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by eitland 1972 days ago
> The solution to online privacy and data mining is not collecting it all in a central repository, it is not collecting it at all.

Am I misunderstanding this?

It seems to be an open source, self-hostable server, not a central repository?
1 comments
brnt 1972 days ago
You'd be concentrating your own data on your own server, which means you're one step away from someone capturing all your data.
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eitland 1972 days ago
Oh.

Classic Internet then, if it can't be perfect why bother at all. Let's just complain and look at all those stupid people sharing things on Facebook?

Alternatively we can set up our own servers that won't be monetized by Facebook or Google but since they can potentially be broken into, why bother?

Or do you mean we should keep our data on hard drives in a safe and plug them into an airgapped computer whenever we want to look at photos or listen to music?

This is a bit harsh but this is an important topic and at the moment I cannot come up with a better explanation.

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willemlabu 1972 days ago
I'm not advocating for anything specific here. :) And frankly, I take your point and actually agree wholeheartedly. The status quo of data mining and tracking is terrible, and leads to exactly what you're talking about: people changing their behaviour (not just online) because they feel like they're being watched[1].

I realise I'm not providing a solution. I wouldn't even feel confident at pointing a general direction. I'm merely pointing out that I don't believe the right way to solve this problem of personal data aggregation is consolidating all this personal meta-data into a single spot.

[1] https://www.socialcooling.com/

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eitland 1972 days ago
Ah, ok.

I have a couple of ideas (and/or can both be applied here to some degree):

- improve vpn to the point that people can and will use it to browse their photos.

- make hardened login solutions, run services behind that

- local hosters, stronger data protection rules

- fringe benefits at work or as part of union membership? (I admit I don't like the lock in aspect of this)

- make software local only by default

etc

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