Rug pulling and control and curiosity. If you host with a host, you’re only able to put in your feed what they allow you too. With self hosting, you can put any tag in your feed you want as long as you’re curious enough to figure it out. If your host goes tits up or decides to censor your feed or add dynamic ads to offset host costs, you’re at their mercy. And some people just like the idea of being in control of the means of distribution of their content. But that extra freedom and control comes with the extra responsibility of maintaining your own feeds.
Discussion
I get the sovereign side. But what’s the negative side?
As in how much development work is necessary. How do you evolve with the technology and etc.
If podcasting 3.0 come out what is required to adjust or conform.
I ask as a gentle pleb whose time is scarce and it’s something I am honestly interest in.
Down side is not as much help. If you break your feed or your server goes down, you have to troubleshoot.
No development work is necessary. Your feed is literally a text file you can edit in Notepad. You just have to be able to read the docs and format the text correctly in your feed so an app is able to read it and display your images, media, description, etc.
We call it 2.0, but that’s just marketing. Under the hood, it’s the same podcasting it’s been for 20 years, we’re just adding new features to the docs and building apps that can read those new features and display them properly.
Got it. Thanks
What a host provides is an easy interface for you to pick and choose the features you want, an automated feed builder (which you could do by hand in a text editor), a server, some promotion, and tech support. I think for most people, a host is a great way to go.
And I say that as the creator of Sovereign Feeds. SF gives you the easy interface, but you have to do everything else your self.