3 Layers of Freedom

Layer 1: User of an External Service

This is the worst one, you're just using someone else's service.  You obey and they are god.  This includes all Big Tech, gmail, proton, telegram, twitter, whatsapp, ect.  Unfortunately, this is the only thing the vast majority of people ever experience.

Layer 2: Federation / Self-hosting

Any service that can cross-communicate to servers that different people control.  Identity is usually based on the domain of the server you're using.  You don't have to self-host here, but how much freedom you get depends on your relationship with the hoster.  Examples of this are Email, XMPP, Matrix, Mastodon, and Lemmy.

Layer 3: Transcend Locations

This is any service where user identity, data, and content delivery are separated from physical locations, to provide censorship and self-ownership that transcends traditional internet structures.  Examples include Nostr (micro-blog), Arweave (websites), Session (delivery), Bastyon (video delivery), Farcaster (professional networking), Lens (art), Yacy (search), and almost all cryptocurrencies.  It would also include legal systems based on PGP.

Layer 3 is controversial.  You're not only asking people to learn new technology, but then place value in this completely new system.  For example, to accept that Bitcoin or Monero have financial value for trade.  Or to learn how Arweave domains and hashs work to view content.  This has a huge opportunity for pessimists to try to knock it.  Often pessimists will dispute the entire premise of layer 3, by clinging to value systems in layers 1 or 2.  Or they may be heavily invested in one particular solution, and thus try to haze alternatives.

Careful, as there is a lot of misrepresentation to gain market share as they develop.  Images on Nostr are layer 1 regular websites.  Channels on Farcaster are a censorable layer 1 service.  SimpleX's identity links are really layer 2 masquerading as a layer 3.  (But I acknowledge Session's flaws)

Ok here's my point:
I recommend people: avoid layer 1 whenever possible.  Have a layer 2, a little digital home: self-host email, a website, and your messenger communications.  But stay open to all different kinds of layer 3s, this is the end goal.  Layer 3 is not only a technology battle, but a cultural one. 

 Really great post.  Your very last is especially fire. 

 The depressing part is that even if you self-host your website, you’re still dependent on centralized solutions like Cloudflare for DDOS protection, and they’re more than happy to censor you if a government thug requests them to do so.

Maybe one day IPFS will catch on? 

 Thanks for writing in for an educational opportunity.

First, for DDoS you don't have to use cloudflare, there are other alternatives for a CDN.  And you don't have to point the A-record of your domain to a CDN, you can use CDNs that are just third party images.  This makes it harder to ddos you but not impossible.  Solutions such as Bunny CDN accept anonymous bitcoin.

As far as IPFS goes, I don't think it will be popular because it has socialism built into it.  If one runs a pinning service, you're automatically serving up not just your customers' sites, but also random other people which raises the computer resources required.  Because IPFS has delivery separated from payments of filecoin, its unlikely people will subsidize the delivery.  However, I am optimistic about ArNS Arweave gateways. 

 Great info. And thanks for the tip on Bunny. 🐰 I’ll hop on over there and take a look.