The (somewhat affordable) productized NASes all suffer from big tech diseases.

I think a lot of people underestimate how easy a "NAS" can be made if you take a standard PC, install some form of desktop Linux, and hit "share" on a folder. Something like TrueNAS or one of its forks may also be an option if you're into that kind of stuff.

If you want the fancy docker management web UI stuff with as little maintenance as possible, you may still be in the NAS market, but for a lot of people NAS just means "a big hard drive all of my devices can access". From what I can tell the best middle point between "what the box from the store offers" and "how do build one yourself" is a (paid-for) NAS OS like HexOS where analytics, tracking, and data sales are not used to cover for race-to-the-bottom pricing.

> Can't even name the domains on my own damn server with an expectation of privacy now.

You never could. A host name or a domain is bound to leave your box, it's meant to. It takes sending an email with a local email client.

(Not saying, the NAS leak still sucks)