The Future is NOT Self-Hosted
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Compute has become so ubiquitous it’s silly that we need to pick between server-client and p2p
Syncthing is a good example of being both, with options you can enable for your server version, but it’s way too basic compared to immich or nextcloud
Eh, Syncthing is only stuff you control, which doesn't exactly fulfill what OP is talking about: extending the benefits of self-hosting to those who can't or don't want to self-host. It also doesn't expand storage, it just keeps your storage in sync between devices.
P2P solves a lot of this. It provides expanded storage, can be easy to get into (add nodes as you go/pay others for nodes), etc. But there's the perennial issue w/ trusting others w/ your data.
That's why I think a hybrid is better. Buy storage from trusted providers as needed and use apps that work w/ that. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to really be a thing, but I think it could be super cool. Places like libraries can provide libraries to underprivileged people, who can then add to it w/ something from the market.
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The future is community-hosted
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The authors approach to not owning anything digital was to attempt self hosting. But the authors reaction to the amount of work was that he shouldn’t own the “self-hosting”? He does not even realize that he’s back to not owning anything
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The authors approach to not owning anything digital was to attempt self hosting. But the authors reaction to the amount of work was that he shouldn’t own the “self-hosting”? He does not even realize that he’s back to not owning anything
He proposes the cloud be owned by communities, so in a way by everyone. That's not the same everything being owned by private companies.
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He proposes the cloud be owned by communities, so in a way by everyone. That's not the same everything being owned by private companies.
wrote last edited by [email protected]So is he insinuating that communities should have IT people who keep things running for everyone (like a digital librarian of sorts)?
Because that takes time, effort, and money. Like a lot more than one would spend or need for just themselves/family/maybe a couple of friends.
Also, community-run self-hosting just seems like a bad idea from a privacy and legality standpoint. One pirate getting caught isn't usually so bad (usually a warning or small fine). But once you start distributing, then you're going from a kiddie pool of consequences into an ocean of consequences. We're talking massive fines and/or jail time.
Edit: I should clarify that I'm not talking about services here, but content itself.
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He proposes the cloud be owned by communities, so in a way by everyone. That's not the same everything being owned by private companies.
In fact, that model (conceptually, though not technically) is how most fediverse software already work
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The future is community-hosted
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E2E usually suffers from the same thing HTTP does: the MITM might not be able to read what you're saying, but they know who you're saying it to, and they may know in what context. This is a lot of information that can be used in profiling.
So you end up with systems like SimpleX, where everyone has a different UID for every contact, but that has its own problems, as anyone who's used systems like that are aware. We haven't really solved making that a good user experience for messaging; I don't see it translating to broader social media any time soon.
Nostr has some really good specs and tooling that neatly addresses these topics, including great cryptography support, signing, ad-hoc IDs, and an entirely voluntary simple naming lookup; it doesn't exactly solve zooko's triangle, but it provides a toolset sufficient to mix and match characteristics for whatever your threat model is. Sadly, Nostr is utterly dominated by the crypto crowd (and is associated with some controversial personalities), and even if you're not cryptocurrency-hostile, it's a really dull echo chamber with little other content that has prevented people who might otherwise build interesting platforms in it from doing so.
Mastodon was around for ages before (the in practice centralized) Bluesky; why did it take Bluesky to open a mass exodus from X?
This is a hard problem to solve. Throwing E2E at it doesn't make it easier; it's just tossing a buzzword in.
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So is he insinuating that communities should have IT people who keep things running for everyone (like a digital librarian of sorts)?
Because that takes time, effort, and money. Like a lot more than one would spend or need for just themselves/family/maybe a couple of friends.
Also, community-run self-hosting just seems like a bad idea from a privacy and legality standpoint. One pirate getting caught isn't usually so bad (usually a warning or small fine). But once you start distributing, then you're going from a kiddie pool of consequences into an ocean of consequences. We're talking massive fines and/or jail time.
Edit: I should clarify that I'm not talking about services here, but content itself.
wrote last edited by [email protected]There's so much to host that isn't related to pirated media sharing though. I host like 5 services and only one could be related to that. I know you clarified that you're talking about content, but there's also so much content that isn't related to pirating either. Like most of the fediverse for example
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The future is community-hosted
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so did the author spent a bunch of money while excited about sticking it to companies upon discovering a company is not your friend. didn't enjoy the work of maintaining the services or have any friends to share them with. then dreamed up federated services so someone would do all that continuing maintenance for them? am i the weird one here for only putting effort into services i have other users for or actually enjoy doing?
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So is he insinuating that communities should have IT people who keep things running for everyone (like a digital librarian of sorts)?
Because that takes time, effort, and money. Like a lot more than one would spend or need for just themselves/family/maybe a couple of friends.
Also, community-run self-hosting just seems like a bad idea from a privacy and legality standpoint. One pirate getting caught isn't usually so bad (usually a warning or small fine). But once you start distributing, then you're going from a kiddie pool of consequences into an ocean of consequences. We're talking massive fines and/or jail time.
Edit: I should clarify that I'm not talking about services here, but content itself.
The point is that clouds aren't inherently bad, and actually come with a lot of important upsides; they've become bad because capital owns and exploits everything in our society, poisoning what should be a good idea. The author is arguing that while there's nothing fundamentally wrong with self-hosting, it's not really a solution, just a patch around the problem. Rather than seeking a kind of digital homesteading where our lives are reduced to isolated islands of whatever we personally can scratch from the land, we should be seeking a digital collectivism where communities, not exploitative corporations, own the digital landscape. Sieze the means of file-sharing, in effect.
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The future is community-hosted
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Every city should host main public web servicies for its citizens, each one as an instance of a complex system, that's how anarchy works.
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End-to-end encryption means the service provider can't see your data even if they wanted to
Not necessarily. All it means is that intermediaries can't see the data in transit. You need to trust that the data is handled properly at either end, and most service providers also make the apps that you run at either end. Your library is more likely to buy whatever is cheapest than what respects your privacy the most (e.g. probably Google drive, not Tuta or Proton).
The incentives for even community-hosted services (e.g. if the library spun up its own cloud servers) to share/sell information is just too high. Maybe the library found someone uploading illegal content, and they wanted some monitoring in there to catch service abusers going forward. They'll probably put something into the client that a third party monitors, and now you have someone snooping on everything.
Instead of this, I think P2P storage is the better option for those who don't want to self-host. That way there's an incentive for the person providing storage to not know what it is (reduce liability), as well as the person submitting the data (reduce risk). Unfortunately, most current solutions here are a little shady, because they either rely on volunteers (no guarantees about data integrity) or anonymous payments (again, no guarantees about data integrity).
I'd like to see something in the middle:
- apps that work off buckets of data, that the user configures
- services that provide data guarantees that users can choose (e.g. AWS S3, Backblaze B2, Hetzner Storage boxes)
- common protocol between apps for accessing this data
So if you want more storage, you buy said storage and know who is responsible for protecting it, and your app doesn't care where it comes from.
That's possible, but the bigger leap is getting people off the major platforms like Google's or Microsoft's cloud.
You can already do what you want. S3 with HTTP, XML + XSL for responsive / dynamic content.
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Its funny to say a worse experience because I can confidently say that all the services ive replaced are equal or better than their corporate counterparts. And sometimes better by 10x
I never wonder, is "X" is on jellyfin? Yes, good. No, give me 5.
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You can already do what you want. S3 with HTTP, XML + XSL for responsive / dynamic content.
Sure, but where are the apps?
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Every city should host main public web servicies for its citizens, each one as an instance of a complex system, that's how anarchy works.
Hi! This is what I'm trying to do with tucson.social. Wish the city would get back to me. I don't want to own/operate Tucson.social alone perpetually. Lol.
It would allow me to expand to a lot more community services outside of social media, chat, and Meetup platforms.
There's dozens of us! Dozens!
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so did the author spent a bunch of money while excited about sticking it to companies upon discovering a company is not your friend. didn't enjoy the work of maintaining the services or have any friends to share them with. then dreamed up federated services so someone would do all that continuing maintenance for them? am i the weird one here for only putting effort into services i have other users for or actually enjoy doing?
am i the weird one here for only putting effort into services i have other users for or actually enjoy doing?
Absolutely not.
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so did the author spent a bunch of money while excited about sticking it to companies upon discovering a company is not your friend. didn't enjoy the work of maintaining the services or have any friends to share them with. then dreamed up federated services so someone would do all that continuing maintenance for them? am i the weird one here for only putting effort into services i have other users for or actually enjoy doing?
I didn't get the vibe that he didn't enjoy it. More that he figures that a typical person wouldn't enjoy it. And that I would agree with.
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The future is community-hosted
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Great article!
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I'm limiting myself to only open source applications on the tablets. Strictly nothing from Play Store or Aurora.
I like KOReader for my Kindle, but it's available for Android too. Have you tried it?
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The future is community-hosted
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I'd love to help community host stuff, but I'm terrified of someone posting cp to a server I have or getting breached.
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The future is community-hosted
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If you do not have physical access, it is not yours. Trust absolutely no one.
