Owning my data
I want to be able to move, inspect, and delete anything my software knows about me.
I’m trying to keep ownership of the data of my life: my notes, my conversations, my location history. The test I use is whether I can move the data, inspect it, and delete it. If I can’t do all three, I don’t own it.
There seem to be two separate choices here. The first is what gets recorded: how much, in what detail, and when. The second is what gets shown: to whom, and in how much detail. They’re independent. I can record everything and show nothing.
I’m trying this out in Tukur, my location-sharing app. Turning on sharing is one choice. What other people see is a separate choice. The same day of GPS points can show up as a live dot for the few people in my circle, or as a short summary that only I can read.
I don’t think this means self-hosting everything. A third-party service seems fine when I pay it for servers, it doesn’t sell my data, and I can leave with everything. If I want out of Supabase, I can take my Postgres dump and go.
The oldest version of this in my life is a folder of plain text notes that every tool I use reads and writes. Tools come and go, and the files stay.
These days, before I build something new, I ask whether it leaves me owning more of my data or less.