Monday Apr 15 15:58:53 2019
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       Today article 13 (the so-called 'uploadfilter'-law) was voted in.
       This is a sad day, but there is a silver lining.
       
       Many people are actively seeking ways to get away from the likes of
       Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al. I myself have several things set 
       to wrestle my data and actions away from the big Silicon Vally
       behemoths. Here's a list of alternatives I have been flocking to. I
       might help you liberate yourself as well
       
        CHAT
       
        - Matrix
 (HTM) Matrix website
       
       Matrix is an interesting one. It kind of reminds me of skype, disco
       and slack all rolled into one, but distributed. Setting up a
       homeserver is surprisingly easy, and as difficult as you would like
       it to be. There's the easy dedicated instances at Modular.im, or yo
       can install it on your own droplet at Vultr (see my front page for 
       nice discount).
       
       
        - XMPP/Jabber
 (HTM) XMPP/Jabber website
       
       I've ran an XMPP server (prosody) for quite a while, but Matrix was
       easier to set up, and to sell to my wife. Getting video calls to wo
       in XMPP is a bit of a gruesome slog, and then there's the myriad of
       clients that all work slightly different from each other. My client
       of choice for XMPP were Conversation for Android and Gajim for Linu
       and Windows. No native web clients.
       
        - Signal
 (HTM) Signal website
       
       I still use Signal, but I don't like it for standard discourse. It'
       my fallback, because I can also send SMS messages in a pinch when
       network connectivity is down the toilet.
       
       SOCIAL MEDIA
       
        - GAB
 (HTM) Gab website
       
       Gab is interesting. Especially because the far left *doesn't* like 
       at all.  So they claim the site is filled with right-wing folks (da
       say extreme ones), but I haven't seen it. Another interesting thing
       from the GAB universe is the Dissenter-plugin, which puts a comment
       section on *every* page, even ones that have them disabled. Those
       folks at Gab are really concerned about Free Speech.  Gab could
       easily replace twitter, especially because there are no frothing bl
       checkmarks.
       
        - MINDS
 (HTM) Minds.com website
       
       Minds is kinda like facebook, youtube and twitter all rolled into
       one. A little rough to get into, but I think it might become big in
       the future. Also the use of cryptocurrency is really interesting.
       
        - Steemit
 (HTM) Steemit website
       
       Steemit is another interesting one. It's basically a blog site with
       articles from lots of people, and the idea is that if you write a
       nice blog or article, you earn cryptocurrency. You get upvotes for
       your story, and depending on how many and more importantly *who*
       upvotes your story, the more you earn. You can put your steemit
       crypto towards your upvote "power", or just turn it into BTC and pa
       yourself out. You can also divide your earnings to those ends.
       
        MAIL
       
        - Host it yourself
       
       This is not for the faint of heart. Hosting your own mail is a bit 
       a lost art. Since I have a Unix-administration background, it's
       doable for me. But just setting up a Postfix on a VPS isn't enough.
       You have to take care of DNS, anti spam measures, DomainKeys, DKIM,
       DNSSEC, DMARC and SPF (please do google all those things). Beside
       being able to recieve and send mail, you also need to be able to
       fetch your mail. I prefer the dovecot suite to provide POP3 and IMA
       via SSL or STARTTLS. Oh, and you have to keep it all secure. Good
       luck.  Seriously though, hosting your own mail builds character, an
       it looks nice on your resume. The MTA and MDA doesn't even matter (
       just have my preference). As long as you understand the technology,
       anything that works, does.
       
       (Yes, there is protonmail and others, but if you want to control yo
       data, the best way is to really host it yourself)
       
        FILES/WEBDRIVES
       
        - NextCloud
 (HTM) Nextcloud website
       
       If you need file sharing, you could look at nextcloud. Get a VPS, a
       a glob of storage, and you don't need Google Drive or Dropbox
       anymore. Nextcloud also facilites a CalDAV calendar, and contains a
       IMAP mail client, and several other things, all optional. Just
       install what you need, and off you go.
       
       So that's my list of things you can use to get away from the big
       Silicon Valley companies. Good luck and take care.
       
       (PS: Damn, this post is big. I might link it on the front page)
       
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