I can write poetry, so I asked a new friend:

In the realm of tech's changing tide,
Where billions flowed like an endless ride,
Investor money, a torrent's stream,
Built startups bright with a lofty dream.

But now, the era draws to a close,
As monoliths emerge, the story goes.
They tighten their grip, a vice-like hold,
Squeezing pennies from users, bold and cold.

Fair or not, the question arises,
Do we still want to wear their disguises?
Are we mere billboards, a canvas for their name,
Or can we reclaim our autonomy, break free from the game?

In this pivotal moment, we must pause,
Reconsider, question, and find our cause.
To degoogling, a path unfolds,
Where privacy and freedom firmly hold.

Privacy Guides, a beacon of light,
Leading us to services that respect our right.
No longer pawns in their data-collecting scheme,
We seek alternatives that make our souls gleam.

Plexus, a treasure trove of shared knowledge,
Mapping compatibility beyond the edge.
A community united, hand in hand,
Building a future where we take a stand.

And in that random PDF, a study's gaze,
Unveiling the truth in Google's data maze.
Awareness dawns, eyes open wide,
As we uncover the layers they've tried to hide.

So let us step back, reassess our role,
As users, as consumers, with a collective goal.
To break free from the clutches that bind,
Embrace a future where our privacy we find.

For the era of user exploitation wanes,
And in its place, a new dawn remains.
Where we reclaim our voices, make choices anew,
And shape a world where fairness rings true.

Yes. But remember to share!

Just your two cents lol

I self-host my own mail server. I don’t send many emails, but they seem to be arriving correctly whenever I do at the moment, but it wasn’t always like this. I’ve properly setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC, which helps a lot, but my IP address was blacklisted on some servers from a previous owner I guess. I have a VPS from OVH. I had to manually fill out some forms to get Microsoft Outlook to accept emails from my server. Despite that, it has been working flawlessly. I have my own domain since 2017, and I’d say the age of the domain is also important.

Not OP, but I used to self host email. I gave up because both google and microsoft, the two big players in email, refused to deliver my mail to anywhere but spam/junk. I had DKIM, SPF and DMARC set up, with reverse DNS set up correctly. So I gave up. Now I use a privacy friendly email provider (paid)

w/ hosted email over IMAP

I think they meant they pay a provider to host it for them. For example, I have my own domain and email is hosted on mxroute.com. There haven’t been any issues that I’m aware of with people receiving my emails.

I’m actually using a web host email solution for now, but I do plan to try self-hosting within the year. I too have read plenty of horror stories about Google and Microsoft essentially abusing their authority with mail handling. I remain naively hopeful lol.

The reality is that I use email very rarely these days and it’s mostly incoming rather than outgoing.

Haha I do, and I’ve used VSCodium in the past. I don’t mind using the official release with telemetry disabled (and sandboxed as a flatpak), but may very well switch back if/when Microsoft does anything shady with the project.

Hah, that’s a fair question! We use syncthing in place of cloud storage.

We have several 1-way and 2-way shares configured across about 10 devices. Our camera rolls are synced to the home file server while we’re on the road, thus eliminating the need for Google Photos. It also keeps our shared KeePass database in sync between all clients, syncs wallpapers across desktops, etc. It’s excellent software and I really can’t say enough good things about the project.

It’s no replacement for actual backups, which I do perform monthly with copies stored off-site, but it can be a great solution for those wanting to move away from Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.

It just depends on the UI that I’m wanting at the time. Google Images sometimes, Bing/Google Maps sometimes, etc.

I did. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have some of the features I use on a daily basis, like a multilingual mode (no need to switch between languages) and swipetyping.

How do you host nextcloud? At home or on a vps?

On a VPS. Later down the road I intend to build my own home server, but that will take some time and money. A VPS is not ideal, but that’s leagues above trusting Google and the likes, and so far it has been working well enough for me.

Did you have any self hosting experience before doing that?

None at all.

Do you know Logseq? It’s an OpenSource/FOSS alternative to obsidian

I did try it, and it’s a cool project, but not as good as Obsidian, imho.

Bitwarden is way better all around. Both for 2FA and password managing in general.

i’m not a cybersecurity expert so i can’t say anything about how well they secure your data. however, authy is closed source and a walled garden. you can’t easily export your data. if authy pulls a reddit tomorrow and decides to start charging, you’re screwed.

building your 2fa life in a different service like aegis will save you so much headache in the future, and you can feel good about supporting open source.

I was intentionally keeping them separate in case my 1Pass is somehow hacked at least then they still need another login that’s not in there to get to those codes. But I may just give up on that it’s a headache

I’d love to use all those but I’m the admin of our family accounts and there’s only so far I can make relatives go in terms of these platforms. It’s been a lot of compromise to get here without complaints lol

It’s more about the ethics of the company hosting than any encryption benefits for me personally. Self-hosting would be ideal but email is a bit too important for me to do that personally, so I use proton as a compromise.

if you’re switching then you have the privilege to start anew with something great, you should look at options like Proton or Tutanota rather than other equally exploitative megacorps like Apple :p

i think it’s also important to be accepting of changing service providers because it’s the right thing to do, not just because it’s an improvement. i think we should be thankful that alternatives are mature enough now that we don’t lose much, or anything, when we switch.

If you use docker it’s super simple to setup. There’s also a version optimized for the raspberry pi.

Backups could definitely be improved–currently I keep a cold backup (USB hard drive) at my girlfriend’s place, updated about once a month. I also keep the entire file storage and database synced to my laptop’s (2 TB) SSD; not a backup, I know, but it does give me some peace of mind if my server (rockpro64) ever goes down. I’d love to add an additional hot backup via rsync, but unfortunately rent keeps getting in the way of a new hard drive :(

I have mine running on a raspberry pi 4 in a docker container next to my home assistant instance.

Getting the external storage to work on HASSOS was a bit of a bitch, but now that it’s working it’s rock solid.

Self-hosting email hasn’t been smooth. A lesson learned is always send time-sensitive and critical emails using trusted services.

I use paid privacy focused email service now to avoid any problems.

Face and object detection is pretty good. It gives you a list of people it doesn’t recognize so you can tell it who it is and it learns a face better the more samples it has. Low spec is fine as long as you have 4 free gigs of ram! I have mine running on a 2014 mac mini!

Are you not able to use Google Takeout?

Long time Fastmail user here. Where is it failing with respect to privacy?

DeepL is a german Company where privacy laws are pretty strict, though i dont know what kind of data they collect. At least you dont need an Account to use it.

There’s also FairEmail for an app: https://email.faircode.eu/ !

I’d argue that Apple is the lesser evil when it comes to privacy 😁

Wonderful suggestions, ty!