Companies make policies guaranteeing their users’ data privacy, but policies can be changed, and promises are broken all the time. Information is leaked, used for advertising without the users’ acknowledgement — information is sold, anyone who has more information can make more out of it. In the age of hyper-interconnectedness, data are gold.
What happened?
Apple, a company famous for initiatives in privacy, is facing a lawsuit for listening to their users in 2025. Facebook faced many lawsuits for data breaching. Data is not only taken from users, they are also trapped inside tools people use. Microsoft Words documents work best with Windows machines, may break if you use other softwares, and at best usable but buggy. Notion provides unlimited working space but your information are stored on there clouds. Adobe encourages user to store files on Adobe Cloud. There are iClouds, Google Drive, Onedrive. Brands are slapped onto your data, and there are very limited choices to host data on your own.
You are required to trust the brands how they manage your data, which all happens behind closed door. You can request for your information, you export files, and then ask them to delete your data. Is it really your data after all? Users are stuck in having limited options, and lawsuits back-and-forth on court wars, a tug of war for their own data.
This seed is inspired by Steph Ango’s post on self-guaranteeing promises and file-over-app
What is a self-guaranteeing promise?
A self-guaranteeing promises consists of two things:
- Can be proven easily by the user,
- Cannot be revoked.
A very good example of a self-guaranteeing promise is stainless-steel. Before I go further into explaining this, I want to clarify that stainless-steel is not rust proofed, but it is a lot more unlikely to rust as compared to normal steel. The steel stainlessness can be easily proven by the user, people buy stainless-steel pan can see that the pan do not rust after humidity exposure, slight chemical usage. The stainlessness also cannot be revoked, no companies can update their policies in a blink of an eye and your pan suddenly rusts.
How can a promise become self-guaranteed?
With Obsidian, its self-guaranteeing promise is built into its architecture. All files are stored on your computer, and the file format is Markdown, so you can easily move them everywhere you want.
The question is how can Obsidian maintain this self-guaranteeing promise of user data privacy when using Obsidian Sync and Publish. Apparently Obsidian really sticks to their principles, Obsidian Sync and Publish uses end-2-end encryption. Obsidian is also apparent on how users themselves can check if their data is safe and secured with encryption.
Is user-based self-guaranteeing?
No, no matter how many users are actively contributing to the project, if the data does not belong to the people then the tools along with their data can be revoked from the user. This is mainly due to Venture Capitalism. Investors may come and go, leaving the tools crumbled, buried with it the information, the time, and the dedications that has been put into to it.
People intentions, scopes, goals change. No tools live forever, but your data and knowledge should. That’s why it’s important to build a knowledge base where you can migrate, when the housing crumbles.
Without investment, how can programs like Obsidian survive?
Obsidian survives based on user donations, buying obsidian credits, merchandise, and other subscription services such as Sync, Publish, Catalyst. I have also recently support Obsidian’s initiative by using Obsidian Sync to sync this vault on my computer to my phone.
It’s the time and age when technology is advanced enough that a small developer team can create such a customizable application that can adapt to millions of people’s need.