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Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

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Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#71

Post by lotsofpulp »

nkrisc wrote: post #49
bluebarbet wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly offtopic, but the sheer scale of the phenomenon you allude to - of screen-addled zombification - is really turbo-charging my own misanthropy. People staggering around, necks hunched, eyes down, all but glued to their miserable little toys. Everywhere, everyone, all the time. It's just pathetic . I guess I had hoped humans would have more self-control than this.

Stop viewing them in isolation and view them as a product of their environment. They weren't born with a phone in hand, someone gave it to them and someone created Tik Tok for them.

I got screwed, I had to pay quite a few hundred dollars with a 2 year contract with ATT and I waited in line at 6AM for my first smart phone.

Even today, I doubt I could get anyone to just give me a smartphone.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#72

Post by dd_xplore »

When I was a kid, a 4GB pendrive was a huge thing for me. I used to think my 40GB HDD would never fill up, but then Internet started to grow. Today it doesn’t even matter how muc storage you have it’ll always fill up.

I have started to self host quite a lot of stuff but eve then every storage solution has a life of 5-6 years in which atleast one of the components would fail. We click enormous amounts of photos but they do not have any impact like printed photo albums. With ever growing storage costs (both cloud based and self hosted) I’m thinking of going back to keep only important stuff that too in print format.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#73

Post by pessimizer »

xandrius wrote: post #61
InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

If even the people who experience a different time gives up because "nothing changes" then it's truly over. We need to do what we preach: sure, things are worse in certain things but for sure setting up a local network with top-level open source self-hosted alternatives is the easiest it has ever been ever. Also I think people forget to realise that the type of people who were online in the 90s are still online, many…

> We need to do what we preach

You start.

edit: I have no idea what people think they're talking about when they're like "people should just" and "you should just." The cage is not all in your mind, dude; it's an actual cage, guarded by people with guns.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#74

Post by dangus »

This article seems pretty far detached from the problems that people experience using technology. It’s the kind of thing that only deeply technical people consider.

When someone uses a service like Dropbox or iCloud Drive or Google Drive, they really aren’t experiencing any kind of problem where their data “isn’t theirs” or is “trapped.” It’s not that hard to migrate to something else and the services themselves are reasonably low-friction.

In terms of social data, users don’t really have a major issue with the status quo, and those who do have already developed relatively popular solutions like Mastodon and BlueSky.

Even “proprietary” photos applications like Apple Photos and Google Photos have very easy migration paths to other services.

So what exactly is the problem we’re trying to solve here? Giving me an @Bob handle? Did I want that or need that?

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#75

Post by danparsonson »

switknee wrote: post #29
seu wrote: post #6

The fact that the AT Protocol relies on everyone having a domain name, which is a centralized system over which few people have control, and about whose workings most people have no clue about, is problematic. Also impractical, once we consider that - as far as I can understand - 8 billion people should have their own domain name.

What's impractical about everyone having a domain name? It surely isn't due to lack of domain names, because foo.bar.baz.bim.bim.bap.com is a valid domain name. It is true that full data sovereignty isn't something most people are interested in, but this is more about a cooperative model for data ownership and access. Having your data identifier be JackDaniels@yahoo.com isn't particularly different from it being jack…

Small point but

> foo.bar.baz.bim.bim.bap.com

is owned by the owner of bap.com, under the current system.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#76

Post by pavlov »

InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

> “Applying for a job or apartment or anything today means creating endless pointless copies of your pesonal information in databases across the world that will eventually be neglected, hacked, exploited, sold off etc”

This problem is practically fixed in the EU (to the extent that legislation can fix it). Data protection laws have enough teeth that real companies can’t afford to keep or sell customer information illegally.

But people only see the tip of the iceberg and think EU data protection is something to do with annoying cookie banners. We need to do a better job of celebrating Europe’s real achievements in making the digital world better for its citizens. Instant zero-fee bank transfers are another example.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#77

Post by Forgeties79 »

Khaine wrote: post #11

It was an idea that never went away. Many people have wanted to self host everything. Sadly companies have found it easier to centralise, and then as a bonus can monetise that data.

I’ve always had this like 70% formed idea about Plex and how it’s indicative of how people want to self host more than we realize, but I’ve never quite been able to articulate what I’m thinking here and what the larger implications are.

Plex is obviously not true self hosting, but it’s a lot closer to it than a Netflix subscription, and the number of people who I do not consider very tech savvy who have not only been joining other people servers but trying to set up their own is staggering lately. And they’re not simply doing it because they want free movies or something. A lot of them have done it for the same reason I initially started: their kids.

I am concerned about the media that is put in front of my kids. I care about what shows they are watching. Kids are going to get their hands on screens there almost is no getting around it, so I would rather not trust YouTube et al with deciding what my kids do and don’t see. I can’t realistically be there to catch literally everything they watch, but if they’re using my server I know they only have access to a certain Library at all times so I can rest a lot easier. In a lot of ways I imagine this is how our parents felt when we were kids. On cable television growing up there were only so many “weird” or troubling things that could pop up, definitely nothing as extreme as we see today, and you could be reasonably aware of what most of those things were and know what channels to forbid/what times your kids should not have free access to the TV.

I found a lot of other parents feel the same way here. They’re just tired of feeling like the Internet is such an incredibly hostile place and want to find ways to take a little power back into their own hands.

I don’t know hopefully something useful popped up in that rant above. I have a lot of disjointed thoughts about this I really haven’t been able to bring together.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#78

Post by hnlmorg »

erlend_sh wrote: post #31
InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

This is demonstrably not fantasy as the example case is a fully productionized network (Bluesky and the rest of AT-net) that’s having real-world impact to the point where it’s under threat from several authoritarian states.

Honestly, that’s not been my experience. Granted the UK is less authoritarian than most. But the general attitude is people who care don’t even use Bluesky and those that don’t continue to use Meta services because why wouldn’t they if they don’t care.

I know the topic of mental health and social media is different from the topic of independence vs the monolithic web. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t significant overlap in terms of those who are willing to boycott Meta for privacy reasons are also the kinds of people who likely dislike social media for other societal reasons too.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#79

Post by pessimizer »

erlend_sh wrote: post #31
InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

This is demonstrably not fantasy as the example case is a fully productionized network (Bluesky and the rest of AT-net) that’s having real-world impact to the point where it’s under threat from several authoritarian states.

> the point where it’s under threat from several authoritarian states.

This is a victim fantasy, and if being under intense attack from the state meant you were rebelling against the authoritarian system, then you would be capping for Parler, Gab, X and Tiktok. Bluesky, however, is only under attack from its own users, who are authoritarian trolls. At least the management seem to be getting sick of them, because it is actively inhibiting their growth* that they've been used as a base for the angriest, most entitled, least interesting people on the planet. It must be hell trying to manage a site filled with people demanding to speak to the manager.

It is also just a centralized twitter clone backed by VC looking for a return; not a revolution.

[*] Of course, it was their strategy to cater to that group because of all the free advertising they'd get from the media. But it had and has nothing to do with Dorsey's hopeful redemption arc, which was only about decentralization (i.e. not having speech under the control of people like him) and resilience. Bluesky was supposed to be bittorrent.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#80

Post by ArcHound »

pessimizer wrote: post #73
xandrius wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If even the people who experience a different time gives up because "nothing changes" then it's truly over. We need to do what we preach: sure, things are worse in certain things but for sure setting up a local network with top-level open source self-hosted alternatives is the easiest it has ever been ever. Also I think people forget to realise that the type of people who were online in the 90s are still online, many…

> We need to do what we preach You start. edit: I have no idea what people think they're talking about when they're like "people should just" and "you should just." The cage is not all in your mind, dude; it's an actual cage, guarded by people with guns.

Not OP, but I am self-hosting a bunch of things, like my blog. I am trying to move away from Google, my primary email for important things is under my domain (not purely self-hosted, but still). I am also creating backups so that I can recover if a service is gone for any reason.

So yea, some of us are practicing what we preach.

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