Is it just up-front cost? I understand that for larger instances because they’d have to setup heftier systems, but even micro-instances seem to rent cloud compute when they could probably get by with port-forwarding to an old laptop.
Edit: I understand that self-hosting is a skill that takes years to learn, and I’m aware that the vast majority of people on Earth choose to spend their time and energy investing into completely different topics. However, Lemmy tends to attract the techy type, so I suppose I just assumed the ratio of self-hosters-to-not would be higher. I’m not saying it’s trivial, just that I presume more Lemmings know how to do it than, say, Redditors (taking total users into account ofc)
Specifically for Piefed/Lemmy, I have all the experience and knowledge necessary to self host my own instance. I’ve been managing servers since before half of Lemmy’s population was born. And what it has taught me, is it is always better when its is someone else’s problem. My home lemmy instance closed down, which could have been a chance for me to self host, but I, instead, spent a little time finding another instance I liked, because I didn’t want to be responsible for it.
I actually own a domain with the idea of starting a Piefed and Mastodon instance, but I’ve never been willing to set it up and deal with the overhead. Maybe one day I’ll decide to, especially if feddit.online ever goes offline, but for now, I enjoy it being someone else’s problem.
Also, I’m pretty sure the fediverse wouldn’t work if everyone had an instance of 1. Maybe some day someone will crack a fully distributed P2P ActivityPub like solution, but until then, the health of the swarm requires we stay somewhere between “1 company runs everything” and “there are 7 billion fediverse instances”.
I’m not a developer. I don’t code. So when it comes to building my own local infrastructure from scratch and maintaining it like it’s not a full time job… all with enough security as to not fuck up my local home network… I don’t know man…. It’s easier to stay out of it and just have some drives and a tv.
@sam@r1b.it I think a lot of it boils down to knowledge. You'd be surprised by the amount of people who need their hands held the first time they buy a domain name, who have never so much as paid for a subscription to a managed service before.
It's easy to take for granted the technical abilities that are necessary to self-host an instance. None of it is exactly difficult, but it's time-consuming and requires a lot of specific knowledge.
I appreciate you being as kind as you are in response to a half thought-out thought posted sporadically onto the internet. You’re giving me too much care, lol
I would love to but the main issue is I don’t have motivation, the time to learn, or the money to set it up the way I’d like. I can’t even get a pihole running atm, despite trying. I once had a server on my old desktop but couldn’t even take the time to rip all my movies to Jellyfin. I’m also concerned about having all my stuff in one location (and if that’s the same with a corp then that doesn’t change with me self hosting 😬). I would love it for privacy but there’s a few options that are convenient and supposedly secure enough that I am willing to make the trust compromise. I would really like to own my router or set up that pihole though, but see first sentence :/
I agree more people should self host.
Disclaimer: I’m fediverse developer myself of Mbin. And also host all my services and websites.
Most people are answering the title question but is your question about why people use a VPS or paid server for a Lemmy instance instance of hosting at home?
Content is federated in. My home server is not a good place to keep unknown images, videos, and links to other content. The risks associated with hosting user content are the main reason for using a data centre instead of home hosting.
There are also other benefits like complete separation from my personal hosted services that are actually hosted from home, and privacy and security reasons. As an example, my home hosted services are not available from outside my country, which virtually eliminates the malicious vulnerability scanning bots that constantly hit the domain before I added that limitation. But you can’t have that limitation for a federated service or it wouldn’t be able to federate. I have this country restriction on my router as part of the port forwarding rules.
But mostly it’s that first thing about the user generated content.
The risks associated with hosting user content are the main reason for using a data centre instead of home hosting.
Is the legal liability actually different? Wouldn’t you still be equally responsible for what’s on your VPS, since you control it?
Legally? I’m not sure.
But if I had to explain to a jury, I’d sure rather have “the social media site’s server was in a data centre and hosted user content” as the explanation instead of trying to explain to laypeople “yes the material was on a computer in my house but akshully a computer and a server are the same thing, and there’s this concept among people online about hosting your own internet services” and so on.
A lot of people here are saying that it’s difficult and takes a lot of time and money to get started. It doesn’t. I learned how in just a few days, and I’ve been hosting everything on this shitty computer from 20 years ago that I got for free.
Seriously, it took me just a few days to go from absolutely zero knowledge about self hosting to get about 80% of what I know now, the other 20 is just neat tips and tricks I’ve learned in the past year and a half that have made the experience smoother.
Now, I host almost every service I use, the only exceptions being YouTube and steam, and other general forums for when I look things up.
Who on earth starts a thread and doesn’t put in a single reply?
I agree with pretty much everything people are saying, at least that which is kind. I think I probably just overcorrected when trying to account for the fact that Lemmy tends to bring in the techy type. My thought process was flawed. I don’t have much to say beyond that and an updoot, which I’ve been giving to most
Also, the edit to the post was intended as a mass reply. A lot of people are saying the same thing, so I didn’t want to reply to each individual one, nor did I want to come off as argumentative. Like I said, I agree with what most are saying
Convince your partner that you need £600 for hardware box and then 4x£200 for hard drives (before HDDs became a mess, now those HDDs are impossible to find AND they are £480 off the back of the lorry).
But cost aside, I know how to self host and solve most of the issues around it but I don’t know much and don’t have many plumbing tools, or carpentry, I can do some basic things but it will be shit and wonky.
That’s why you pay for experts who can do what you cannot. For instance I need to probably replace threads and risers and I would not be able to do that myself without breaking the entire staircase (I tried to start)
…Of course.
it’s difficult and dangerous
Fantastic! No notes.
I appreciate the refresher. Thanks for sharing the link!
Most people don’t know how to self-host. Most people don’t know what self-hosting is. Most people don’t know what hosting is.
This post is a prime example of a weird logical fallacy that seems to permeate the tech world in particular, and which goes something like this:
- For me, this task is trivial.
- That is because I have spent a lifetime developing the knowledge, skills and experience to make that task trivial.
- I lack the self-awareness and intellectual honesty to understand that.
- Therefore, I assume that anyone for whom this task is not trivial is simply lazy, and has only themselves to blame for their failure to perform this task.
- Therefore, I am very superior and very smart.
To add between 2. and 3.: I choose to spend my limited time and energy on managing self-hosted infrastructure rather than on other hobbies or life demands.
Tbf it is a hobbby 😂
deleted by creator
Most people don’t make their own furniture, clothes, or ingredients either. It’s difficult, time-consuming, and requires a significant up-front (and ongoing) investment of money and of specialized knowledge that most people have neither the time nor care to deal with while managing the rest or their life.
Im sorry, is this a real question? Honestly, I cant help but feel like youre still in high school. This is such a self obsessed question its hurting my head.
This is like asking “Why doesnt everyone just learn roman numeral analysis and use the progression i-VI-III-VII to write a song that people like?” Its a deeply niche knowledge base/skill.
If youre asking this in earnest, do some deep reflection on how distinct and varied human experience is. The answer is that people have different skills and interests and your lived experience has nothing to do with other people’s lives.
I get where you’re coming from but this is a pretty full on response isn’t it? I work in a technical organisation and plenty there don’t do it despite having the skill set. I assume this is more the framing of the question not “why doesn’t the average granny who worked as a teacher her whole life self-host?”
Fair point and well made at that. Full on can be appropriate. This community has an unearned superiority complex. With that in mind, I stand by the full on-ness.
Risk of attackers getting on your la(w)n and ISP issues like no public IP I guess
Yeah, probably for the same reason few people sew their own t-shirts, knit their pullovers and repair the plumbing and electrical work in their house by themselves.
