Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale

Re:Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale by loughnane on Thursday January 18, 2024 @12:27PM (#39044617)

I think for self-hosting as a service to take off you need to persuade people that it's 10x better for non-privacy reasons. That's hard to do because the biggest value prop for most folks would be media, but unless you already have a collection it's hard to legally get your hands on DRM-free digital media.

When I look at the things I self-host it's mostly media (beets/navidrome/jellyfin/etc) and privacy/longevity-focused alternatives (photoprism/miniflux)

Only a few (huginn/archivebox/rmfakecloud/llamacpp) are for general usefulness, but the applications are pretty tech-heavy and not for the average person.

I wonder what applications would knock the socks off a non-technical person.

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Re:Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale by MeltedVoltage on Thursday January 18, 2024 @01:05PM (#39045161)

I think self-hosting could be viable for more people if two things would happen:

- ISP's need to give a permanent IP's and more upload bandwidth in "regular", low-cost internet plans or at least a "self-hoster" addition

- There needs to be a protocol standard to communicate with home routers for auto-configuring the network in a safe way to be able to access services and applications on certain devices outside of the local network. I don't think it currently is possible in a robust enough way

With those two things I can imagine dedicated appliances that are accessible enough for non-technical users. But the experience has to be as seamless as video game consoles in order to reach "the masses"

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Re:Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale by loughnane on Thursday January 18, 2024 @02:25PM (#39046381)

That's a good point. Last I checked I pay $15 for a static IP.

For access, i feel something UX-friendly powered by wireguard could do the trick. My own use is to just flip the "connect to my home server" button in wireguard and then I have access to everything. I leave it on most of the time but still have to toggle it if things get weird. Seems like that ought to be able to be wrapped in something prettier.

I def think a "box you set up" is the right way to do it.

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Re:Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale by rglullis on Thursday January 18, 2024 @12:52PM (#39044950)

> unless you already have a collection it's hard to legally get your hands on DRM-free digital media.

Sneakernet meets the fediverse: https://funkwhale.audio

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Re:Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale by cherryteastain on Thursday January 18, 2024 @01:24PM (#39045492)

> it's hard to legally get your hands on DRM-free digital media

Time to hoist the jolly roger and plunder the high seas, friend

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Re:Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale by loughnane on Thursday January 18, 2024 @02:27PM (#39046395)

I'm sure most folks on this forum are capable of doing that, but if the question is mass-adoption I think illegal copying of other files---even if the law is bad---is a bar.

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