The next step of my obsession to rid myself of companies tracking me for advertising is to escape cloud file storage. For that purpose I've discovered a great open source way to sync files locally called Syncthing:
Rather than storing files in the cloud on a company's server, it just syncs files between your different devices. It doesn't work on iOS, though, only Android, but I also want to get rid of my iPhone anyway and use LineageOS now that I've figured out how degoogle Android phones and since iOS doesn't allow an adblocker in Firefox.
Ever since syncing my data with a Palm Pilot 15 or 20 years ago I've found syncing to be a challenge, and I also want to keep things backed up, so like many people I've resigned myself to using cloud services for some of this. You can also use SSH or other file sharing systems but the advantage of Syncthing is you don't have to configure it with a username/password/IP address or things like that - it just connects devices that you physically have in your possession and disallows other people with other devices from connecting to you.
Another reason I've been thinking of doing more local syncing and less relying on internet services is from reading about the carbon footprint of the internet. It's difficult to tell how much of an impact various internet actions have in the grand scheme of things, but since I have many GB of data to keep backed up, I'm sure it's more environmentally friendly to keep it local and not cause companies to build infrastructure to store it, especially when their apparent incentive for doing so is to access my data for advertising.
