I got a bunch more motion sensors and I've been putting them around the house so I can program Home Assistant to do stuff like turn off lights in rooms that aren't being used, turn on lights when we're going downstairs with hands full of laundry, obviously just flipping a switch is easy but in some rooms the switch is on the opposite side of the wall and if I put a button on the entry-side then I don't trip over the cat, telling the water heater to get hot before we shower, having a $10 smart plug tell me when my 80's washing machine has finished, having a button to make the lights go cosy, y'know just nice helpful stuff that I do because I like making the house better for my spouse and kid and as I was putting up all these motion sensors I was thinking,

man,

there's NOTHING in this program to detect when it's being used for evil

And like there really should be? Like someone could legit fucking torment their family with this, this could be used as a tool of manipulation and control and fostering the abusive sort of dependence

And then I think of how me and spouse are moving away from google and onto like self-hosted stuff, nextcloud and searxng and xmpp and shit like that, and I can't help but think, *know* really, that right now there's someone controlling their intimate partner with those same technologies, like something that's supposed to be liberating you from corporate-style General Abuse is being leveraged towards a form of very focused abuse against you specifically by someone on whom you depend

I don't think enough software devs spend enough time thinking about how their projects can be used to hurt people

Has anyone smarter than me written any long posts thinking about this and what we can do about it

@ifixcoinops

Excellent post.

I don't think that I have blogged about this but I have definitely written about it before, in the context of our (my wife and my) personal situation.

Essentially, similar thoughts to you, given that I run email, telephony, DNS, and loads of other stuff for my wife and me. Plus, how we consensually share real time granular location.

The focus was on transparency and consent, and how we talk about the risks of the access that I have.

@neil @ifixcoinops it's definitely a conversation that's happened in the past with @foxshaped - might be time to re-visit it and check-in actually!
@neil @ifixcoinops
I also self host.
Currently in the process of training a kiddo on how it all works, which has resulted in the wiki pages becoming more up to date and comprehensive.