Can we all stop the in-fighting for a minute and realise how awesome the platform we are on is?
We are forming communities on the realized image of the internet that we were told we would have back in the 80s and 90s.
You can make your own home on the web and have your own niche community, not owned by any corporation, while still being connected to the wider internet.
This feels like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Exactly! Back in the 80s, tech enthusiasts would run their own dial-up message boards in their homes. The Fediverse is like that, but with all the benefits of modern technology. Anyone can run their own instance if they have a decent internet connection (usually fiber). But it is more than just message boards: they can run Lemmy, Mastodon, Wordpress, and even things like Tor and NextCloud, and instantly contribute their computing resources to the larger Fediverse community.
@Ramin_HAL9001 @crazyminner
To add to that, it became dirt cheap to get hosting. Like under a pack of cigarettes per month cheap.
Did a little analysis over on my blog going over the shoestring methods for those interested: https://blog.lionscade.de/show/7
Just wanted to say I appreciate your reference of the Dodo.
Reject modern life, return to Dodo
Cheers mate.
X
I’m not that well read on this subject, but you can do this in your house or with a VPS? I always thought there was some conflict with residential internet and selfhosting?
You can have issues with self hosting on a residential connection if your provider gives you a CGNAT connection and not a dedicated one. With CGNAT (Carrier Grade Network Adress Translation) your line is shared between multiple users. So are the ports, so imagine you’re trying to open a port on your router and expect to reach from internet to your home using that port. Your carrier may have splitted the whole available ports pool between the 4 customers behind your IP, and when you try to reach <your IP>:<the port> your packets may go Somewhere else. This thing is ok for when you use internet for classical browsing, not when you try to have traffic initiated from internet up to your home
Many ISP:s also forbid hosting servers in their terms of use, regardless of the technical possibilities.
Depends a bit on your ISP, but it’s possible to self-host services on most internet providers. And for those who restrict it, you can use Cloudflare Tunnels to host most things.
I suppose data caps could be an issue if you’re unfortunate enough to have an ISP that enforces those, but even then it’s definitely possible.