NEXTCLOUD – I want to own my own data.

“If you are not paying for a product, then you are the product.” - Tristan Harris

Each time I opened Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo, MSN, or Google (i.e. “Silos”), the words of Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist echoed in my consciousness. I began to view ‘being the product’ as synonymous with ‘being held hostage’. Big Tech was threatening me with not only the loss of my friends and family but also with the loss of my digital possessions.

Almost from Day One I was a Google user. I would later say of myself that I was an early adopter of all things Google; I drank the Google kool-aid. I was right at home, emersed in the Google Eco-sphere.

“If you are not paying for a product, then you are the product.”

It is wonderfully ironic that this article is about Free and Open Source (FOSS) software.

I want to own my own data.

If I wanted to ‘stop being the product’ then I faced two sets of hurdles. The first, and worst, hurdles were getting my data out of their silos. Silos are paid to keep your attention. Silos are designed to keep your attention. Silos do not want you to leave. One way they ‘keep you’ is by holding your emotions and data hostage. Yes, they will say you can leave any time you like. But it is more like “Hotel California” (...you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave…).

With my Meta accounts I simply turned off the lights, closed and locked the doors and walked away. Yes, I did lose contact with a great many people. I did lose the copies of pictures that I have posted. Losing contact with my family, friends and acquaintances (FF&As), while initially painful, was a wake-up call alerting me to just how much I was the product, how much I was being held hostage. In exchange for ‘ease of access’ to my circle of people I had relinquished all personal social responsibility. FB/IG even went so far as to dictate who I could see and when. The algorithm keeps people away from you that you don’t actively interact with. In order to stay ‘present’ with my FF&As I had to continuously reinvest, giving the system more of my attention, being more of the product.

The Google-sphere was another matter entirely. “G” had become the repository of all of my digital life; all of my personal Email, Contacts, documents, original pictures, Blog postings, websites, Notes, et cetera, et al. “G” assured me that I was free to download any and all of my personal data. I started with my photographs. “G” said just follow the instructions. Instructions that required re-authentication (in an authenticated session), agreeing to the terms and conditions, and then I was told to wait for an Email link that might arrive in 2-3 days.

I am glad that I didn’t ignore my email stack as I often do. The message gave me a link and notice that it would only be good for a few days. Following the link I came to a page that had 18 download links. So it began. 2 GB zipped files to download at ~0.75 - 1.5 MB/S thanks to a dismal “High Speed Internet” connection here in rural Kentucky. I was fortunate there were only 18. After downloading all the files and unzipping them into a holding directory I found each picture had an image file (.jpg, .png, etc.) AND a .json file. It turns out that “G” stores each picture and its meta-data in separate files. I would need to merge the meta-data back with the picture before moving forward. That meant finding the right Linux utility ( https://exiftool.org/ ) and a working command-line instruction to use it.

exiftool -r -d %s -tagsfromfile "%d/%F.json" "-GPSAltitude<GeoDataAltitude" "-GPSLatitude<GeoDataLatitude" "-GPSLatitudeRef<GeoDataLatitude" "-GPSLongitude<GeoDataLongitude" "-GPSLongitudeRef<GeoDataLongitude" "-Keywords<Tags" "-Subject<Tags" "-Caption-Abstract<Description" "-ImageDescription<Description" "-DateTimeOriginal<PhotoTakenTimeTimestamp" -ext "*" -overwrite_original -progress --ext json <DirToProcess>
If you owned everything, where would you put it?

It sounds like a Steven Wright joke, right? I could not find an attribution to him so the punch line to my joke is, “Everywhere!”

If I owned my own data, where would I put it. My answer to this very serious question is, ‘A Cloud’. But not just any cloud. No sense taking it out of one ‘cloud’ silo just to put it into a different silo. (Did I mention a slow Internet connection?) A local cloud. A Free and Open Source Software cloud running on Linux. On minimal hardware. Nextcloud.

In keeping with my Personal Rule #14 – It isn’t a good OS and/or Server install unless it has been (re)loaded at least 3 times. I compiled this recipe for loading Nextcloud from bare metal. This is just a base install. In my next article I will begin to address the some of the fundamental issues cited on the Administrative Settings page.

When I started my Nextcloud journey I pieced together a system made up of spare parts. This is a ‘household’ server with only two users. Even with these meager resources it is capable of doing everything I have tasked it with, albeit a bit slower than I would like. When the circumstance presents itself I will certainly upgrade the hardware.

Production “Server”