Right to be Offline / Analog / Unplugged

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The developed world is increasingly forcing people to use incompetently designed technology. The #digitalTransformation movement is being forced onto people.

Just like we cannot rely on the public sector to solve the climate crisis, we also cannot rely on the public sector to deploy well-designed privacy-respecting inclusive technology. We always need an analog option.

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Idea to reach the cloud without actually having Internet -- using wi-fi cold-spots (for lack of a better term) (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org to c/right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz

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As some might recall, I am offline by choice. I still have to make periodic trips to public hotspots to send and fetch msgs, and to write this post herein for example.

I can theoretically improve on that using a Wi-Fi AP. I could run a webserver without Internet, which is only accessible to those in Wi-Fi range of my residence. They could connect via Wi-Fi and a captive portal kind of mechanism could force the traffic to a website that I run. The website could have a msg like:

“Please tell Alice@wherever that I like her idea and want to meet”

or something like:

“Please post to freecycle that I have an air fryer to give away if someone wants it”

Of course, that’s just a half-baked brainstorm to give an idea. That would not be a manual labor intensive procedure and a non-starter. But in principle I should be able to broadcast an encrypted personal msg to Alice and someone more connected should be able to run an app on their phone that automatically grabs their neighbor’s msgs and sends them.

I think there even already exists an Android app that exchanges msgs with other devices over wifi or bluetooth, which works without Internet. I forgot the name of it but I had the impression it was a system of its own that does not use other protocols like email or activitypub.

UPDATE: I need to look into some of these apps:

https://www.geckoandfly.com/22562/chat-without-internet-connection-mesh-network/

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[–] dermanus@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That sounds like being online with extra steps.

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Then with that kind of rationale, you might as well say I am already “online”, based on the fact that I occasionally connect from libraries and various public spaces, given the extra step of putting my device into a backpack to cycle to the connection point.

Not sure what point you are struggling to make here after apparently neglecting to follow the link, but I have managed to avoid directly financing monopolistic telecoms that would impose forced-banking as a precondition to joining their pricey surveillance-prone network, in addition to the huge digital footprint imposed by banking in itself.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So ..

You want to run your own wifi network, that's not connected to the Internet...

And people who are physically close to your house can connect, get forced to a "website" that only contains requests from you asking random people to use the Internet to reply for you?

How are you even finding out what people are saying to reply to them?

Why would anyone put the effort in to be your middle man?

Are you legally prevented from being online and trying to crowdsource a remedy?

Kevin?

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

get forced to a “website” that only contains requests

Please read the whole post you are responding to before writing your response.

asking random people to use the Internet to reply for you?

Most, if not all, of my network traffic is via random generous people who support the privacy and digital freedom given by the Tor network and (not so recently) the Mixmaster relay network.

How are you even finding out what people are saying to reply to them?

If you don’t know the answer to that or cannot imagine a solution, this thread might be above your pay grade. Also understand that not all varieties of messages necessarily need a reply. Have you never received an email from a defunct email address formed as noreply@corp.xyz?

Why would anyone put the effort in to be your middle man?

Ask operators of Tor nodes, i2p, mixmaster, proxies, etc.

Are you legally prevented from being online and trying to crowdsource a remedy?

“Legally” is a slippery word here, but indeed various legal circumstances come into play when, for example, someone (potentially unbanked) wants to exercise their legal rights under Article 5 of the GDPR along with various human rights that are not in the slightest useful for understanding the requirements at hand. There are many reasons someone might be offline, either by choice or by force (where “force” comes in different forms and magnitudes). It’s irrelevant how they got there in the context of this thread.