There are a few logistical things that I'm concerned about getting into trouble with:
1. Running afoul of government regulations (Cookie banner requirements, CCPA, etc.) I know many of these wouldn't actually apply to a tiny personal project, but as there are greater numbers of tech regulations I'm worried there will be some legal requirement I fail to comply with due to ignorance or incompetence. (The latter is a real risk--though I studied CS in college, I've never coded professionally outside of internships).
2. Personal liability if I'm sued This one's particularly on my mind since several of the ideas I want to explore involve scraping data from sites that may object, but I can come up with all kinds of nightmare scenarios outside of that. I wouldn't want some dumb little project I'm playing around with to end up bankrupting me.
3. Running up massive cloud provider bills Just heard too many horror stories about this, and again my incompetence is a big risk.
Wondering if there are well-established ways that folks have dealt with these issues, e.g., creating a separate legal entity like an LLC and/or creating a separate bank account. To be clear, I'm not specifically trying to start a company. I'd love it if I some of the things I build could be self-sustaining, but I'm very cognizant of the fact that the most likely outcome is that anything I build is completely ignored.
Since jurisdiction probably matters, I'm based in California.
Appreciate any advice or thoughts folks have!
You should form an LLC in the state where you live. Here's a nice guide for how to do this in California:
Remember, there is an annual cost associated with forming and maintaining a legal entity. In some states, this could be close to $1k per year, not including additional tax preparation costs.
Note that there is no "cookie banner requirement".
What there is in the GDPR is a requirement to obtain consent before placing tracking cookies in a user's browser. The hated cookie banner is just the lazy legal department method of attempting to "obtain consent".
If you don't insert tracking cookies, you don't need banners (nor do you need to obtain any consent).