I still do self-hosting, but I took the time to understand what problem I could and couldn’t solve, and who it solves it for

ergaster.org/posts/2023/08/09-…

I don't want to host services (but I do)

I don’t want to self-host, and even worse: I think most individuals shouldn’t host services for others. Yet, I am self-hosting services and I even teach people how to do it.

^ergaster.org

I've read that oponion before: drewlyton.com/story/the-future…

I absolutely agree.

The Future is NOT Self-Hosted

Hey friends 👋, A few months ago, Amazon announced that Kindle users would no longer be able to download and back up their book libraries to their computers.

^{Drew Lyton}

I don't think this is a good comparison, but the idea is still valid.

Long term, how are we going to keep our data alive, without fossil fuels and the whole world-wide HDD-producing infrastructure that goes with it?

I like this comparison, but the missing, and most important piece is the small commercial farms that *should* be the main supplier (of food and hosting services!)

Individual solutions are fun, but not efficient for really feeding ourselves, and industrial megafactoryfarms come with a huge pile of problems. True with data, true with agriculture!

You are not in control by doing it yourself, if you don't know what you are doing. Some vegetables you just plant and receive a good harvest, but there are more than enough that are hard to grow.

Self-hosting sensitive data is more like: To be in control of the safety of you home, build your own lock. Yes, you exactly know how secure it is, but that doesn't matter if you exactly know: I know jack-shit about making locks.

I self host and have a large vegetable garden.

I also contribute to FOSS projects including paying for hosted ones, and work at a food coop.

While I largely agree with you, I object slightly to the either/or framing.

very well put, and I agree with the conclusion of tackling this is a team.

I dream for a long time of a world where every cell phone comes with a paired personal server, that you'd keep plugged in at home, with more storage and compute power, and perhaps a more stable internet connection.

Managing the server would be similar to managing your smartphone (i.e., what Sandstorm.io wanted to create), with apps, permissions, etc.

Yes, this! We host stuff for the purpose of communicating - and communication is inherently social.

Though self-hosting has given me a much better understanding of technology, and skills that make me feel empowered.

It's not that self hosting as a concept is a bad way, it's that we don't do it in a user friendly, easy to set up, way.

We've figure out how to make applications easy to install on a phone - that's what Android is. Making them easy to install on a "Self hosters appliance" ought to be just as easy. A "Self hosters' Android" is something achievable, but with the ISPs locking down connections, and the average person is now so dumb that they can't join Mastodon because "You have to pick a server", the problem is fighting a lot of bias that prevents anyone from having the incentive to build a OS and ecosystem like that.

so far, Ive not had any trouble with "being in control of my data", for about 10 years of it now.

What is the connection to the analogy of growing a garden? A garden is usually a finite plot on rented land with strict limits.

Data warehousing is much more flexible, the cost of warehousing a LOT of it is much cheaper today/low energy, and there would never be any way to scale a garden like you can scale personal storage. Also the philosophy of WHAT we store, and why.

in my opinion (30+ year tech workers), I think we should be generating less digital content, attempting to immortalize less digital content, and considering more seriously (climate change, late stage capitalism, etc) the whole subject.

If we also limit what we consider essential data, this makes the whole problem much easier. I dont think we live in a world where our data can be as immortal as we maybe want it to be...

I've got pretty good resilience for my data. I'm not sure why I would ever want any kind of transparency for it.

The difference between a veg garden and claiming you're in control of your food and self-hosting and being in control of your data is the order of magnitudes in difference between the resources required for both.

You can be in control of your data for something like 1000 bucks a year or something like that, combining HW, some remote backups and electricity.

I love self hosting my stuff. I loathe the fact that I need to in order to guard my family's privacy. And I'm sad for all the people who don't understand how the cloud owners are abusing them and exploiting their data.

I can't personally fix the online world; the oligarchs have seen to that. But I can avoid cooperating with it.

We WERE self-hosting, until the cost of "business" internet service (for static IPs and public-facing servers) more than doubled. Now we use a VPS for mail and web. The VPS is also more reliable, as our location has frequent outages.

We use an EU based nextcloud provider for offsite backup (because the GDPR is your friend).

@thibaultamartin

As @pluralistic often writes, group problems need group solutions.

pluralistic.net/2022/06/06/for…

pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how…

The libertarian billionaires carping about "self-sufficiency" and "individualism" are all hypocrites.

Billionaires fund malign influence campaigns deliberately to erode trust in groups, undermine group actions, and torpedo the functioning of democracy.

They purposely manipulate public sentiment towards "easy to fail & frustrate" individualism.

1/

I self host too and I also host other people. However, I don't do as much of it as I used to. Hosting other people is a huge headache so I let that business fade out.

I never made a serious effort to grow my #hosting service. It ran it as a social enterprise.

I didn't just offer good hosting to them, I also offered them support and advice they could trust. That kind of service is something that I should have valued more and priced in a way that was more fair to me.

Offering artisanal hosting run by an expert who knows you, your site, and your goals is something I wish I had more time to do. I'd love to see other people build a business from this model. My advice is to be sure to price it fairly to yourself and clearly explain the value you are providing.

#managedhosting

Yeah, if services respected instead of productified you I might just have had only ONE computer... maybe two, running mainstream software... probably.

I rather be out cycling than tinkering with my computers. But here we are; self-hosting by pure spite of the modern Internet.

H'mmm, I'm going to cast doubt on that.

You may need more food than you can grow on the land available to you; you may need more food than you can grow with the skills and tools you have.

You may think growing food is an inefficient use of your time, and certainly communal food production is a better, more resilient idea, but you absolutely can produce much more food than you need, as peasants all over the world have been proving for the last ten thousand years.