A fascinating look into both sides ‒ positive and negative ‒ of self-hosting and escaping the corporate "cloud", touching on the tools that are available, the requirements to get them working, and why they may not be the utopian future some make them out to be.
Critically, the call to action here is one that I fully agree with: an actual independent web is not one born of individualism and escapism; it's a return to shared, community-led and community-run infrastructure, with interoperability and personal control baked in. Building your own little "cloud" server is fine, but the end goal should be distributed, networked "cloud hubs", provided as part of small, non-profit endeavours. (I also really like the thoughts around public libraries!)
On the core issues with wanting both a self-hosted web, and a social one:
This highlights the fundamental problem with self-hosting: it assumes isolated, independent systems are virtuous. But in reality, this simply makes them hugely inconvenient.
On the negatives of self hosting:
But just like the suburbs, this vision is incredibly inefficient and detrimental to creating vibrant, interconnected communities. It necessitates mass amounts of duplicate, unused infrastructure and requires each household to be individually responsible for maintaining that infrastructure. It silos us and makes it harder to share resources.
On the wonderful concept/phrase of "digital feudalism":
We're living in a time of digital feudalism where our tech giant lords provide us serfs with cloud infrastructure, tax us to use it, and then claim that the data we grow on their land is their own.
On a different, more collaborative future, and one possible way to achieve it:
Imagine a world where your library card includes 100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services — all for free.
On how to prevent provider lock-in:
And with standardized protocols and portable data standards, you could switch between services much more easily than you could today.
On the benefits to both public and private cloud spaces, if the former were more common:
By providing a good, baseline public offering with no profit-based incentive, the cost of *private* options would go down and the service they provide would have to get *better*. Competition is good and at cost competitors disrupt markets in the best ways.
On why simply battling for a world where anyone can self-host is missing the fact that the majority of people will never have the time, resources, and/or skills to do so:
I realized how privileged I am to have the skills required for digital sovereignty. I realized how unattainable, unsustainable, and unrealistic self-hosting is as a mass solution to the problems we face. I realized that self-reliance isn't freedom — it's the luxury of retreating from a system that others can't escape.
