651
Google Maps renames “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” even faster than US government
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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I think this is pretty true. To expand:
I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have to either run my own email/hosting/storage servers and surrounding infrastructure with the tech understanding required to do so*, or give my data to someone else. Not having an email address is not realistic when it's the primary key for your bank, school, employer, etc.
*A decade or so ago, running an SMTP server was trivial. Now, it needs DMARC, DKIM, SPF, publicly trusted certificates, and maybe newer things I'm not familiar with in order to be able send email. These are not bad things, but they increase the requirements for self-hosting.
Right now, that 'someone else' is generally google or microsoft for most people, and those companies are so big they get to dictate how other tools I need to use work. They also freely sell my data or give it to the government - possibly without any sort of warrant via 'data sharing agreements'.
US-based data brokers are actively hostile to me. A Chinese data broker is less likely to care, since I'm further from their profit model: I'm unlikely to buy a Chinese cereal or make-up brand or visit a restaurant halfway across the globe. This only matters as long as US and Chinese data brokers don't share info, but I suspect there's friction there. If there's not, then there's no reason to NOT switch.
If I have to give my data to someone, then I'd prefer to give it to someone who doesn't directly impact or care about me the way google/microslop and the US government do.