Self Hosting is an Unhelpful Term
By @edent
· fediverse ReDeCentralize Social Networks · 8 comments · 650 words
Mathew Duggan has a brilliant post called "Self-Hosting Isn't a Solution; It's A Patch". In it, he (correctly and convincingly) argues that compelling people to run their own computer services is a complex and distracting crutch for the current problems we face.
It's expensive to self-host, there are moderation problems, and the difficulty level is too high for most people.
But, in my opinion, I think he misunderstands something about self-hosting because, as a term, it is both misleading and unhelpful. When people say "Defund The Police" what they mean is "Move funds away from miliary style policing and give it to trained mental health professionals" - what people hear is "Abolish the police and let anarchy reign".
The ability to "Self Host" doesn't just mean "run this on a Raspberry Pi in your cupboard and be responsible for constant maintenance". Yes, you can do that if you're a masochist, but it isn't restricted to that.
To me, "Self-Hosting" means "I am in control of where I host something". I currently pay a company to host this blog. It has previously been hosted on Blogger, WordPress, my own VPS, and a variety of other services. Tomorrow I could decide to host it with a big company, or I could run it from my phone. I get to choose. That's what "Self-Hosting" is - a choice in where to host.
Similarly, Mastodon allows me self-host my account. I can have my content on one of the big servers and let them do moderation, storage, and maintenance for me - or I can move my account anywhere I choose. To a server in my cupboard and back again.
Email is similar. I know people who've gone from CompuServe, to HoTMaiL, to Gmail, to their own domain, then to OutLook. Their address-book moves with them. Forwarding rules ensure incoming email is routed correctly. They can choose to actively moderate spam, or outsource it. They can pay a company to host, keep backups in their basement, or watch adverts in return for services.
I agree with nearly everything Mathew says in his post. It is absurdly privileged to think that running your own services is something normal people want to do and are capable of doing. Strong regulation helps everyone, people want simplicity, and ecosystems can be fragile.
But witness all the people moving over from Twitter to new networks. Do they care where their data is hosted and how it is maintained? No! But they want to move their social graph with them. And when BlueSky and Mastodon collapse, people will want to move again.
In the UK, I have the ability to move my phone number between hundreds of providers. If I'm particularly techy, I can even run my own infrastructure and route the number there. People love the fact that they can leave crappy service providers and move somewhere cheaper or with with better customer service or whatever it is they value. I think that's a form of self-hosting; I get to choose who provides my services.
Similarly, I believe people have a desire for "self-hosting" which is difficult for them to articulate. They want to move their data around - be it old photos, a social graph, or a username. Most of them don't really care about the underlying technology (and why should they?) but they do care about continuity of service and being able to escape crappy service providers.
So, that's my reckons. Self-Hosting means you can choose where to host, and I think most people can find value in that.
What do you think?
@Edent IMHO Docker front ends make the difficulty of self hosting even in the traditional oil changing sense a lot easier.
That said I think your comparison to defund the police is apt.
@blog i like the phone number comparison 👍
It's a given and people wont accept anything less.
Self hosting is being in control of your own data/network.
@Edent I agree. I know some people see "self-hosting" as an extreme, and you're really only self-hosting if you can physically touch all hardware at any time. (But who provides that Internet connection, huh? By that definition you're not self-hosting, are you?)
To me too, self-hosting is about choice. Can I take what I have, put it somewhere else, and others don't notice (possibly apart from brief downtime during the transition)? If so, that likely qualifies. Whether I pay others is secondary.
Reminds me of my post a long time ago about why the mass adoption of Medium was a risk, because one day maybe you find you no longer own your work. That's not the same as me having a plex server running at home that I access to listen to my albums anywhere in the world
@Edent
This perfectly encapsulates my experience on the Fedi: I started out on a hosted instance, and as I learned more about how instances work I moved to a host in my home country, where I found and connected with people on a more local level. Then the techy in me got interested in running my own instance (I used to SysOp my own BBS in the ‘90s), but the demands—both financial and technical—proved to be too much of a headache so I moved to a managed self-hosting provider, which I eventually outgrew and I finally ended up on the instance where I began my journey.
The true power in decentralized solutions like Mastodon and the Fediverse is that people are free to choose their own path without being locked-in to a particular provider.
@neil
@blog I'm not quite at "raspberry pi" level but I did dabble in self-hosting a Minecraft server. I can understand where this inclination comes from, but I think it may be difficult to convince people outside the "in-group" that this is what it means based on the word parts.
Do you think this might be a niche for a separate term, like digital agency/data agency?
@blog I think that's a perceptive view (if you can self-host you can also other-host) so in a sense self-hosting is the existence proof that something is really open and possible to deploy autonomously.
However I'm more of an optimist about these things. I don't see why people can't self-host. I'm nobody special and I self-host. I don't want to say if I can do it anyone can do it but... It's not like there's some impenetrable magic involved here. It's all simple mechanism.
@Edent I see what you're saying but I think the affordance people need is "portability". I'd describe that as portability across a sliding scale of options, where different people will describe options on that scale as "self hosting" or not. "Managed hosting" and "SaaS" are also places on that scale.
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