I think most people would rather create accounts with online services than run servers. But if it were using standardized software that is available from multiple providers (much like many people...
I think most people would rather create accounts with online services than run servers. But if it were using standardized software that is available from multiple providers (much like many people can run a Mastodon server or a Minecraft server), then that might result in more user-centric software?
I bought a Synology server months ago - yes, I know they took a turn for the worse, I bought it before that - and one great thing about it is how familiar, casual and convenient it is. The UI is...
I bought a Synology server months ago - yes, I know they took a turn for the worse, I bought it before that - and one great thing about it is how familiar, casual and convenient it is. The UI is great, very user friendly, and you can configure it without ever touching a single command line. There are apps for it, like drive, notes, word, photos, music, etc. You can use it as if it was Google's services.
Truly, I cannot think of a better example of a personal server that is as convenient and casual to use.
But I still think it's not suitable for non-tech-savvy users, and will never be:
you have to understand the risks of opening it to the internet and how to properly protect yourself with firewall rules;
- I very much doubt most people understand what these are, what ports are, how they interact between the server and router, etc
you have to understand that a server needs a backup! It itself is not a backup
- I very much doubt most people are willing to spend yet another hundreds of euros for a backup
- I very much doubt most people understand or know what are snapshots and how to use them, or better, if they even know those are a thing
you have to understand that you need to protect your server with an UPS, else you risk losing your data with a power outage
- Just mention how it is possible to lose data, and see how most people are immediately turned off and turn to Google's Drive or Onedrive
you have to understand that you should use an ethernet cable, so you don't keep your wifi clogged
- There are many people who don't know the difference in practice between the two
you have to understand all the security good practices, not using the default ports, not using the default admin/guest accounts, using 2FA, etc
- I don't think I need to elaborate on this one. You guys know what's up here too
Self-hosting is, in a nutshell, a DIY project. No matter how simple it can be made, the user will always need to have the basic grasp of the thing that they are mounting. And I can't picture the majority of people having that grasp, or care to have it. It's much easier and convenient to pay someone else to worry about that for you
If we can get it down to being just as easy as pressing a button maybe, most casual users aren't going to want to do anything more complicated than that.
If we can get it down to being just as easy as pressing a button maybe, most casual users aren't going to want to do anything more complicated than that.
I made a comment on a post about a self-hosting stack that I think is relevant here. The gist is that no matter how simple you make the setup or how much complexity you have the software wallpaper...
I made a comment on a post about a self-hosting stack that I think is relevant here. The gist is that no matter how simple you make the setup or how much complexity you have the software wallpaper over, when you get to self hosting there will always be an unhandled way for things to break/behave/degrade sure to hardware faults, OS interactions, network interactions, etc.
Unless you include the hardware and more or less make it disposable or factory reset to fix every issue, there's just going to be a lot of people who can't/won't want to take on the work.
CasaOS tries to do this, but I am not sure how effective it is. Homelab enthusiasts are very opinionated, so you will see criticisms of absolutely everything.
CasaOS tries to do this, but I am not sure how effective it is. Homelab enthusiasts are very opinionated, so you will see criticisms of absolutely everything.
Might need to go a step further than that. Even if there is established software everyone has a different computer setup and interactions with other software or drivers can still make running...
Might need to go a step further than that. Even if there is established software everyone has a different computer setup and interactions with other software or drivers can still make running software a headache.
Maybe something like an approved docker container that is being maintained to fix any bugs that pop up would be better. That way all the supporting software can also be included and the differences between individual peoples computers wont be as much of a concern.
Yeah, I was thinking of an app store for server-side, open source software that you run on an ISP of your choice, sort of like Docker but more consumer-oriented. Maybe someday. It's hard to get...
Yeah, I was thinking of an app store for server-side, open source software that you run on an ISP of your choice, sort of like Docker but more consumer-oriented.
Maybe someday. It's hard to get the ball rolling. Sort of like how the Bluesky protocols are designed to be mix-and-match at multiple levels, but at some levels, they are the only big provider.
There's PikaPods, which makes it easy to host open-source software in the cloud. I haven't tried it, but it looks simple to use and they have a lot of the popular self-hosted software. They also...
There's PikaPods, which makes it easy to host open-source software in the cloud. I haven't tried it, but it looks simple to use and they have a lot of the popular self-hosted software. They also do revenue sharing. Is this in the vein of what you're envisioning?
Not yet! Always tempted to, and then I remember I have a miniPC and a Synology at home already that I bought for the purposes of self-hosting.. but maybe in a decade when they die lol.
Not yet! Always tempted to, and then I remember I have a miniPC and a Synology at home already that I bought for the purposes of self-hosting.. but maybe in a decade when they die lol.
@smores may have insights to share. I was poking around the app list on the platform and came across a familiar name. Dug around a bit on tildes for Storyteller and found...
Oh, hi! Yeah, Storyteller is available on both PikaPods and Elfhosted. They're both cool services — Elfhosted seems much more actively maintained and has a much more active community and support....
Oh, hi! Yeah, Storyteller is available on both PikaPods and Elfhosted. They're both cool services — Elfhosted seems much more actively maintained and has a much more active community and support. PikaPods was very responsive when I first reached out about getting Storyteller on the platform, but has been slow to incorporate updates (they promise weekly updates, but that hasn't always been the case) and I think they still haven't updated the docs link? Maybe they have now, I haven't checked recently.
Anyway, I don't use either service aside from testing Storyteller on them occasionally, but happy to answer questions about them if I can!
Huh... I enjoyed reading this more than I thought I would. I agree with the premise. It would be nice if there were more local options for building a distributed community (in spite of the irony)....
Huh... I enjoyed reading this more than I thought I would.
Imagine a world where your library card includes 100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services — all for free
I agree with the premise. It would be nice if there were more local options for building a distributed community (in spite of the irony). The appeal of being local is that they would be more responsive and responsible to the needs of the community, right? I could see that.
But nothing is really stopping your local organization from developing the same harm that Google is perceived as emitting. They are both organizations of people. If Google was a worker-owned co-op with solidarity, mutual aid, and all that; would there be anything 'wrong' with Google Photos? Is it just the organizational structure that needs to be changed?
I think the key factor is democratic accountability. If there were some servers held in common, either through a collective or (slightly worse) through a public entity like the library, then...
I think the key factor is democratic accountability. If there were some servers held in common, either through a collective or (slightly worse) through a public entity like the library, then ultimately the users have the final say over what happens on those servers. At least in theory. If google changed to be a genuine collective that would be a legitimate improvement.
I can't quite pin down why I don't buy this idea. I want to. It is my idea of the Ideal. But w/o being clear on the "why", it feels unreachable/utopian. Like, why can't we just have a...
I can't quite pin down why I don't buy this idea. I want to. It is my idea of the Ideal. But w/o being clear on the "why", it feels unreachable/utopian.
Like, why can't we just have a representative govt, with fair and accessible voting and devoid of financial corruption?
Capitalism, I know. But that's an easy, throw-away answer. [Edit: Okay, and racism.]
I used to lean Libertarian, because I trusted People over Govt. Now, IDK, local/community/municipal Cloud services sounds great. Bitcoin sounded great back in the early days, too.
I prefer self-hosting, with a giant, over-arching push to simplify it to the point that most people can do it themselves, or at worst, hire the nearest 4th-grader to do it for them.
I agree with you. I've been self hosting more and more as I've come to loath a lot of big tech and what they stand for. But this article just rubbed me the wrong way? I can't pin any real critique.
I agree with you. I've been self hosting more and more as I've come to loath a lot of big tech and what they stand for.
But this article just rubbed me the wrong way? I can't pin any real critique.
I do like the idea of libraries evolving into municipal data centers ... that seems like a viable progression. Honestly, I don't think my gripe is even with the article, so much as with the world...
I do like the idea of libraries evolving into municipal data centers ... that seems like a viable progression.
Honestly, I don't think my gripe is even with the article, so much as with the world we live in, where these ideas seem entirely unrealistic because of the political and socio-economic landscape.
I'm building my own self-hosting capabilities because it is worthwhile to me. I am also considering offering hosting to family and friends in exchange for helping to defray additional costs. I...
I'm building my own self-hosting capabilities because it is worthwhile to me. I am also considering offering hosting to family and friends in exchange for helping to defray additional costs. I think such an approach could help broaden access to those who don't want to build/maintain their own, reduce the costs for them, and also improve privacy/security/independence. I'm not sure how to do this, and I'm not even certain if it could be done easily, but I want to try.
The answer to me isn't federation, though it kind of does look like it, but instead immediate environment community building. A community-hosted alternative could enable filesharing rather than defaulting to Google Photos or Docs - think of it as an app-based pseudo-SSH.
The risk of this is that small organizations are only as good as their executives. The unscrupulous "roleplayed sys admin" could leverage substantial power over their friends and family, potentially denying them access to their files (or accessing it themselves). While is fundamentally the situation we currently have with big corporations, it would be made a more immediate risk in this format. A trusted third party may be needed to ensure safety, an honest broker, to break out of the walled gardens. We have become bad at trusting, this is a low-trust society, making broader cooperation a challenge...so we really need to address that too.
Sorry, it's late, I'm rambling, just some thoughts.
I am halfway agreeing with the author. But not entirely I posted this thread earlier this week. In it I explain that for the most part I don't self host, but use services that offer open solutions...
I am halfway agreeing with the author. But not entirely I posted this thread earlier this week. In it I explain that for the most part I don't self host, but use services that offer open solutions I can easily switch away from.
I don't host my own nextcloud instance (dropbox, drive alternative) but rent one.
You don't need a lot of technical knowledge to move away from big tech's cloud (still a bit). But, you do need to pay for it. Which still puts me in a position of privilege, since I am able to afford the various services.
But also highlights the problem with wanting a community cloud, it isn't going to be cheap. Google and the likes have made these services seem very cheap but that's only because you pay in other ways (ads) or because they subsidized their own services in order to undercut any competition.
Overall I agree with the author, I just don't know how we can make this happen. Even more so since most people don't really care. So any public investment is going to be a uphill battle to get done.
I agree that the "how" is tough in this topic. And, in fact, i would have suggested the "local library" model has worked (to a degree) historically for non-digital stuff...where a community pays...
So any public investment is going to be a uphill battle to get done.
I agree that the "how" is tough in this topic. And, in fact, i would have suggested the "local library" model has worked (to a degree) historically for non-digital stuff...where a community pays taxes into the municipality, and the town uses some tax revenue (combined with other funds like from state/provincial/federal, etc.) to fund conventional library programs (e.g. book borrowing, etc.) for the benefit of local citizens. If i were to oversimplify things, that makes me think that such a model might work for self-hosting and other digital benefits...but nowadays, it feels like local libraries are under immense pressure to even survive, let alone thrive and add on digital services. So, yeah, not sure if this model would work everywhere - well, maybe some areas more than others. Either way, tough to figure out how to do it on wider scale for the benefit of people.
Libraries struggling is one thing, convincing the public is another. For many people it is a very abstract issue if they are even aware of the issues with big tech at all. From what I have seen...
Libraries struggling is one thing, convincing the public is another. For many people it is a very abstract issue if they are even aware of the issues with big tech at all. From what I have seen around me most people really aren't aware and have other things on their mind.
Self-hosting has always been an unpopular and expensive option. World of Warcraft is a testament to this. Before the days of Discord, you had to use Ventrilo, Teamspeak or Mumble as Blizzard's own...
Self-hosting has always been an unpopular and expensive option. World of Warcraft is a testament to this.
Before the days of Discord, you had to use Ventrilo, Teamspeak or Mumble as Blizzard's own in-game voice chat at the time was shitty and practically nonexistent. Few guilds had their own voice chat server, as you had to pay for hosting or host a server yourself. And Skype was utterly awful for conference calls.
Sorry, but the telecom existing is not an argument for not self-hosting voice chat. Because it implies that only telecom companies are able to do voice solutions. Which simply isn't the case, it's...
Sorry, but the telecom existing is not an argument for not self-hosting voice chat. Because it implies that only telecom companies are able to do voice solutions. Which simply isn't the case, it's apples to oranges. While historically a bit clunky in their UI, self-hosted voice solutions like mumble (OSS), Ventrilo and Teamspeak have been around for decades and served their purposes well. These days you even have open source solutions that do video as well, like Jitsi, Nextcloud Talk, etc.
The only real limiting factor, as with any self-hosting, is the cost* involved. If you don't want to be beholden to a company like Discord then self-hosting voice chat is just as reasonable as self-hosting anything else. . And not wanting to deal with Discord is in itself is a valid reason for a variety of underlying reasons. For example, they are still trying to figure out how to be profitable, the constant nitro and server boosting upsells, not to mention the privacy angle.
*yes you also need a reasonably decent server and a reasonably low latency connection. But that all still boils down to cost. The knowledge involved is not really different from hosting anything else. But as I said, these solutions have been around for decades, so they aren't that technically demanding for a small group of people. My experience (for reference, been online gaming since the late 90s) has always been that in any game related community someone would eventually host a voice solution of some kind. Sometimes they'd do a fund drive to rent a server, but often they just ran it on a home server or something like that. I know I have done that plenty of times.
These days for a small group (20 folks or so) you probably only need a VPS with 1 vCPU and 512mb of ram (1gb if you want some head room and other stuff). That would cost you $4 to $6 per month when using a digitalocean droplet, cheaper if you go with something like hetzner.
I've been mapping out this territory for a while now. I don't feel like writing a long comment at the moment, but I don't think that it's a this-or-that solution. I think that the ideal involves...
I've been mapping out this territory for a while now. I don't feel like writing a long comment at the moment, but I don't think that it's a this-or-that solution. I think that the ideal involves digital spaces hosted by individuals and also communities. The big question is how to promote interoperability. I think Solid has some pretty good ideas on this front but the project seems to have ossified a bit.
I love the concept behind Solid! But, I think open protocols is an important dependency here...so as to allow for not only eventual interoperability, but also for parallel development of different...
I love the concept behind Solid! But, I think open protocols is an important dependency here...so as to allow for not only eventual interoperability, but also for parallel development of different solutions...which of course only addresses the technical aspects. But, yeah, open protocols is a good start...and then the implementation of solutions and approaches like Solid work great because they empower the user with maximum control.
I think most people would rather create accounts with online services than run servers. But if it were using standardized software that is available from multiple providers (much like many people can run a Mastodon server or a Minecraft server), then that might result in more user-centric software?
I bought a Synology server months ago - yes, I know they took a turn for the worse, I bought it before that - and one great thing about it is how familiar, casual and convenient it is. The UI is great, very user friendly, and you can configure it without ever touching a single command line. There are apps for it, like drive, notes, word, photos, music, etc. You can use it as if it was Google's services.
Truly, I cannot think of a better example of a personal server that is as convenient and casual to use.
But I still think it's not suitable for non-tech-savvy users, and will never be:
- I very much doubt most people understand what these are, what ports are, how they interact between the server and router, etc
- I very much doubt most people are willing to spend yet another hundreds of euros for a backup
- I very much doubt most people understand or know what are snapshots and how to use them, or better, if they even know those are a thing
- Just mention how it is possible to lose data, and see how most people are immediately turned off and turn to Google's Drive or Onedrive
- There are many people who don't know the difference in practice between the two
- I don't think I need to elaborate on this one. You guys know what's up here too
Self-hosting is, in a nutshell, a DIY project. No matter how simple it can be made, the user will always need to have the basic grasp of the thing that they are mounting. And I can't picture the majority of people having that grasp, or care to have it. It's much easier and convenient to pay someone else to worry about that for you
If we can get it down to being just as easy as pressing a button maybe, most casual users aren't going to want to do anything more complicated than that.
Sandstorm was an attempt to do this, but I think it’s still too geeky.
I made a comment on a post about a self-hosting stack that I think is relevant here. The gist is that no matter how simple you make the setup or how much complexity you have the software wallpaper over, when you get to self hosting there will always be an unhandled way for things to break/behave/degrade sure to hardware faults, OS interactions, network interactions, etc.
Unless you include the hardware and more or less make it disposable or factory reset to fix every issue, there's just going to be a lot of people who can't/won't want to take on the work.
CasaOS tries to do this, but I am not sure how effective it is. Homelab enthusiasts are very opinionated, so you will see criticisms of absolutely everything.
Might need to go a step further than that. Even if there is established software everyone has a different computer setup and interactions with other software or drivers can still make running software a headache.
Maybe something like an approved docker container that is being maintained to fix any bugs that pop up would be better. That way all the supporting software can also be included and the differences between individual peoples computers wont be as much of a concern.
Yeah, I was thinking of an app store for server-side, open source software that you run on an ISP of your choice, sort of like Docker but more consumer-oriented.
Maybe someday. It's hard to get the ball rolling. Sort of like how the Bluesky protocols are designed to be mix-and-match at multiple levels, but at some levels, they are the only big provider.
There's PikaPods, which makes it easy to host open-source software in the cloud. I haven't tried it, but it looks simple to use and they have a lot of the popular self-hosted software. They also do revenue sharing. Is this in the vein of what you're envisioning?
Yeah, looks interesting. Have you used PikaPods?
Not yet! Always tempted to, and then I remember I have a miniPC and a Synology at home already that I bought for the purposes of self-hosting.. but maybe in a decade when they die lol.
@smores may have insights to share. I was poking around the app list on the platform and came across a familiar name. Dug around a bit on tildes for Storyteller and found https://tildes.net/~books/1ktn/storyteller_is_now_on_pikapods.
Oh, hi! Yeah, Storyteller is available on both PikaPods and Elfhosted. They're both cool services — Elfhosted seems much more actively maintained and has a much more active community and support. PikaPods was very responsive when I first reached out about getting Storyteller on the platform, but has been slow to incorporate updates (they promise weekly updates, but that hasn't always been the case) and I think they still haven't updated the docs link? Maybe they have now, I haven't checked recently.
Anyway, I don't use either service aside from testing Storyteller on them occasionally, but happy to answer questions about them if I can!
Huh... I enjoyed reading this more than I thought I would.
I agree with the premise. It would be nice if there were more local options for building a distributed community (in spite of the irony). The appeal of being local is that they would be more responsive and responsible to the needs of the community, right? I could see that.
But nothing is really stopping your local organization from developing the same harm that Google is perceived as emitting. They are both organizations of people. If Google was a worker-owned co-op with solidarity, mutual aid, and all that; would there be anything 'wrong' with Google Photos? Is it just the organizational structure that needs to be changed?
I think the key factor is democratic accountability. If there were some servers held in common, either through a collective or (slightly worse) through a public entity like the library, then ultimately the users have the final say over what happens on those servers. At least in theory. If google changed to be a genuine collective that would be a legitimate improvement.
I can't quite pin down why I don't buy this idea. I want to. It is my idea of the Ideal. But w/o being clear on the "why", it feels unreachable/utopian.
Like, why can't we just have a representative govt, with fair and accessible voting and devoid of financial corruption?
Capitalism, I know. But that's an easy, throw-away answer. [Edit: Okay, and racism.]
I used to lean Libertarian, because I trusted People over Govt. Now, IDK, local/community/municipal Cloud services sounds great. Bitcoin sounded great back in the early days, too.
I prefer self-hosting, with a giant, over-arching push to simplify it to the point that most people can do it themselves, or at worst, hire the nearest 4th-grader to do it for them.
I agree with you. I've been self hosting more and more as I've come to loath a lot of big tech and what they stand for.
But this article just rubbed me the wrong way? I can't pin any real critique.
I do like the idea of libraries evolving into municipal data centers ... that seems like a viable progression.
Honestly, I don't think my gripe is even with the article, so much as with the world we live in, where these ideas seem entirely unrealistic because of the political and socio-economic landscape.
I'm building my own self-hosting capabilities because it is worthwhile to me. I am also considering offering hosting to family and friends in exchange for helping to defray additional costs. I think such an approach could help broaden access to those who don't want to build/maintain their own, reduce the costs for them, and also improve privacy/security/independence. I'm not sure how to do this, and I'm not even certain if it could be done easily, but I want to try.
The answer to me isn't federation, though it kind of does look like it, but instead immediate environment community building. A community-hosted alternative could enable filesharing rather than defaulting to Google Photos or Docs - think of it as an app-based pseudo-SSH.
The risk of this is that small organizations are only as good as their executives. The unscrupulous "roleplayed sys admin" could leverage substantial power over their friends and family, potentially denying them access to their files (or accessing it themselves). While is fundamentally the situation we currently have with big corporations, it would be made a more immediate risk in this format. A trusted third party may be needed to ensure safety, an honest broker, to break out of the walled gardens. We have become bad at trusting, this is a low-trust society, making broader cooperation a challenge...so we really need to address that too.
Sorry, it's late, I'm rambling, just some thoughts.
I am halfway agreeing with the author. But not entirely I posted this thread earlier this week. In it I explain that for the most part I don't self host, but use services that offer open solutions I can easily switch away from.
I don't host my own nextcloud instance (dropbox, drive alternative) but rent one.
You don't need a lot of technical knowledge to move away from big tech's cloud (still a bit). But, you do need to pay for it. Which still puts me in a position of privilege, since I am able to afford the various services.
But also highlights the problem with wanting a community cloud, it isn't going to be cheap. Google and the likes have made these services seem very cheap but that's only because you pay in other ways (ads) or because they subsidized their own services in order to undercut any competition.
Overall I agree with the author, I just don't know how we can make this happen. Even more so since most people don't really care. So any public investment is going to be a uphill battle to get done.
I agree that the "how" is tough in this topic. And, in fact, i would have suggested the "local library" model has worked (to a degree) historically for non-digital stuff...where a community pays taxes into the municipality, and the town uses some tax revenue (combined with other funds like from state/provincial/federal, etc.) to fund conventional library programs (e.g. book borrowing, etc.) for the benefit of local citizens. If i were to oversimplify things, that makes me think that such a model might work for self-hosting and other digital benefits...but nowadays, it feels like local libraries are under immense pressure to even survive, let alone thrive and add on digital services. So, yeah, not sure if this model would work everywhere - well, maybe some areas more than others. Either way, tough to figure out how to do it on wider scale for the benefit of people.
Libraries struggling is one thing, convincing the public is another. For many people it is a very abstract issue if they are even aware of the issues with big tech at all. From what I have seen around me most people really aren't aware and have other things on their mind.
Self-hosting has always been an unpopular and expensive option. World of Warcraft is a testament to this.
Before the days of Discord, you had to use Ventrilo, Teamspeak or Mumble as Blizzard's own in-game voice chat at the time was shitty and practically nonexistent. Few guilds had their own voice chat server, as you had to pay for hosting or host a server yourself. And Skype was utterly awful for conference calls.
There are plenty of use cases for self hosting, mostly file sharing, voice chat definitely isn’t one of them. Telecom industry exists for a reason.
Sorry, but the telecom existing is not an argument for not self-hosting voice chat. Because it implies that only telecom companies are able to do voice solutions. Which simply isn't the case, it's apples to oranges. While historically a bit clunky in their UI, self-hosted voice solutions like mumble (OSS), Ventrilo and Teamspeak have been around for decades and served their purposes well. These days you even have open source solutions that do video as well, like Jitsi, Nextcloud Talk, etc.
The only real limiting factor, as with any self-hosting, is the cost* involved. If you don't want to be beholden to a company like Discord then self-hosting voice chat is just as reasonable as self-hosting anything else. . And not wanting to deal with Discord is in itself is a valid reason for a variety of underlying reasons. For example, they are still trying to figure out how to be profitable, the constant nitro and server boosting upsells, not to mention the privacy angle.
*yes you also need a reasonably decent server and a reasonably low latency connection. But that all still boils down to cost. The knowledge involved is not really different from hosting anything else. But as I said, these solutions have been around for decades, so they aren't that technically demanding for a small group of people. My experience (for reference, been online gaming since the late 90s) has always been that in any game related community someone would eventually host a voice solution of some kind. Sometimes they'd do a fund drive to rent a server, but often they just ran it on a home server or something like that. I know I have done that plenty of times.
These days for a small group (20 folks or so) you probably only need a VPS with 1 vCPU and 512mb of ram (1gb if you want some head room and other stuff). That would cost you $4 to $6 per month when using a digitalocean droplet, cheaper if you go with something like hetzner.
I've been mapping out this territory for a while now. I don't feel like writing a long comment at the moment, but I don't think that it's a this-or-that solution. I think that the ideal involves digital spaces hosted by individuals and also communities. The big question is how to promote interoperability. I think Solid has some pretty good ideas on this front but the project seems to have ossified a bit.
I love the concept behind Solid! But, I think open protocols is an important dependency here...so as to allow for not only eventual interoperability, but also for parallel development of different solutions...which of course only addresses the technical aspects. But, yeah, open protocols is a good start...and then the implementation of solutions and approaches like Solid work great because they empower the user with maximum control.