Data Sovereignty

As human beings using the Internet and using apps, we have an interest in how our data is being used. If you’ve been posting to Reddit, then Reddit is selling your data to Google to train their large language model. If you’ve been posting to Tumblr, then Automatic is selling your data to OpenAI to train their LLM. If you’ve been posting to Twitter, then who knows what the hell Musk is doing with that for his LLM. This is not to mention Facebook, whose empire is built on access to and control of our data. Our data and what we create and provide is owned by the platforms. What about Flickr, for our photos? What about Squarespace and Webflow for our websites? What about Sanity or Contentful for our content? Other than Flickr, these are all VC backed Silicon Valley tech companies (Flickr is owned by a little Mom’n’Pop Silicon Valley tech company).

Is there somewhere else I can store my data? Can I use an application like IA Writer or Eagle and store my data somewhere that I control, that I pay storage and bandwidth for, and have access to on my own terms? Where can I go on the internet and not have my preferences and actions mined for advertisements? How can I stay out of a database that gets sold on to help make the internet worse? Where can we go?

The Fediverse takes this seriously, but they’re not the only ones. Data sovereignty is a big deal for the First Nations in North America, and I think it’s something that more people starting to think more about. The IndieWeb folks do a good job talking about owning your own content, but what if we go further? Can I own my own Wordle streak? What about my Pins (both Boards and Interests)? What about my budget?

We put effort and work into our interactions with the internet. But everything we put up on a platform or service can be lost, or it can be used against our interests. We need a middle ground between hard, backwoods-survivalist style “run all your services yourself” and sharp, “submit to the surveillance capitalist ad-tech ecosystem”.