this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
119 points (91.0% liked)

Privacy

50168 readers
195 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
k_o_t@lemmy.ml
tmpod@lemmy.pt
Yayannick@lemmy.ml
ranok@sopuli.xyz
119
Are you ready for the day the internet splits? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 3 days ago by shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
84 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Are you prepared for the day the #internet splits?

On the clearnet you will be

  1. Unable to watch porn.

  2. Required to give your real name and ID in order to use social media.

  3. Arrested for "mean tweets", "anti-government views", "liking subversive memes", etc

  4. Only be allowed to use approved applications from Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc

On #Tor and #I2P you can still be free.

What you can do to prepare

  1. Set your downlink speed to 10-15mbps to acclimatize yourself

  2. Encourage app developers to host their applications on Onion and Eepsite domains. (Git repos, fdroid repos, linux distro repos, etc)

  3. Run all applications that support SOCKS5 over the Tor SOCKS port (9050) (#Fdroid, #Signal, #SimpleX, #AntennaPod, etc)

  4. Use bookmarks or password manager notes to have the URLs of your commonly used programs, services, and repos (#Monero, #XMRBazaar, #Pitch, #Dread, etc.)

  5. Get used to text messages instead of audio or video calls. (Audio and video use UDP and generally give your real IP to either a central STUN server or the other peer. (it may be possible to force audio and video calls over TCP exclusively, but the latency would be high and therefore make the call unenjoyable.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Alternatively, create your own private intranet and/or become a P2P node in something like YaCy, peer tube etc.

You can self host a lot (and I mean a lot) of what people think of as "the internet" using a busted $20 laptop and some decent storage.

I'd say you can get a really decent slice of the internet in 10-15TB of storage if you have the technical know how.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It would be very private. I'd be the sole participant.

[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Could be. No more or less than a very large library of books.

Plus, you wouldn't have to be 100% Robinson Crusoe-ing . Peer-to-peer networks, mesh radio and sneakernet would still exist in that hellscape.

Still, for nerd fun, I paper-napkin'ed the maths last night with the aid of clankers. Here's how I'd make an “internet in a box”.

Reference: 1–2TB

  • Wikipedia, Gutenberg and other Kiwix archives: 300–600GB.
  • Medical, repair, farming and technical manuals: 100–300GB.
  • Forums, software docs and selected papers: 100–400GB.
  • OpenStreetMap, routing and regional map tiles: 100–500GB.
  • Selected Zimit web archives: 100–500GB.

Zimit might fit roughly 100,000 ordinary web pages into 100GB. Kiwix server could serve the ZIM archives (inc websites), while Recoll could provide Google-like full-text search across the wider library of websites, books, manuals and documents.

Other Software: 1–2TB

  • "Linux images": 100–200GB.
  • Open-source apps, drivers and firmware: 200–400GB.
  • Compilers, package mirrors and useful GitHub repos: 300GB–1TB.
  • Emulators, open games and preserved software: 300GB–1TB.

Media and education: 5–10TB

  • Podcasts and radio: 300GB–1TB.
  • Music: 1–2TB.
  • Courses, documentaries and educational video: 2–4TB.
  • Films, television and selected YouTube channels: 3–5TB (at 720p, that's anything between 5-10yrs of content, if watched 2hrs/day).

AI and search: 100–500GB

  • A few local language models: 50–150GB.
  • Speech, image, OCR and embedding models: 20–100GB.
  • Search indexes and vector data: 20–200GB.
  • OpenWebUI, Kiwix, Jellyfin and other services: under 20GB.

Community and nerd nonsense: 100–500GB

  • A local forum, wiki, IRC or Lemmy instance.
  • Reticulum or Meshtastic links for nearby networks.
  • Minetest, Doom, Quake and local game servers.
  • Old Reddit or BBS archives
  • OASIS or another Reddit-style simulator populated by argumentative LLM agents (yeah that's a thing apparently).
  • Random GitHub projects.

(That last category has little survival value, but probably considerable morale value)

So, roughly:

  • Lean: 6–10TB.
  • Comfortable: 12–18TB.
  • Media-heavy: 20TB or more.

Twelve to eighteen terabytes would give you a decent slice of "the internet". Get a 3D printer while you're at it for the ultimate off grid chic.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 2 days ago

Can confirm. Hosting a large media collection, 500.000 books, offline Wikipedia, tons of offline game installers, and it all fits into 5 TB.

Got a used 10 TB HDD in very good condition for just $120, plan on buying a second one for redundancy.

Also, a 3D printer and a bunch of useful models are certainly on my future list.