Also, before anyone pipes up with the old privacy, shmivacy spiel, please stop to consider:
In many parts of the world, privacy can literally be a life or death issue for ethnic/religious minorities, LGBT people, women, and many others.
Your personal privacy isn’t the only issue here; it’s the way our collective “digital exhaust” is being turned into frighteningly accurate/effective predictive tools and the harmful ways those tools have been/are being used today and will likely be used in the future.
PS – Please excuse the edits…just wanted to tone down any perceived hyperbole. This is an emotional subject for me, and the more I learn about it, the more concerned I am that we’re not doing enough, despite the increased public attention.
Facebook’s response elicited and Edna Krabappel “HA” from me
A person’s choice to use Facebook’s services, and the way we collect, receive or use data — all clearly disclosed and acknowledged by users…
Nobody has any clue what is being done with their data on these platforms. Pretty sure that’s the epicenter of the current tide against these services. And no, small disclaimer text within a “click-through” EULA doesn’t constitute acknowledgement and disclosure.
FreedomBox is like a cheap PC/personal cloud. It’s really frustrating that TWiT’s never covered it. In fact, NO outlets have covered it, to my knowledge. 3rd-party grift is not our only option! A foundation to give them away by the millions could conceivably turn the tide, I wonder.
I’d never even heard of this…and yes, it’s very odd that it hasn’t been covered on TWiT (if indeed that’s the case). Here’s a link for anyone interested: https://freedomboxfoundation.org/
There is also the much bigger problem of a majority of internet users, who don’t use Facebook and haven’t given their permission for Facebook to track them, who are being tracked nonetheless, every time they visit a Non-Facebook site. And they aren’t the only culprits, but they are without doubt the biggest and most will known, if not the most obnoxious.
You’re right to be skeptical it’s never aired on TWiT: it’s probably appeared on FOSS Weekly. What I really mean to get at is that I never hear it mentioned in anyone’s discussions on the topic of “the privacy sky is falling”, which it certainly is if you’re not aware that projects like it exist. Even Keybase still relies on centralized infrastructure. The reason I don’t have a FreedomBox yet, aside from cost, is because I’m not sure I can administer it reliably enough given I have only an iPad. But the main point is: we don’t need intermediaries to have “social networks”! Not even Blockstack’s “dapps” (decentralized apps) solves this as well as FreedomBox does, and not everyone needs their own necessarily, just enough of them to form resilient federated networks.
I understood what you meant. This is the sort of technology I’d expect to be mentioned during one of TWiT or TWiG’s many discussions on privacy. (I was just leaving room for the possibility it was discussed on some show at some point, and I missed the episode.)
Again, my larger frustration is with the failure of so many people to get beyond the personal privacy implications of Google, Facebook, et. al. and see the bigger picture of how our collective data is being used. It’s not like the information isn’t out there; hardly a day passes that it’s not in the news, although one does have to consult a source like Zuboff for a more detailed explanation and analysis.
I’m tired of hearing otherwise intelligent people, even someone like Leo (who certainly knows better), minimize/justify this massive data hoovering and the predictive tools this data is turned into – the vast majority of which do not benefit those of us providing the data – because they really dig this or that Google product or service. It’s short-sighted, wilful ignorance…like I said, very frustrating.
Another reason I’m glad to be running uBlock Origin (along with Privacy Badger)
I really want to see GDPR show some teeth here. Our Canadian version (PIPEDA) isn’t as strong or as comprehensive, even with recent updates. Maybe if GDPR scores some hits and gets enough press, momentum will build here for a tougher overhaul.
Freedombox seems to be just another small home NAS, I don’t see that it offers anything more, possibly less, than what all the other small home NAS devices offer (e.g. Synology, Qnap). I see absolutely nothing on their pages about how it can provide social networking that connects thousands, let alone hundreds of millions, of people.
From the website:
That’s why FreedomBox was built: it cuts out the middleman and empowers you to do things like share files, send encrypted messages, have voice calls, and edit documents through a server you host yourself.
Nobody I know wants to administer a server in their home to provide those functions. I have a couple NAS devices and the skills to do those things but it just isn’t worth the effort to me.
It sounds a lot like Owncloud, from the excerpt, I haven’t visited their site yet.
Why not provide it as a docker container for existing NAS devices?
Edit: So, it is provide your own hardware, but no mention of Docker, Kubernetes etc. And 82€ doesn’t sound that steep, for a turnkey solution.
Edit 2: Just looked at the demo, it looks very dated and doesn’t offer that much. OwnCloud and the like seem more modern and more extendable, at least at first glance.
One of the things about Freedombox that attracts me is that it can run your own private Apple Messages server.
OwnCloud may be open source but it is not free software. You are still beholden to their interests and vulnerabilities as a for-profit enterprise. I’m not aware of any other project than Freedom Box which is truly free software and open-source/libre hardware (you are not paying Olimex for copyright on the design, only the materials, manufacturing, and fulfillment). Considering that, I’m a bit surprised at how fully featured it is.
