I love self-hosting a bunch of apps I use, so I don’t have to rely on anyone but my ISP for my digital life. Jellyfin, Immich, forgejo, memos and more.
But I know this isn’t for everyone. I just recently spent about 3 hours doing routine maintenance and fixing an issue (I caused) and I know not everyone is into doing that kind of thing.
I also wonder what it would take to get more people into this self-hosting thing. I.e., to get them off of subscription streaming services, Google, etc…, so they can own their own data, stop feeding the machine and for the general betterment of humanity. What would the world be like if half of all adults self-hosted their own services? Or even 25%?
So, for discussion, is increasing the number of self hosters a good idea? How can we make help that process along?
Edit: Fixed typos
I would not suggest the „average person“ who statistically can only install with „click through“ and extensive description and may require a hotline if things go south to selfhost anything.
Ideally, they should pay a friend or a local small business for hosting for them.
If a person is able to constructively work through bugs and make bug reports and read a lot, yes, they could attempt selfhosting imo. But they should be aware that it is going to be work and its not going to go smooth 100% of the time.
Interesting idea. I wonder if there’s any such local / regional service out there. I imagine they would have to have “real people” customer service to make that work. Not sure what that would be worth to most people / cost to run as a business.
I‘m attempting to do exactly that for my local community atm. Most people are still reluctant though.
Sweet! Tell me more about how you’re trying to do that and how you’re seeing reluctance, please.
I‘m self employed in IT and host a couple services for people. Small, local business.
My experience so far is that few outside of IT understand why big tech isnt a viable option and even fewer are willing to accept that imperfection when it comes to services that have a proprietary option.
Obviously its pretty early in the game so I guess this will get better and I‘m also not complaining, just stating that peeps need more time and education on this matter.
More self hosting would improve the “average” person baseline.
We’ve had computers for decades. We’ve had computers in our pockets for several years now. Computer literacy is still garbage (mostly because your average person’s critical thinking skills are garbage).
I’m not saying that today everyone should push a button and start self hosting. I’m saying it would be great if more people learn to self host and that there are benefits to people learning more.
People don’t just absorb knowledge. It will require education programs.
The problem is the average person is not going to know how to properly secure whatever they are hosting.
Did you know how to do everything before you started?
I agree on principle but paying someone would do wonders for the state of self hosting - assuming that the people paid would foward parts to the software devs and help improve the software since they can afford to spend time with the software. Second point is that attempting self hosting only makes sense if someone is actually willing to learn and put time in.