by ege
The website collects and stores two kinds of personal information from your activity on it: (1) the authentication information you provide (e-mail, display name, password), and the posts you create on it. This data is stored and provided mainly through Google Firebase, and therefore stored on Google Cloud. The website does not collect or store any other information about your visit or activity, nor does it share it with any other third parties. It does not have a cookie acknowledgement popup, because it does not store any cookies in your browser.
The website uses the Authentication and Realtime Database services from Firebase, while avoiding Google services that are known to exploit data generated by websites that employ them, such as Google Analytics. Nevertheless, please take time to read through the terms of service for the Firebase services used: Data Processing and Security Terms | Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service
This is also a good moment to recognize the digital colonialism that this website itself is a product of. Aside from Google Firebase, the website is built on a variety of free libraries and technologies that are provided by multi-billion dollar tech companies such as Facebook (via React) and Microsoft (via JavaScript itself)— and could not have been built without them, with the technical complexity required and the time frame available. This is not an excuse or an apology, but rather an invitation to reflect on how platforms consolidate power and capital on all levels.
The platform, in this case, fulfills the gaps in my technical knowledge and experience, and the time limit that I have: I do not know how to create an authentication system from scratch, so I use a ready-made one. In return for providing this freely, the platform generates reliance upon itself, both technically and political-economically. It monetizes the website and your activity in it as operational data. Most importantly, it gains the power to shape how the technology is applied and maintained. To put it more briefly, the principle of the exchange between a tech platform and a developer is very similar to the one between a social media platform and its user: if the service you are using is free, you're likely not the customer, but the product. In this case, the product for Google (and React, and Microsoft, and others) is this website, and by extension dear visitor, you.
The solution, of course, is not to practice some sort of tech asceticism in our creation, but instead to bring these dynamics to light through discussion, reflection and subversion. This work is already underway, some of it already discussed on this text. But I hope to continue this dialogue as we build this website together.