FOSS

My interest in self-hosting began in my with my interests in internet privacy. Plastered all over the internet are stories about how much Google, Facebook and Amazon know about you. I deleted my Facebook account years ago, and I’m too paranoid to go back to the site because there’s a real possibility that Facebook has cached my account, ready to spin it back up in case I try to login again. The ads served to me were too accurate for my liking. This is despite almost never clicking on them! I have become convinced of the idea that, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. From this assumption, it follows that anywhere I trust with my data that I am not paying for (like Google Drive, Google Photos, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter) is using my data to earn money. We know that Google uses the labels you add to Photos to train it’s AI, and Facebook uses (at least) Instagram photos to train it’s AI. For some, the value proposition of allowing a company to use your data for a useful service in return is an acceptable one. I find this to be a reasonable stance, but I took my growing interest in internet privacy as a chance to learn about how I can take control of my data. ...