I agree with this. I am not self hosting for some end of days apocalypse (except I do have a whole house generator and am looking into off grid electricity, though I really missed the boat on that one haha).

It’s because literally all of these services are parasites run by scumbags. I don’t want anything to do with them. I use Jellyfin/komga because I don’t want my watch/read history sold.

I seek out local only iot devices and isolate them to a physical switch that does not have internet access, only a physical link to the pfsense box where there is an isolated vlan on their own subnet with a hard rule in the firewall to block any outbound traffic. I can still view things like cameras and home assistant remotely via headscale or even homebridge (with some added risk) but not nearly as much risk as the plethora of security issues created by lazy iot firmware developers who rarely, if ever, update their shit. But further than the massive security risks created by 500 iot devices are the massive amounts of profiling data.

I run my own apps like nextcloud and local llms because I don’t trust companies like openai and Google not to suddenly shutter products or drastically change the tos once I’ve integrated them into my workflow (plus tons of data harvesting).

I refuse to use apps and run local proxies to view paywalled news articles because I either don’t trust websites that offer this service or they capitulate to everyone that sends a cease and desist (see: 12ft.io).

Etc etc etc

It’s inescapable in the modern age and I’m so goddamn sick of it. I was talking to a family member the other day and they were signing their literal fucking infant up for daycare. The daycare is owned by private equity, because of fucking course it is. Group homes for the disabled, emergency rooms, drug and alcohol rehabs, etc have been bought up by those scum in increasing numbers over the past decade with the anticipated results (people dying, worsening outcomes, etc) so why wouldn’t they sink their disgusting claws into child and infant care?

The daycare (bright horizons, fuck them) will only send updates to parents via a proprietary app, of fucking course. Updates include pictures of their child, diaper changes, feedings, play, social time, developmental milestones, etc. both parents work so they’re sending the kid there 40 hours, it will be a lot of data - daily updates. The TOS is disgusting. Of course the company owns all the data, of course they can and will share it with third parties, of course they collect as much personal info as possible, and of course they do the bare minimum in terms of cybersecurity. Anything to drive up profits, even if it means exploiting the children you’re supposed to be serving and educating.

The worst part is that when I point this out, when I point out that COPPA exists and they can insist that an account not be made because their child is under 13 and demand an alternative, I look like the pain the ass. they know that ultimately the daycare can be like “fuck you, the app is policy, do it or no pictures”. everyone just wants it to be easy and wants pictures of their kid. And we’re so indoctrinated by tech at this point to just click “agree” and not think about it. It just fucking sucks. No one wants to be the martyr and people like me that demand to be respected are seen as assholes. Meanwhile the company that’s charging them $1600/month for childcare that’s spitting in their face to earn extra on the side with their literal infants harvested data gets a pass because “that’s what companies do I guess”.

They definitely just made an account on the app. In 10-20 years their child will probably have higher health insurance premiums because predictive modeling will have data starting from day 1 and it shows a higher risk of colorectal cancers or whatever.

I cannot stress how badly I hope for a drastic change in the next 5-10 years. This is unsustainable. The villains are winning.