I hate it when I don't know an acronym, but this one is particularly hurtful to my brain since everyone is saying "yeah, that link to the FSB was obvious glad someone demonstrated it." So... I will just assume FSB=KGB and be done.

Anyway, most of our privacy "war fronts" are honeypots in one way or another. Take for example Tor network (high number of exit nodes are controlled). Except those apps or protocols that are truly decentralized (e.g. OMEMO in XMPP), these are good. But then again, they lag behind to our standards of "normal" Internet that connects us to the world, outside of our tiny circles of nerds.

Now, the thing with honeypots, is that they are there to catch some specific type of fly. If you were to use their network to take advantage of the features for anything that the "predator" behind doesn't care, you're fine. So, I will keep using Telegram for the memes and piracy channels...

From an OPSec perspective this is important news nonetheless and I will keep it in mind.

Yes, I think the problem description fits for moving from static website to having a database and a web service ( with or without javascript, could be just forms, check htmx.org ). For example, if you know Python you could go and check Django. But there are many other ORMs, all aiming to make working with databases easier. Btw, I am not expanding the ORM acronym because it would only add noise. OP should look into that, and understand why these 'frameworks' are called like that... Good luck!

+1 I use it to on all of my devices for sharing 1 folder, just set one as introducer, and keep adding nodes (e.g. phone, Work mini, laptops, PC, ...) Once you have that set, start adding folders as needed for specific cases (e.g. a folder shared among all mentioned except for Work mini.)

As other comments mentioned, Push Notifications, your main issue has workarounds. So, the answer would be Yes.

BUT Google Play Services is much more than that. This dependency can't be worked around really and it's one more way that Google establishes his stance in this oligopoly. I'm certain Apple has something similar if not more aggressive. This is the reason why the year of the Linux Phone is so far away.

Personally, I think Linux Phones will catch-up when their hardware allows for emulation of an android subsystem where we could sideload (illegally?) Google Play Services...

Spain? check guifi.net ;)

People had LAN Partys playing video games "offline" in the 90s... Setting up a network is easy, the difficulty comes from scaling up to many nodes, and spreading through the geography (e.g. if you were to use antennas for WLAN, they would need a mostly unobstructed vision) which in urban areas gets tricky.

But those "topology" issues can be flattened, e.g. you can always have a raspberry pi (or any device) acting as server in the corner of a neighborhood. A virtual bulletin board, emails, etc. all could be self-hosted locally there and then people could go grab a coffee and consume the local news just like in the middle ages, but with a screen, digital assets and some healthy amount of trolling :P

I was in love with this brand because they supported rooting (halfway into actually owning your device.) but that's no longer the case, so... I couldn't care less if this model is available in my region

Public instances need to fight against the giants, but running your own local version is easy if you learn to use Docker. It just takes around a hundred of megabytes of memory. I have been super happy with it.