HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Eben Moglen - Freedom in The Cloud Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Eben Moglen - Freedom in The Cloud

Punkcast
Talks
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this talk3 months2011–2018 score 4
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it as the foundational talk behind FreedomBox and the case against centralized web services.

Eben Moglen speaks at NYU in 2010 about freedom in the cloud, arguing that centralized services and handing over personal data and server logs erode privacy and freedom. The talk lays out the motivation for FreedomBox, a personal server for your own data.

“It's worth the watch/listen to get the idea in full.” (HN, 2012)

2 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 3 citations · Talks

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@bootload Feb 2012 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Facebook Is Using You
Read more
"... I follow a few high profile tech news source, but I never heard of Freedombox. ..." That's why it's important to read HN. Eben Moglen is one of the few lawyers I bother to listen too. It helps he has a CS background. Moglen did a talk at New York Technology Council & Internet Society, Friday, February 5, 2010 that outlined the idea behind the freedom box. I remember watching & listening to the recording just after the speech. It's worth the watch/listen to get the idea in full. The idea in short, "Own your own logs" . Third parties can't infer what they don't have. The talk is located here - [link] - [this video] or here for alternative AV formats ~ [link]
Explains the idea behind FreedomBox: own your own logs.
@logn Jun 2014 Recommends
on HN thread YunoHost: Aiming to make hosting accessible
Eben Moglen gave a great speech on what we're giving up by using centralized services. His call to action was to basically build what YunoHost now is. This video of the speech is an hour long but a good one: [this video]
Speech on what centralized services cost us.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@bootload Aug 2014 Cites it
on HN thread It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web
"... The idea that software should be free means that only software that isn't free gets polished to the level that anyone uses it. ..." Linux kernel? "... The Internet, which was supposed to be our great liberator and engine of learning, became George Orwell's bidirectional TV set. It's a TV set that watches you. ... and it all goes back to free. ..." Telephony isn't free and is spied on. Related but not quite. Relinquishing control of server logs is the source of the problem. cf: Eben Moglen, "Freedom in the Cloud" , Feb 5th 2010 @ NYU ~ [this video]
@jancsika Apr 2018 Cites it
on HN thread FreedomBox
Here are two potential features Eben Moglen mentioned[1] back in 2010: * it should know how to go and collect your stuff out of all the social networking places where you've got it * it should know how to send an encrypted backup of everything to your friends' servers (in the video you can hear two developers making "mmm" noises at that feature) Eight years later, does Freedombox have either of those two features? [1] [this video]
Moglen's 2010 proposed FreedomBox features.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close