This. The real solution here is to keep your data, encrypted, on your own devices. The idea that everything needs to be in the cloud is absurd and naturally leads to concentration of power.
That is A solution. To be "the real solution", it needs to be within the grasp of a regular person. Self hosting your entire digital life is absolutely asking too much of the vast majority of people
This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corners? Don't try to regulate, just learn carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC plus codes!
You said it better than I could! As someone who does software for a living, do I want to come home and maintain a homelab that hosts photos, email, decentralized social, etc? Hell no!
Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.
This is what stops me from doing it. I used to host all my own stuff, with custom setups etc etc. But you end up having no free time, or reduces it at best, and it'll break down at the least convenient time.
The last part about it breaking can of course be true, although knock on wood has not happened to me in quite some time. But I don't find myself spending all that much time on my selfhosting setup day to day. Once a week I do a backup to external storage and upgrade software and that's it most of the time. Once everything's set up it is mostly quite hands off.
That said, I also don't think selfhosting is a realistic solution for most people.
Ideally, self hosting shouldn't be like building your own devices, vehicles, furniture and pipes. It should be like owning your own devices, vehicles, furniture and pipes. Go to a store exchange money and it runs itself with minimal maintenance. I'm not saying we are there, but it's clearly a state that could exist.
> This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corners? Don't try to regulate, just learn carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC plus codes!
you're acting like these are bad or impossible skills to learn? these is just basic skills that people should have.
It still is risky, as who knows what tools NSA & cie really have. Even if it feels safe now, it can be stored by them, and what will (quantum?) computers be able to do in a decade? And how will the US gov look like at that time?
Forget that. If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives.
It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could.
At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
Even if the encryption is sound, some day in the future laws can be written that compel a citizen to relinquish their passwords. In 2000, the UK passed a law called RIPA that can be used that way. They say it is only used in emergencies, but who is to say what constitutes an emergency.
Of course, technical solutions are only helpful for a small portion of the population, while the default is what happens to most people. Since this is Hacker News, for plausible deniability for forced password disclosure, you can use VeraCrypt hidden partitions.
the entire point of encryption is to facilitate communication across adversarial channels, if you want to keep your data in a locker you don't need encryption, and if you use encryption you can keep it stored in North Korea for all it cares
Not only. Someone could break into your house and steal a PC, or you might lose your laptop while traveling. You don't want someone reading your files, passwords, or crypto wallets. You absolutely want some form of disk encryption unless you have exceptionally good physical security.
