this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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Canada should build public cloud infrastructure rather than relying on U.S. tech giants (www.policyalternatives.ca)
submitted 1 day ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/buycanadian@lemmy.ca
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[–] squid64@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think we should stop relying on cloud completely. The cloud is just someone else's computer. More should learn about self hosting and not depending on some other corporation to hold all your files and data. I already self host many things myself so as to depend less on other companies and being more independent.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 18 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

There is a world of difference between self-hosting your personal life and, for example, the department of motor vehicles needing servers that benefit from economies of scale.

[–] squid64@lemmy.ca 0 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Well companies can also have their own servers. It would even be better than relying on a third party where when the company does a mistake then all their clients (other companies) are affected. The Cloudstrike bug would be a good example of that.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 18 hours ago

And for economies of scale and reliability and flexibility they could start pooling their computing together and then

[–] AGM@lemmy.ca 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

That's just not practical for a lot of businesses. Offloading the capex, operational costs and other hassles to a service provider makes a lot of sense for most companies.

[–] squid64@lemmy.ca -3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I think you could easily hire people who do that job at your company or someone who maintain it at least or some contractors.

[–] leftytighty@slrpnk.net 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

ok what do you think that costs? you've clearly given this a lot of thought to have such a strong opinion.

[–] squid64@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Depends on what you need, if you're a small business you won't need much and it won't cost as much as if you'd run a big business. Anyway, the whole point was to be more self reliant, how is being self reliant a bad thing? Why should you give all your information and trust a third party with everything you have?

[–] leftytighty@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You're treating data as a special unicorn. Why don't companies manufacture their own computers? Why don't they build their own delivery vans?

[–] squid64@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

They don't need to go that far, I am just saying this is simple enough to do. Probably more complex for big corporations but the big corporations have the means to pay for their more complex system. As for small business this is simple enough. I am not saying they should build all their own hardware from scratch. And yes data is important and its better not to rely on some third party like I said what happened with cloudstrike affected so many and cost millions in damage. Same as so many company rely on Microsoft for everything. What's so bad about not needing to trust another big corporation with all your data and your business?

[–] leftytighty@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 hours ago

It's an ROI thing, as people are pointing out. You're hand waving that part away. A small business has to weigh an small annual fee and loss of control against buying expensive hardware and paying the salary of one or more IT professionals to maintain their in house systems. This also scales with the size of the company and their data, it's expensive for a small company to buy one or two servers and storage solutions, it's expensive for a big company to buy 20 of the same.

You also lose out on off-site backups (without more investment of course) and global availability. Will every company that has a global team roll out servers in every global region? Small companies can have global teams as well.

It's simply not cost effective for everyone to have their own infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure is the same as any other infrastructure, it is cheaper to pool resources and share

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I self host a lot of things to but I still have a cloud provider (sync.com as it is Canadian) and a Canadian web host service (hosthero.ca) for my web site and now my email. I have broken my home lab (made up of raspberry pi’s) to many times to trust running anything for my password manager so I have 1Password, another Canadian company. I stopped using google services (minus youtube) long ago so I found another authenticator app; I should maybe move all that stuff to 1Password as well, but I do like having separate apps for that stuff. I stopped paying for youtube premium and started using Unwatched so that I am not paying for ads. I have cancelled all of my US streaming services and moved to the high C’s for those things, and host them out of my home. Maybe if my Mac Pro still could connect to the internet, no idea what is wrong with it, I would use that to host more of my stuff.

I found out that my ISP has moved to an exchange server, and I cancelled most of my Apple services so hide my email is no longer available to so now I am in the process of moving everything to their own email address from my old email addresses. I already got very little spam and for the first time in months I got some spam today.

[–] squid64@lemmy.ca 2 points 23 hours ago

I mean that's good and all and I am sure those companies are way better than those big American tech companies but my point was about not having to depend on another company. Because you have to trust them with your information and just because it's Canadian doesn't mean they are good automatically. Another advantage of self hosting is if for any reason you lose internet access you still have access to your local network and all your files and passwords when you need them. This is also why it's important to not create a dependence on any online services. Like if this site were to shut down I wouldn't lose much, I would just lose my posts which to me aren't that important as people have read them already.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Protomail, you can make aliases for different signups that forward to your main address. Delete them when you are done receiving junk

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I tried use hosthero.ca to host all of my email, I have unlimited email addresses. I create a new email address for everything and everybody.

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Canadian government should host its own Mastodon server for public service announcements and discourse.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Please build it somewhere cold in Canada so you don’t have to waste energy cooling the place.

Also, is anywhere in Canada a potentially good source of geothermal energy?

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago

I present to you: Chibougamau, Quebec. There's a higher education institution not too far away to train technicians. It's north enough that it's fucking cold. It's also pretty close (comparatively) to the massive hydro electric dams that powder the entire province to make significant savings in transmission losses, and the transmission network reaches all the way to major cities to easily piggyback fiber deployments!

[–] Ptsf@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Every government should have a public competitive corporation in every aspect of infrastructure. Cloud, water, etc. If they're going to free market it, they need to stoke competition.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

100,000x this

We are fucked over a barrel right now.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Most of my web services I have moved away from the US things, and have replaced them with Canadian things. I also use a pair of piholes to block ads many of which are sold by google and other US companies. I wish there was a real alternative to YouTube as I could move to that rather than using Unwatched to block ads.

[–] villasv@lemmy.ca 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The alternatives to YouTube already exist, like PeerTube. The issue is lack of content and the critical mass to attract content creators.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 hours ago

Yes but as I understand it there is no money in it for creators.

[–] leastaction@lemmy.ca 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

There's https://freetubeapp.io/ for the desktop and https://newpipe.net/ for Android phones.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 21 hours ago

I have moved away from using Safari or chrome/chromium because I do not want to give Apple the joy of seeing me use Safari. I use Vivaldi, sure it is based off of chromium but developed by a EU company and blocks some ads and it is not letting me go to freetubeapp.io/.

I use the app Unwatched for my free youtube with ad blocking.

[–] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Somehow I just can't see this happening with Carney in power.

[–] garbagebagel@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Would it be his copious investments in american tech giants? Or his vanishing backbone regarding US relations now that he's in power?

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

and news media majority, and native social media, and...

Yeah we're sucking their media and storage teat hardcore. A lot of things really. Dependent in general.

Bring back Nexopia!

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

I cancelled all of my US streaming services and started paying for CBC gem if I so want to watch the news.

I stopped using Facebook proper long before the boycott, and only used messenger but have not used it for a long time. A group I belong to uses discord I tried to get them to move off of that but the group as a whole would find it difficult to move to whatever else I found (do not remember what it was). I try to avoid using using Reddit and have replaced it with lemmy.ca to use lemmy. The only reason I have a Bluesky account is because one of the creators I follow posts on there when he is going live.

[–] DaveX64@lemmy.ca -5 points 1 day ago

I'm thinking the opposite...we need to go back to analog and unplug ourselves from this globalist digital dystopia they are creating. They aren't going to be happy until our brains are plugged into the Matrix and our DNA is tortured into a shape that pleases them.