So, for people who are paranoid about using the services that are designed for these sorts of sharing, like Dropbox, GDrive, GPhotos, and a million others? These theoretical people would suffer the frustrations of setting up and managing their own db for the added privacy? I wonder what they have in those photos and meeting notes that is so sensitive?
I don't use any of those services, though I used to use Dropbox for sharing family reunion photos with older relatives who didn't have the technical skills to do much more than click links to download photos. I am also not a potential user of Earthstar's product.
>I wonder what they have in those photos and meeting notes that is so sensitive?
As someone who is actively working on documenting my family history using photos, original copies and reproductions of official documents, old paper letters and copies of letters, I can say that the dominant reason that I do not use any of those "services that are designed for these sorts of sharing, like Dropbox, GDrive, GPhotos, and a million others" because none of the things that I am working with are any of anyone else's business.
Using many of those "services" grants perpetual ownership and license to use anywhere, forever to the service operator and should that service collapse for any reason their only asset is the contact info and personal data that their customers have chosen to entrust them with.
Frankly speaking here, I have been using computers for a long time and the most dominant recent trend among tech-bros has been to conjure an app or service to con people into paying SaaS fees even if they stop using the app or service. There are fewer apps available that can be bought as a pay once use it forever app.
I'm not interesting in playing anyone's con games and the software industry is full of them as many here note whenever someone does a new "Show HN" post. Oftentimes some of the first comments note for other interested parties that there is a requirement to give an email address to test the app or to register an account just to be able to see for ourselves what it does and whether it is truly useful.
I'm not interested in helping fund someone's second or third or fourth income stream when it requires handing control of something I own outright to a third party who will make every attempt to monetize every part of the transactional relationship that develops when a user registers an account.
I do not trust companies or individuals to have my best interests in mind when I am using their products or services.
Since the materials that my family members have collected and preserved for generations can't be replaced and we are not trying to write books or shoot films about any of the individuals who may have led interesting lives it is none of anyone else's business what the photos depict or what the documents tell us about how each branch of the tree connects to an individual's trunk.
The archive of the work I'm doing will be available to my family members. Some of them unfortunately use social media to keep in touch with friends and family. I can't control what they do with the results of my work but I can control everything up to the point where I distribute it and it's my decision to keep it all local on storage that I own and control.
The tone of your last sentence is accusatory and, like this last sentence of mine is out of place.
I really appreciate you taking the time to read all of that and I appreciate your supportive reply.
Preserving one's privacy to the fullest extent should be one of the main characteristics of a well-informed citizenry and not an excuse to demonize people who exercise their rights to withhold private information from entities that have no business obtaining that private information.
It's too easy today for information to be collected, profiles built, and those profiles used to silently discriminate against a person or a group of people who have something in common. There is limited or no accountability in the system since many of these capabilities evolved much faster than any regulatory framework could. Once the money started flowing in the data collection space, it acted to restrict the pace of regulatory development since some of those monies were spent to lobby individuals or groups who had the ability and the responsibility to protect privacy rights.
Those of us normal people out here who all contributed to the widening of the data stream by signing up as users of these predatory apps and services are the ultimate losers, having effectively ceded control of our own privacy rights to the extent that we can all be easily profiled, monitored, and predictive tools can be configured to allow any new business relationship to be an adversarial relationship where a profile of the new customer informs the service provider about how they should treat the new customer in order to maximize profits from that individual.
It's wrong. It's predatory. It's an unfortunate consequence of the selfish greed that has become an acceptable lifestyle choice for many in the software industry.
But, here I sit. I'm old and I ramble and at the end of the day my words are weak signal in a high background noise stream that looks exciting to the adventurous ones too inexperienced to understand the risks they ask us all to accept.
