DanKhramov

With Nitter getting a cease and desist today, I'm glad I moved family photos off big platforms last winter Saw the top post today about Nitter getting a cease and desist. Not surprised, but it hit a nerve. Last winter I finally moved my family off Google Photos. Not for ideology, just tired of paying for One that gets more expensive every year. Old Dell Optiplex 7040 in the closet, Immich for photos, Nextcloud for docs, Matrix for family chat. It was messy. I forgot to set up proper backups and almost lost a month of kid photos in January. My wife still brings it up. Before that I thought privacy was about picking a better provider. Nitter was part of that logic too - use a private frontend for a bad platform. But frontends die. Nitter, Invidious, all of them. One letter and it’s gone. Self-hosting didn’t solve everything, but at least my photos don’t depend on someone else’s frontend staying alive. The problem now is family. My server is in my closet, but my sister is still on Messenger, my mom on iCloud. My setup doesn’t protect them. Curious how you handle this part. When the frontend you rely on disappears, do you try to move family to Signal/Matrix or just accept you can only protect your own node?

PM says government should not engage in religion-based politics - Should all governments separate religion from politics? Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman said the government does not engage in religion-based politics and pledged equal rights for all faiths regardless of identity. Do you think this should be a universal standard? Can a government be truly neutral on religion, or is religion-based politics inevitable? What are the best and worst examples of religion in politics you have seen? Source: The Daily Star, April 30 2026

Chat Control is back on the table in EU, and it made my self-hosted setup feel political for the first time I’ve been following EU Chat Control discussion for a while, but it always felt like distant politics. After moving family photos to a self-hosted Immich on an old Optiplex last winter, it stopped feeling distant. The current proposal, as I understand it, would push providers, and potentially clients, to scan private chats and photos for CSAM, even in encrypted chats. That is political, but the effect is technical. If it passes in a form that requires client-side scanning, it doesn’t matter if my photos are on Google or in my closet. The phone that takes them would be the scanner. What surprised me is how little party politics matters here. Both sides frame it as child safety, so it passes under that banner. The pushback comes mostly from privacy orgs, self-hosters, and some MEPs, not from left vs right. I’m not in EU, but I have family there, and my setup talks to theirs. For those who follow the politics closer than me — is there any realistic path where self-hosting actually stays out of scope? Or is the trend that any law like this will eventually hit the OS or app level, no matter where you store data?

Nitter is dead for real this time — after the cease and desist, is self-hosting frontends still worth it? I hosted a private Nitter instance for a year for family after Twitter removed guest accounts in Jan 2024. On 24 August X Corp sent cease and desist letters to Nitter and its instances demanding permanent takedown of the instances and the project’s repository, accusing it of scraping and unlawful use of API. Nitter.net is now offline and development is paused while the dev seeks legal advice. Source TechCrunch and nitter.net banner. Technically it was already half-dead, but this is different — it’s not API breaking, it’s legal takedown of code. I get why X does it — they want traffic on X, not on a lightweight reader. But from self-hosting side, it feels like we are playing whack-a-mole. First Invidious gets legal pressure, now Nitter. I moved my own photos to Immich on an old Optiplex last winter to depend less on platforms. That part still works. Frontends don’t. They depend on the big platform staying tolerant. For those who self-host frontends like Nitter, Invidious, Bibliogram — do you still think it’s sustainable to keep hosting them for friends/family after legal letters start? Or do you pivot to full alternatives like Mastodon and just tell family X is not readable anymore? Curious how you handle it, because my family just wants to read posts without account, and I don’t want a letter.

Finally moved family off Google Photos to Immich on a closet Optiplex 7040 — almost lost a month of kid photos in January Last winter I finally moved family photos off Google Photos. Not for ideology, just tired of Google One getting more expensive every year. Hardware: old Dell Optiplex 7040 (i5-6500, 16GB, 1TB SSD + 4TB HDD) in the bedroom closet, running Proxmox. LXC with Immich for photos, Nextcloud for docs, and Matrix for family chat. It was messy. I set up Immich, told family it’s done, but forgot to set up proper backups. In January the HDD had errors and I almost lost a month of kid photos. No 3-2-1, only local copy. Wife still brings it up. Now: Immich with daily backup to external USB, weekly rclone to B2, and Nextcloud with versioning. Matrix is still half-used because sister is on Messenger. Cost is now about $6/mo for B2 vs $15+ for Google One family, but time cost is higher. For those who run Immich on similar old Optiplex / small box in closet — how do you handle backups without making it a second job? And how do you keep noise/heat down? My closet is warm and wife is not happy about second heater. Happy to share docker-compose if anyone needs.

Thanks, solid points. AC — you are right, but the heat is only in the closet, not bedroom. Closet door is usually closed, bedroom itself is fine. AC for the closet would be overkill, I just vented it. Downclock — already did, BIOS limit 35W and -50mV undervolt, plus ML only 02:00-06:00. That dropped 8-10C and it’s still enough for Immich. Monitoring — good call. Right now I have simple cron + healthchecks.io ping that emails me if backup is older than 2 days. LGM (Loki, Grafana, Mimir) is great but feels heavy for one Optiplex in a closet. I’m looking at Uptime Kuma with email to wife + me if backup job fails — simple dashboard she can actually open. “Document everything in case you die” — 100% agree, this is my current task. Writing a 1-page README for wife: where files are, how to get plain JPGs from Immich without Docker, B2 credentials in Bitwarden. That’s more important than any stack. Appreciate the checklist.

You are right, it should be automatic — and now it is, but in January it wasn’t. My mistake in January: I had Immich running and thought “I have a copy on the Optiplex, so it’s backed up”. It wasn’t. No 3-2-1, just one HDD. Now it’s automatic and boring, which is what I wanted: Daily: Immich DB dump + rclone sync to external USB (kept in same closet but different disk). Weekly: rclone sync encrypted to B2 — about $6/mo vs $15+ for Google One family. Monthly: I test restore of one random photo from B2, just to be sure. It’s 2 cron jobs in Proxmox host, not inside LXC, so it runs even if LXC is down. Took 30 min to set up once. Heat is harder, yes. My fixes that actually helped: BIOS power limit to 35W, undervolt -50mV — temps down 8-10C, still fine for Immich. Immich machine learning (face recognition) only runs 02:00-06:00 via cron, not all day. Cut a small vent at top of closet door + USB fan pulling air out, wife stopped complaining. Happy to share docker-compose if you want — it’s just Immich + Nextcloud + postgres + redis, nothing fancy.

That’s a brilliant setup — mutual offsite backup with parents. I love that you help them with Pi-hole + security and get offsite in return, everyone wins. Way better than my lonely USB in the same closet. For heat your split is smart too — low power always-on for photos and heavy stuff only spins up when accessed. I might steal the parents idea, my mom has fiber and would benefit from Pi-hole anyway. Thanks for sharing!