After the US election there have been all kind of crazy comments from Trump people about various regulations. For example: if the EU doesn’t allow X to behave as they want in the EU, the the US will leave NATO … I assume this will never happen
Anyway, these comments make me a little bit “itchy” since micro.blog is a US company, and have to follow US law. If these crazy comments become true then I’m not sure I want to have my web sites in the US (note, this has nothing to do with micro.blog but the laws in the US. I also guess that micro.blog is such a small company that it will fly under the radar).
I think you’re being too paranoid. First, I don’t think there will be any relationship between say NATO and treatment of tech. Second, there’s a lot of talk about basically making it harder for very large platforms to do content moderation. This seems stupid and short sighted and likely to die when they realize there’s moderation they want and they can’t really distinguish. But in the worst case, and I do think this case is pretty bad!, it just means that very large US-based tech may be less able to remove spam or hate speech.
Micro.blog is not very large, and not likely to be directly impacted, even if this pretty unlikely result does come to pass.
Effectively the only thing that matters about Micro.blog being a US-based company is that they would have to turn over data to law enforcement if served with a warrant from the courts. I doubt there’s any meaningful threat to you even if US law enforcement for some reason wanted your Micro.blog data, which consists, to a first approximation, of entirely data that is publicly available anyway. The exception being a “private note in Strata” which is encrypted.
I make no predictions about the future, neither good nor bad. We are in a zone of complete uncertainty.
I suggest leaving your blog here, but make regular local backups in case things go bad in the US. And regular backups are good advice anyway. I already have experience with one small blog provider simply going dark and holding my blog — and domain — captive. The management seemed great, and then they just … disappeared.
I’d say there’s a pretty low chance those comments turn out to be true. But, as a general rule, it’s smart to not get too attached or locked in to any service provider, US-based or not.
Make sure you have an exit strategy and can easily move away from any services that are important to you. Regular offsite backups, like Mitch mentioned, are a good idea.
Depending on your risk profile, you might also want to consider keeping your most important online assets—like email hosting and domain names—with providers based in Sweden or the EU.
This is important to know. For 99% of people, no one cares. For the other 1%, entire professional services are devoted to their security, and it’s often a whack-a-mole game. But Mitch is right. I have reminders to back up my content from web services every six months. It can be more frequent if it helps you sleep better.
Neither do I see a connection … although some people would like it to be. It was more an example of the kind of rhetoric that have becomes visible lately.
And I agree that micro.blog is very small and will not be on the radar.
And of course, what I’ve published online is public so there is no need (no, I wouldn’t keep private notes in Strata … in fact, I’m forbidden to keep sensitive notes online except in very specific places).
I’m personally totally uninteresting to anyone, I can’t even remotely think that anyone would be interested in what I do … well, except for perhaps some company that wants to sell something to me.
It’s more my feelings about having stuff in a country where things seem to reversing. I’m starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about how different people want to go backwards in time. Not, that Europe is much better - we can see tendencies of similar trends here.
But, I’m probably just in a bad mood because of Trumps victory, and the reactions of people from around the world. I’m in a “pen and paper, hidden under the stone in the far corner of garden” mode. Not that anyone would think it would be worth the effort of looking for the notes anyway
I would say in this case, I’d focus on the values of the companies and people who benefit most from those companies instead of country of origin. And I’d remember that Trump’s win only becomes more permanent if everyone who can (and who has relatively safety either way), flees.
Backing up your content regularly is a good idea regardless. We encourage it. We also try hard not to keep any personal data. No weird tracking. The only thing I consider sensitive is private notes, and they are encrypted and we don’t have the key.
If you’re going to worry about anything, I think there is probably more private data leaked with a single scroll through Instagram than using Micro.blog for years.
More than ever, we need places that are quieter, smaller, resisting the viral amplification game that wrecks most social networks. I hope Micro.blog can be a force for good over the next 4 years and beyond.
