Why do I self-host?
My reasons for self-hosting.
1. Digital freedom/independence
To put it simply, if you use a service such as Lastpass, iCloud, Dropbox, GDrive, OneDrive, etc. to store your data, you do not own it.
You are trusting corp. X to store it, secure it, and make it available to you. Beyond the obvious privacy pitfalls with this, there are many other things that could go wrong with your data being stored this way:
- Corp. X could vanish/close/“declare bankruptcy” (as with many crypto corps. lately), and you lose your data.
- Corp. X could make a policy change and lock you out from accessing your account.
- Or you could “forget” to pay the bills a few times and get locked out.
- Corp. X could get hacked, and your data gets stolen. This is the latest trend!
- Many other doomsday scenarios.
Personally, I don’t feel comfortable depending on the existence of corp. X for data that is important to me i.e. a lifetime’s worth of documents, memories, and passwords etc. I sleep much better at night knowing I am avoiding most if not all of the risks above.
2. Privacy
Normies often ask me some variation of:
- Why do I care if corp. X has my data? I have nothing to hide!
- Since I’m aware of targeted advertising, it won’t work on me, so why should I care if corp. X has my data?
To such questions, I follow-up with:
Do you want to contribute to a dystopian (Orwellian) future?
If your answer is yes, then no need to read further, the following will not change your mind.
If your answer is no, but you aren’t convinced that/how these are related, then the argument goes something like this…
- We live in a world of mass data-collection/surveillance.
- This enables corp. X to use techniques such as ML (Machine Learning) to build/train models (or “AI” - Artificial Intelligence) that aim to predict human behaviour.
- That by itself is not a problem here.
- The problems arise when corp. X use these techniques for profit without regard for the harm they cause at a population level.
I have unfortunately lived through enough of these cases to be able to cite a few recent examples:
Instagram (etc.) designs its apps/products optimizing for maximum addiction (see Smartphones and dopamine). Think slot-machines. You might think you are “too smart” to fall for these tricks, and you might be right, but what about the millions of adolescents using these platforms who aren’t as wise as you? The data collected, and techniques developed from your usage enables platforms to target not only you, but all users on the platform, including the most vulnerable.
Unfortunately, many of these kids will end up suffering from mental-health, body-image, self-esteem issues (see Mental health and social media), and for some it will be fatal. I do not think this is morally acceptable, and is primary reason I refuse to participate in social-media platforms.
You could say “well that’s due to bad parenting”, but the point remains that more and more of the digital world is having real world negative consequences regardless of your individual participation level. Another example:
By now its well known that Facebook’s (etc.) targeted advertising played a significant a role in the 2016 US Elections (see Excerpt from Facebook ex-exec). Facebook was able to do this thanks to its users voluntarily giving personal information for two decades. However, the policies that come out of this election has real world consequences to millions (if not billions) of people, regardless of their individual Facebook usage, which undermines the very purpose of a democratic republic. Regardless of your political affiliation, it should worry you that this can happen.
To summarize, it might not be a problem if individuals disregard their privacy at the individual level, but in aggregate, a population-wide disregard has dystopian consequences.
So the question you have to ask yourself is:
What can I do?
Start by valuing your privacy. Then, follow some of these tips to say no…
- Limit your exposure to these services. If a friend stops talking to you because of this, then congratulations, you’ve just gotten rid of a fake friend. You’re welcome.
- Self-host as much as you can. You can see how I implement this and replicate it yourself, though it is a bit involved for normies.
- If neither of the above work for you, then you’ll need to do some research to find an alternative source that you can trust isn’t doing the same thing. Use this as a starting point and try to search (Ctrl+f) for your service. For eg. Twitter, and Instagram both have popular options available.
- Stop using Chrome. If you must use it, use Brave instead. I advocate for Firefox. Neither are perfect, but both offer privacy respecting options in their settings. Specifically disabling cross-site tracking is important. Beyond that, install an ad-blocker extension such as UBlock Origin on both of them. Don’t forget to do the same on your mobile device!
- Things get more complicated on cell-phones. I suggest switching to a privacy respecting operating-system such as GrapheneOS. Short of this, you can only limit your usage.
- Support government policies that respect user-privacy.
