Data self-reliance is essential to controlling one’s own life in modern times. I have also found data autarky is pretty achievable, and does not hamper your online availability at all. In fact, data autarky gives you peace of mind Meta (or some other Big Tech firm) can’t extract facial scans or pictures of your ID, only to still keep you deplatformed. Even if you, as me, are in the process of reaching data autarky, self-hosting, keeping local copies, and avoiding unnecessary terms of service is critical for protecting your digital rights and freedoms. It also gives you a backup if you are deplatformed. Having your data be physically proximate is ideal; data localization is exceptionally important to protecting your rights and those of your community.
On this website I have spoken of the dangers of unfree messaging applications, mainstream mobile operating systems, and corporate-captured browser layout engines. In this era of hostile legislation, mass surveillance, and otherwise increasing threats to privacy and personal security, it is absolutely essential we at least augment our conventional presence online and offline digitally with free or self-hosted alternatives. Outside parties may simply be ignorant of the dangers of nonfree and mainstream software and services, but this is not always the case. Often times these outside parties are recalcitrant or heavily misguided, otherwise, they are straight-up con artists or agents of data brokers. As I pointed out in my piece on resisting Chromium, resistance to this type of aggressive monopoly controlling is crucial if we want to end tolerance of these types of practises in real life as well as online.
In addition to possessing libre and self-hosted or peer-to-peer options software as theoretical options, it is important we also avoid using the nonfree options. Resisting your family’s Telegram group until they get on XMPP, leaving your old Yandex mail be, turning off your Google Drive on an Android devices, suggesting to your boss that your Jitsi Meet server be used instead of MS Teams or Zoom, and promoting your SourceHut instance instead of GitHub, these are all important to fighting outside domination of your data. You do have the right to prohibit your public school from giving your child a ChromeBook, and you also have the right to refuse be a gadfly when everyone else is excited to get on the latest Silicon Valley-hyped bandwagon. The Internet, and the world, can be a dangerous, hostile place, and having as much control over your own life, not governments, corporations you do not really have power over, or activists who can ruin your life for ideological reasons. Data autarky is an ideal, and an ideal worth striving for. Since you can get pretty close pretty easily, if you have an alternative to something proprietary or hosted by a third-party, use your alternative as much as possible. Data self-reliance requires assertiveness for your rights, so always remember that when you cave to pressure or “just go with it,” you lose control over yourself, and your own life.