Does anyone here have experience of running their own email instance?

Would you say it is viable for a non-technical individual to run their own email service?

Do you have any lessons to pass on?

#AskFedi #AskFediverse #AskTheFediverse

Just had a very weird conversation with someone discussing an open source voice assistant, I asked about its privacy and they blocked me. This isn't very reassuring.

Be really careful with voice assistants. As far as I know, all of them rely on sending your data to the manufacturer's server.

Open source alone won't protect you. Open source tells you what the software does, but if it does bad stuff you need to act on that information to protect yourself.

#Privacy #VoiceAssistants #FOSS

@RyunoKi @rysiek @erosdiscordia @Gargron

That's why decentralisation is so important, it makes it difficult/impossible for a platform to ever be controlled by a stockmarket company (or anyone else for that matter).

If you're going to switch to an alternative, it's really important that it's decentralised so that it won't get unexpectedly taken over.

@rysiek @humanetech @erosdiscordia @Gargron

I wonder if Twitter is trying to make a faux decentralised system, sort of like the puppet states of the old empires.

In theory the puppet states were independent (to keep their populations happy), but in practice their governments were controlled by the empire.

Regulators really need to be on their toes to prevent this. And yes we definitely need strong regulators with real power, it's the only language the companies will obey.

@rysiek @Gargron

Exactly. Corporations like Twitter and Facebook are structurally incapable of decentralisation. They will never do it unless threatened with huge profit-destroying fines.

Twitter's management just want to make money.

Fediverse developers just want to make decentralised social networks.

So, Fedi goes ahead and actually makes decentralised social networks, while Twitter does absolutely nothing.

@gemlog

I'm generally just posting about managed hosting services rather than hosting in general.

If you are skilled enough to install server software yourself, you probably don't need a site like mine 😃

@gemlog

Sure, I just mean this account tries to tell others specifically about managed hosting, where there's no need for knowledge about installation or upgrades etc.

I think not many people realise they can own their own instance without having to personally install software.

Hello world! 👋

This is the first toot by Grow Your Own Services, a small website that encourages ordinary people to make their own internet.

It's a totally new site so feedback is welcome! (It would be nice to expand the lists of suggested hosting companies, for example.)

#Introduction #Introductions #NewHere