Stop renting your own life back from Google, Apple, and Meta

Everyone repeats the line that the cloud is just someone else’s computer, and then keeps handing over their whole life to it anyway. I get into what that actually means once you stop laughing at it: they write the rules, they change them whenever they want, and they can lock you out of your own photos and emails without warning.

I walk through what Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple actually do with your data versus what people assume, then break down the 2022 LastPass breach as the clearest example of what happens when everyone’s information gets piled into one company’s server. From there I get into what self hosting actually looks like now, from a box on a shelf in your house to a rented VPS, plus tools like Vaultwarden and Immich (“Image”) that let you run your own passwords and photos without handing them over to a corporation.

This isn’t a burn it all down pitch. I still use iCloud myself and I say so. It’s a real look at how much control you’re giving away by default and what it would actually take to get some of it back, which is exactly what digital ownership and tech accountability are supposed to be about.