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Comment by renegat0x0

7 hours ago

I am nobody. I have little impact. I want my programs to be safe from government intrusions, from age checks, from encryption backdoors, from corporate surveillance. How do I win this battle with big tech?

I am deeply in self-host. For the self-host to succeed it needs to be better, unregulated, and free. It needs to be easily distributed. The data should be easily distributed. Import and export should be fast and easy.

That is why most of my programs use JSONs that are human readable, or use SQLite tables that are just copy-paste away.

I am from Poland. My ancestors were able to survive by hiding, and by fighting small partisan battles. My idea of software is "partisan". It battles big tech in small, distributed ways.

I am not sure, but I think what I said is similar to interoperability.

30 comments

renegat0x0

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embedding-shape  7 hours ago

> I am nobody. I have little impact. I want my programs to be safe from government intrusions, from age checks, from encryption backdoors, from corporate surveillance. How do I win this battle with big tech?

If you're only talking specifically about your program that no one else has access to, I don't think there is any battle? Do whatever you want, no one cares nor would even know about it.

If you're talking about making software available for others, for free and open source, I also don't think there is any battles to be won here.

When people talk about the web not being open, or "age checks" and "backdoors" and so on, they're mainly talking about for-profit platforms, that let users "use" their platform in exchange for something. These probably shouldn't be "do whatever you want, consequences be damned" but instead have some sort of checks against them, so we don't end up letting the business-people rush towards building torment nexuses.

Even if platforms has to have age checks, encryption backdoors and a whole slew of other "bad stuff" or just "annoying stuff", I don't think the self-hosted ecosystem has much to worry about, we all run software "without warranties" already, and plenty of the stuff I'm running at home I've written myself, of course I won't care about age checks or whatever, even if it was regulated to be forced.

  • freedomben  6 hours ago

    In a world where big tech and governments are requiring user-facing things to do things (like age verification, etc) and be liable for what their users do with it, even the self-host becomes a problem unless you are your only user. There are plenty of people that are still doing it, but they're probably taking on liability they don't realize. For example if I stand up a self-hosted git forge and allow others to use it, and some user I don't know commits CSAM to their repo, to quote (paraphrased cause I don't remember exactly) Dijkstra from The Witcher: That's called being in the shit, and you're in the shit.

    • taeric  6 hours ago

      I mean, this is the case for a lot of things? Has always been the case.

      If you host friends over for dinner at your house a lot, nobody will ever say you are subject to the same rules as a restaurant. You start letting other people host dinners at your house, and things could change. You start letting people solicit your place for paid dinners, similar outcome. Do it once, nobody will probably know or care. Continue to do it at scale, though, and I don't know why you would expect to not be subject to regulations.

      2 replies →

  • renegat0x0  4 hours ago

    I am talking about many things. Also about my programs, but also data. Programs are not that important for me. They are just vehicles to get the job done.

    All my programs and data are open. It is something that anybody can pick up, and use as they wish

    - https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database - domains I found

    - https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-feeds - feeds I found

    - https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database-2026 - news from 2026

    - https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database-2025 - news from 2025, etc.

    Does make any change? I don't know. I run web crawlers. It is interesting for me to see what my crawlers pick up from the Internet. It did change my life, these project changed how I see the Internet. More pro-activly.

    I think there are many projects which can be useful for niche groups. I suppose I have 390 stars on one repo. I hope at least my projects were useful for them. That is a hopeful thought.

  • chromacity  6 hours ago

    > If you're only talking specifically about your program that no one else has access to, I don't think there is any battle? Do whatever you want, no one cares nor would even know about it.

    Can I do it on my phone?

    • ChadNauseam  6 hours ago

      If you buy a google pixel 9 (the last version for which google released device trees), you can do anything you want on your phone. My pixel runs a version of android I built myself

    • beeflet  5 hours ago

      No because a phone, despite being made from the same parts as a computer is actually a completely different thing.

      You can't just run programs on your phone. You have to run apps, which require approved by the government and the company that made the phone, which tacks on additional fees as well. The phone also has constant cellular/GPS/wifi/bt-mesh location tracking, and it can never be completely turned off by the user without destroying the phone because even the batteries are glued in.

      It's basicially the perfect slave device for your average goy. And everyone will need one to to access your bank account, recieve insecure SMS authentication, talk to other NPCs, and generally participate in the neo-economy.

      If you don't think this is right, you are literally going to empty the bank account of my dumb ass grandma who can't stop installing malware, and in every way is better served by a flip phone from the early 2000's.

      1 reply →

  • beeflet  6 hours ago

    Anyone will be able to lob legal complaints against your self-hosted mastodon instance if they don't like you, which will bring cops to your door like milkshake brings boys to the yard.

    • embedding-shape  6 hours ago

      Yes, again, you run a public service, expect to have to follow regulations for public platforms, not sure why anyone would expect something else.

      I was talking about creating/running software for yourself, in a self-hosted scenario, not just "I run the software, but it's for others" but really "I run software and it's for myself and/or my family, no one else"./

      3 replies →

bullen  5 hours ago

I would say:

1) Use HTTP (secure is not the way to decentralize).

2) Selfhost DNS server (hard to scale in practice).

3) Selfhost SMTP server (also tricky).

4) Know and backup your router (dd-wrt or iptables).

JSON over HTTP is the way.

XML is not bad for certain things too; even if I understand the legacy of abuse.

  • zrm  5 hours ago

    > Use HTTP (secure is not the way to decentralize).

    This doesn't seem like useful advice. If you're going to use HTTP at all there is essentially zero practical advantage in not using Let's Encrypt.

    The better alternative would be to use new protocols that support alternative methods of key distribution (e.g. QR codes, trust on first use) instead of none.

    > Selfhost DNS server (hard to scale in practice).

    This is actually very easy to do.

    • bullen  4 hours ago

      Let's Encrypt is not part of our friends here.

      DNS is easy for yourself, but if you host it for others (1000+ of people) and it needs to have all domains in the world, then it becomes a struggle.

      2 replies →

hermitShell  6 hours ago

What do you think of the pace of hardware level freedoms? My context is also from Corey Doctorow: https://youtu.be/3C1Gnxhfok0?si=RjmADE5pQ3s7fBIk

For me the freedom to own my computer means I can run any software I want on it.

Self hosting is predicated on some openness of computing in general. Interestingly it still does not practically allow you to use certain services like Google Maps, where even if the end user has great benefit, they get it for free because they give back their data.