't have to worry about Meta, etc trying to monetize it. Plus I get to unplug from those "n liked your post" dopamine hits.

I've thought about building personal site, but the opportunity cost is just too high. The time I spend making a site has to come from somewhere and there just isn't anything I do that I want to take time from.

One hour with Hugo (and netlify) and you have a site, come on...

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#116
I wanted Tim Berners-Lee's "Solid" project to be at least a partial foundation for this, but it doesn't seem to be getting traction.

Some way to "self-host" or "own my own data" isn't very possible in a world of complex system administration and cloud providers, GDPR/Privacy, etc.

Maybe solving this problem (via FOSS, hopefully) and giving people their own internet-in-a-kit could be a good way to go?

Are there active projects like this? Is it even feasible?

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-hosting means taking a second job as a sysadmin True, in the literal sense that you will have to administrate your own system, but I'm sure there must be ways to make this easier for people. Perhaps small computers that come pre-configured with the correct specifications for being a good small-scale server and pre-installed with software that provides a simple web GUI dashboard that you can just drop files on…

> A data breach? On a small self-hosted blog or email server? Who's data would those regulations be punishing you for leaking, your own, maybe two freinds'? Say you host your own WordPress blog with comments enabled. A few of your posts get to the front page of Hacker News, and you collect a couple hundred comments from California techies. Your WordPress instance is breached because you didn't patch a zero day vulner…

Do those laws apply even if you charge no fees and serve no ads?

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take it from the time you spend doing something you care about. Take it from the time you spend doing nothing.

The time I have set aside for me to do nothing is my most valuable time! I'd rather take it from just about anything else

A personal site should be personal, in the sense that the things you share are things you value and the only value derived from it is from sharing what you value with other. That's why personal sites are the ones that are easy to tell apart. Personal should be personal, otherwise it is simply trying to establish a professional profile.)

Of course, if you have no interest in sharing your passions, don't do it. Your free time is valuable and you should only use it for things that you value.

Re: We need to rewild the internet

#120
post #40

Self hosting is definitely the way toward rewilding the internet. If everyone ran their own blogs, chats, email, etc. and let their systems federate thru protocol rather than on a single platform, the forests will thrive again.

I personally am more interested in micro-hosting services like omg.lol[1]. I do self host a few services, but they are generally on VPNs that have smaller attack surfaces. I don't think it's practical for most individuals to maintain secure web servers, but I think most people can pay a very small amount of money to get most of the benefit.

[1] https://home.omg.lol/

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