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🆕 blog! “Self Hosting is an Unhelpful Term”

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 pro…

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#fediverse #ReDeCentralize #SocialNetworks

ynniv 1y ago 💬 2

Literal self-hosting is important because without it you don't have any real control. Yes, laws can compel cooperative companies to treat you well, as long as someone is enforcing it, and there aren't bugs. Yes, it's important that we have these for things which cannot be self-hosted. But if a self-hoster wants to be forgotten, they can microwave the hard drive and have no doubts about whether the data was deleted.

I predict self-hosting will become much more popular as we get local AI's that are able to deal with the complexity. Or, we use them to build simpler systems that don't require so much complexity. What if the AI betrays you? Well, run three different ones that watch each other.

Self-hosting isn't an "solution", it's a philosophy.

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Discussion

Terence Eden 1y ago

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq2akj8hpakgzk6gygf9rzlm343nulpue3pgkx8jmvyeayh86cfrusf8t2fq that simply isn't true, though.

If you self-host, your content can be seen. So anyone can take a copy. Nuke your disk if you want, but the Internet Archive will still have copy. As will anyone who hit ctrl+s.

ynniv 1y ago

I frequently make that same argument about NIP-09. If you've shared something, you should forever assume someone has access to it. But if you aren't self hosting, everything that you do should be considered shared. At least with local files and code there is some semblance of privacy. Most don't understand this.