Digital Independence

It seems these days my internet bubble is all about digital independence, the exodus from platforms run by fascist surveillance capitalists, and self-hosting. Right on!

I also finally watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix today to get into the right mood for jotting down this note. The documentary drama does a good job in illustrating the continuity from “You are the product!”, over surveillance capitalism, to the exploitation of data-intensive tools by sinister forces. However, it only spends a couple of minutes at the very end to touch on an important topic; a topic that is my main reason to invest in digital independence and that makes that investment a radical political act: How enshittification and AI-slopification blatantly reveal that none of the incentives that capitalism has to offer is fit to facilitate a solution to any of our global problems.

It’s this narrow-mindedness, this inability of our species to use objectively great advancements in science and technology to do good that makes me fucking angry. And it is this anger that lets me perceive digital independence as a cleansing rather than a middlefinger towards autocratic billionaires. I need to get my own tools straight before I can hope to make a dent in doing good with tech.

Like most of my notes, this is a living document. I am aware that there are no perfect solutions and that we need to make trade-offs as soon as we rely on tech in any capacity. My goal is to trade convenience and ubiquity with sovereignty and consciousness. Some disposable income, my formal education in computer science, and my experience with Unix-like operating systems makes things a lot easier.

Domain

stephanmax.com is my domain, my handle, my name on the internet. I use it for my email, my website, and probably for a lot more going forward. For almost ten years it has been the sign above my corner on the world-wide web. And it always will be, given I can pay my trusty registrar united-domains the 27 € per year.

I can’t stress enough how important and fun it is to have your own domain. Buying a domain and thereby claiming your little digital spot on a huge interconnected network still feels like magic to me. And don’t worry: having a domain does not mean that you also need a website. You can start by redirecting your domain to any of your online presences or do nothing with it at all for now. Just remember that yourname.tld “belongs” to you a lot more than instagram.com/yourname!

Email

In 2018, I switched from Gmail to Proton and never looked back. Everything is end-to-end encrypted, all Proton mail servers are located in Switzerland and Germany, and Proton keeps expanding its set of tools with sensible additions. I can bring my own domain and use any desktop email client I want thanks to Proton Mail Bridge.

Alternatives: Posteo, Tuta

Passwords

I use pass, the standard Unix password manager. Each password and accompanying metadata like username and login URL is a GPG-encrypted file and a vault is nothing else than a Git repository. My client on Android is Password Store and for my browser I use BrowserPass. This setup is simple, elegant, uses tried and trusted Unix software, and omits almost any middleman (except Git hosting).

Alternatives: Proton Pass is included in my Proton subscription, should I ever feel the need to switch

Files

I use Syncthing to synchronize all important files between my computers and my Android phone. This works so well that I almost have no need for classical cloud storage anymore. When in need, I can tap into my PR2100 NAS (network-attached storage) at home via Western Digital’s My Cloud or rely on my Proton Drive with as much as 22 GB (and a storage bonus of 1 GB added every year).

I also rented a small VPS (virtual private server) from IONOS to install and play around with Nextcloud, which I will need for calendar and contacts rather than cloud storage, though.

My clients usually provide their own cloud storage solution.

Code

I try to host all my code on Sourcehut. I say “try” because some community constraints force me to host and develop inside the Github ecosystem. It breaks my heart that millions of people seem to be fine with Microsoft harvesting code to train models, all in return for Github’s community and deployment features that aren’t even that good. This sucks massively!

Alternatives: Codeberg

To be continued …