glasgitarrewelt

Legitimate question. Targeted ads feel obvious to many, but it is more about control.

• Google knows more about you than your partner or you yourself know about you. And they know how to use that knowledge. The scariest part: this control over you is for sale.
• Google controls how you use things. By being the defacto standard in so many things, they have the power to control how things look, feel and are beeing used. We are missing a lot of innovation because of that.
• Google can basically decide, which business survives and which doesn't. It's not the one with the better product, it is the one which pays more money to Google. By that it helps to promote big companies, small businesses have a hard time to establish themselves. Even in my small citiy: if the new barber doesn't pay for Google placement and begs for useless 5-star-ratings, he won't survive.
• It is hard to get out! You are getting lulled in with convenience and you unlearn how to use the internet outside of Google. Google takes prisoners and puts them in a plushy cell.

I think you’d be surprised at how much everything else is tracking you still.

You are absolutely right, I am surprised again and again. But I do my best to avoid it, if I find something that tracks me. And I am surprised that so many people let themselves being exploited, and even defend this exploitation.

Free yourself! It is work. But it is worth it. And it is not too late.

It is never too late. Free yourself from this abusive relationship, it feels fantastic.

Wow, I am so so much against your suggestion, but I have to upvote you, for your bravery.

To add something constructive: The app Element as a Matrix client works good for me.

I bought a used Synology before knowing more about NAS alternatives. I hated every minute with it.. Because it was a bit older, security updates could stop anytime. And using the proprietary OS felt even more unsave. Who knows what backdoors are build in there? I sold it after I found out that there is no way to install a custom OS or any alternative to the proprietary version.

Edit: found a picture of it:

However to expect things to just be done for us out of the kindness of people's hearts I think is bordering on entitled.

Yes, there are people who do that, but there are many more people in the FOSS world who don't expect anything and instead contribute.

Focusing on the entitled people won't make you happy, reagardless the topic.

My father printed the GNU license 100 times, rolled it up and gave me a good beating with it. The only true way to learn about the four freedoms.

I can only assume, that these downvotes are meant as a not so smart joke.

What was the problem with Docker? I want to host it myself, the docker option seems to be the easiest one.

What is the name of the client software on the pi? How did you connect your pi to an amplifier?

Still a privacy nightmare, with and without ads.

And I have no intention of living off the technological grid to mitigate that.

I would argue that you are already living off the technology grid. Before starting my FOSS journey, every software I used was a dull 'Just click here and let the algorithm do it's job'. By beeing conscious about the software I am using now, I accidently found a lot of joy in technical things, feeling a lot more 'on' the technological grid than before.

Can you elaborate on what doomsday scenario you're referring to?

I am not the commenter above, but my greatest fear with all those data hungry companies is the control and power we give to not elected entities. Knowing all about every person in a state and knowing how to use this data for targeted ads, targeted video recommendations, targeted search results,..., could make a difference in elections and law making. It is basically undermining democracy, and I am a big fan of real democracy.

Firstly, (assuming self-hosting isnt an option) won't you have to use google or AWS to host your website?

It makes me very sad, that there are many people who believe that the internet comes down to Google, Amazon and Facebook.