Understandable. I don’t know what your threat model is. I don’t trust any of them except to do what is in their best interest, globally. However, there is nothing stopping Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, or even your country, from doing the very same thing. Governments make laws for citizens, not themselves. Everything can be compromised at any time a government decides to. That is the reality of it all. If I am going to have to hide my online activities from a government in 2026, then game over, and there’s not a damn thing I could/can do about it. I’ll just unplug, and live out the rest of my life in the seclusion of my farm/compound.

data server

Here is the way I understand Tailscale to work. Feel free to correct any misinformation.

Tailscale doesn’t operate ‘data‑center’ servers that store or forward your traffic.

• Control plane: Holds device metadata, public keys, ACL policies, and the DERP map. It is a small, highly available service that all clients contact only when they start up or need a policy update. Tailscale runs this service on a handful of cloud providers (primarily AWS and GCP) in the United States. TThe service carries no user data. Only control information.

• Data plane: Carries the actual packets between your devices. After the control plane tells two devices how to reach each other, they open a direct WireGuard tunnel that is end to end encrypted. There are no dedicated ‘data servers’. Traffic travels directly between the peers. If a direct path can’t be established because of strict NATs or firewalls, the connection falls back to a DERP relay. The DERP relays are the only servers that ever carry user payload.

However, to keep with your fear of the US having all your Tailscale keys, what makes you think that Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, or the UK wouldn’t/couldn’t do the same? I’m no shill for Tailscale. AFAIC, you can either use the service or not. Your choice, no skin off my back. I’m just curious how far the paranoia rabbit hole goes.

While true, only partially.

• United States Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle
• Australia Sydney
• Brazil São Paulo
• Canada Toronto
• Finland Helsinki
• France Paris
• Germany Frankfurt, Nuremberg
• India Bangalore
• Japan Tokyo
• South Africa Johannesburg
• United Kingdom London
• Others Various locations in other regions, including Asia and Europe

Absolutely agree 100%. Self sufficiency is something I have diligently worked on to achieve in my life. Not only in the digital sphere, but in my daily life as well.

It’s a tool. A tool that needs some heavy regulation, but a tool nonetheless

These are my opinions. There are many like them, but these are mine.

I believe in, and practice privacy, security, and anonymity in every facet of my life that I can. Selfhosting fits in with that just nicely. However, I am very realistic about the whole thing. You are never going to take down Google, Amazon, Microsoft, AI, et al. The best you can do is disconnect from them. However, in the case of Google specifically, that’s a very tall order. The amount of domains and subdomains they run will blow your mind. Almost daily I find yet another one to block. Which makes the likelihood very high that you will encounter one that isn’t in your blocklist, or what have you. Same for Microsoft, same for Amazon, same for all of them. So, to me, chest beating about taking down ‘corpos’ as is usually the jargon, is kind of useless. Oh, it makes us feel good, but in the grand scheme of things, it does little. I would say the percentage of privacy minded individuals that actually practice it, and the percentage of selfhosters is very slim when you consider there are 8.4 billion people on this planet.

Additionally, I hear people saying ‘I run this or that federated’, or whatever ‘…and that can’t be taken down’. That’s a false sense of security to me. Everything can be taken down and a moment’s notice, even the internet. I’m not saying capitulate or rage quit. Again, I’m just very pragmatic and realistic about life in general.

To the folks in the comments debating whether I’m an AI: I’m flattered by the grammar check

This is the world we live in. If you can actually string words together into grammatically correct sentences, then you are AI. It matters not whether you are or you aren’t. Like the witch hunts of Salem, all that is necessary is the accusation. I personally don’t care if you used AI, the message resonates. Don’t let 'em give you shit about your pony tail.

Can we all pitch in and send @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com a box of zip ties?

I just installed Linux a few months ago as dual boot after being a lifelong Windows user (since 3.1 lol).

Well then, you are on your way.

The only thing I use the PDF format for is ebooks. I just always thought PDFs were something you spammed geriatric people with to get them to fall prey to your scam. LOL Like CD/DVDs. Someone here was talking about CD/DVDs a while back, and I got to thinking, I haven’t burned a CD in at least a decade.

you are also formally violating the law

As a population, I would venture to say that we are all formally violating the law in some form or other. Laws are written to be purposefully vague and ambiguous.

It is impossible to place telephone nodes in Russia without equipping the server with threat protection equipment.

I assume you are from Russia since you speak in first person, however, if the laws are so stringent against self hosting or private hosting, why is it a large portion of Warez sites emanate from Russia? They exist all over really, but it seems a lot of the very popular ones are in Russia.

It is also impossible to host sites with more than 10,000 visitors without registering with Roskomnadzor

This sort of ties in with the PBX thing. I am certain that popular Warez sites in Russia get way over 10,000 visitors and I’m sure they don’t register with Roskomnadzor.

Just curious. I’ve always had a curiosity with Russia among other countries. The history is very intriguing and vastly unknown in the West because of obvious propaganda. There used to be a blog I followed years ago about people visiting and photographing abandoned structures in Russia. It was very interesting, but sadly I have lost track of it over the years. I always wanted to visit the Red Square, but sadly I am too old to realize that dream. I have been as far as Latvia, which is not part of Russia, but very beautiful as I remember.

In some countries, it is also illegal to engage in self-hosting.

Really?! Can you elaborate?

If we don’t make these sovereign nodes as easy as a light switch

That’s a long row to hoe. However, I see a lot of very capable mini-servers using Lenovo and that makes me feel better. We live in a digital world now where real life and digital life are co-blended. I’ve always felt that in this digital world, each and every household should have a server. If I were a much younger man, I’ve often toyed with the idea of setting up mini-server racks to sell. But, I’m far beyond being a younger man now, and so I hope some young entrepreneur will bring that to fruition.

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching seniors at a library program

You are a better man than I Gunga Din. I’ve had a computer in front of me since the mid 70s, but a lot of my brethren shit on the notion of computers, giving that ‘…back in my day we didn’t need computers’, and the standard ‘uphill both ways in the snow’ trope. That’s a hard nut to crack because you have to want to learn before you can learn. I know people my age can learn. They damn sure don’t have much problem learning Facebook or TikTok. LOL

The Kiwix Library is chock full of options: https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng

I need to get a backup of some encyclopedias and/or get wikipedia somewhere hosted. That would be fun and informative.

I selfhost the full Wikipedia in Kiwix, plus a decent amount of IT, Political, History reading material in my Calibre library. I’m not much for fiction, novels, or movies.

Maybe I’m mistaken, maybe it’s all really easy even for noobs

I’ll be the first to admit, shit is complicated, especially networking, but it’s not insurmountable. Do you already have a server deployed? How familiar are you with Linux?

See what you think: https://linuxupskillchallenge.org/

What’s stopping people you know from taking this step?

As with any privacy, security, and anonymity efforts, it takes work. Nothing I am doing can’t be accomplished by someone else once the work is put in because I possess no special skills or certs on my wall to reflect any special skills. Just reading a lot, doing, screwing it up, rinse/repeat ad nauseam. We live in a world of convenience, where ‘someone else’ does the work and we capitalize on their efforts, and it’s this point where I see most people falling off the wagon.

Additionally, the average Joe really doesn’t have a firm grasp on what happens between the time you click a link in your browser to the time it returns with your webpage. They definitely don’t realize the preponderance of traffic being generated even on a PC at rest. They may see adverts taking up real estate on their computer screen, but no clue about what’s going on behind the pretty graphics. To them it’s akin to advertising on a billboard, which it’s far more insidious.

Then there’s the obligatory ‘I’m not technologically inclined’, especially from those in my generation of old heads who are stubborn cusses for the most part. However, for the younger, upwardly mobile, youngsters, there is the element of time. For the average family in this economy, it takes both adults working to make ends meet. They get up every morning, go to work, come home exhausted, spend a little quality time with the kids, and it’s off to collapse in bed, only to do it over and over again. On the weekends, there are extracurricular activities for the kids, quality time with the family, catching up on any household chores…and then it’s Monday. They don’t have the time nor the inclination to learn how to stand up a Linux server.

I’ve got a couple friends who bought the equipment, and I set it all up for them, and administer any thing remotely. It does become a headache sometimes. Users cause issues. Luckily it’s only a couple.

my 2p

My server and associated peripherals run me $30+/- monthly. I recently did some adjustments with the help of tlp and a few other apps to see if I could slim that down a few dollars. I’m waiting until the end of the month to do some comparisons. All in all tho, $30 is probably well below what most people would spend on any other hobby.

Sure. I mean, it apparently does exactly what they describe. Maybe someone will fork it into something useful. Seems to me it could be a basis for something to be built on. Damn site better than anything I’ve managed to code, so I can’t knock it too much. LOL

Hmmmm…sorry to steer you wrongly. I mean, gosh it says it does all annotation and collaboration. I assumed ‘collaboration’ to mean multi-user collaboration. Hard to collaborate by yourself.