In the early days there was a thought of the internet and World Wide Web as something that would enable us humans to connect, share, collaborate and ultimately improve as spices. Undoubtedly the technology development has brought many advancements and improved our way of living over the 50+ years or so. But, in its current state, as a medium for human interaction and for our brains to understand in a meaningful way, I think we are in a bad place.
Services used by millions (billions?) of people track our lives, drives commitment by appealing to the most basic human instincts and magnifies extreme and hateful opinions. Seeing so many smartphone zombies every day surely makes one wounder about the long-term effects of technology. I think that evolution has not been able to keep up in equipping us with the mental capacity of living in the world of today, let alone the not to distant future world.
Being a parent, I feel a certain unease now that my children are starting to consume services online. Also, I feel a responsibility of educating about and protecting them from the most dark corners of the web. And, I sincerely believe it is having an effect! I see my kids asking why things are in a certain way, or reflecting on the behaviors of their friends or other kids. This makes me happy 😄.
Having a background in technology I have taken it upon myself to make use of the tools available to peel off as much of the "bad" parts of the online experience as possible. This involves making use of a number of open source applications and open services to set up a personal infrastructure that my family are able to use in a way that does not disrupt our lives too much. Looking at the stack, I would divide it up in
Services
- Invidious, A frontend for youtube that removes the "clutter" and gives you a really lean experience that focus in delivering content.
- Kagi, A alternative search engine that does not rely on google or bing and delivers clean search results that are actually the thing you want...
- Libreddit, A alternative frontend to Reddit that lets you focus on the discussion, visually and mentally.
- Firefox, with the following addons; Decentraleyes, Libredirect, Clearurls and Privacy Badger. We also run Firefox on mobile devices which also lets us use the same addons. Apart from this we also use our own Firefox sync server to sync everything cross devices. And before you ask, we do not use uBlock Origin, it is an excellent piece of software, but we handle the same and more on the infrastructure level.
Devices
- Workstations, here we use Linux, preferably Debian based.
- Mobile, we are an Android family so that is what we use. Personally I use GrapheneOS, but we also have devices running LineageOS.
Infrastructure
- PfSense firewall, apart from being a really powerful firewall, this one lets us maintain IP and DNS block lists. Having these block lists on the firewall that is also handing out DNS to the network means that all devices on the network benefit, thus removing the need to install the same functionality on specific devices.
- Wireguard, using wireguard we connect all devices even when they are on the move. As devices are connected to the same PfSense network whole away, they also benefit from the same DNS filtering and firewall.
In the end, put together, this creates a nice environment for consuming the web that is less bogged down with AD’s, trackers or distracting interface design. If you have questions or want to share some thoughts or ideas you are free to reach out to me on mastodon on @mikael@8bitar.io.
Cheers!