The future is not self-hosted

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Incentives, economics & reliability

  • Many agree self- or community-hosting lacks sustainable incentives: goodwill and hobbyism aren’t a business model, and reliability/continuity are hard to guarantee if the homelab admin gets busy, bored, or unavailable.
  • Colocation and VPS are seen as previous/ongoing “self-hosting” cycles; several note they eventually moved to AWS/large cloud after colo providers shut down suddenly.
  • For individual use, cost can be low (cheap N100/NUC boxes + disks), but providing Google‑level storage or uptime competitively is hard once you factor in hardware, colo, and backups.

Convenience vs control

  • A recurring theme: most people trade control for comfort. Many technically capable commenters have stopped self-hosting after kids, jobs, and time pressure.
  • Others argue the “gain” is only visible when something goes wrong: account lockouts, service shutdowns, DRM changes, price hikes, or data loss.
  • Some advocate a hybrid: use cloud services but maintain local, portable copies and backups.

Technical & UX hurdles

  • Docker, NAS devices (Synology/QNAP), Umbrel, CasaOS etc. have lowered barriers, but critics say the real work is backups, updates, security, and recovery, not initial docker-compose up.
  • Exposing services safely to the public internet, managing domains, TLS, and identity for friends/family is seen as the hard, non-mainstream part; mesh VPNs like Tailscale help but don’t magically fix UX.
  • Debate over what counts as “self-hosting”: home box vs VPS vs managed Nextcloud-type offerings; some see VPS-based setups as effectively self-hosted, others call that “still someone else’s computer”.

Ownership, DRM & piracy

  • The Kindle backup change crystallizes fears that “purchases” are just revocable licenses. Some refuse any DRM’d media, or immediately strip DRM and store locally.
  • Complaints extend to games, streaming, and audiobooks: exclusives, shutdown storefronts, lost saves, and poor export options.
  • Strong sentiment that if buying isn’t owning, piracy becomes morally easier to justify; several predict a renewed rise in piracy as legal options worsen.

Community, public & federated alternatives

  • The article’s “community-hosted” or “library-hosted cloud” idea gets mixed responses:
    • Supporters like the analogy to public utilities and libraries as digital stewards.
    • Skeptics question funding, political will, censorship, technical competence, and competition with cheap commercial offerings.
  • Others point to existing or emerging models: public libraries’ digital services, managed Nextcloud, federated protocols (ActivityPub, Solid, Nostr, Peergos), and “local‑first” apps with optional encrypted sync.
  • There’s concern that centralized ID or state-run infra can slide into surveillance, while corporate clouds already enable de facto “digital feudalism”.

Is the future self‑hosted?

  • Many think self-hosting will remain a niche/hobby or “area effect” (one geek serving 5–20 friends/family) rather than the dominant model.
  • Optimists argue better tooling, LLM-assisted setup, and appliance-like boxes could make “the iPhone of self-hosting” and drive broader adoption.
  • Broadest consensus: the future is plural—some mix of corporate clouds, VPS/self-hosting, community services, and local-first apps—rather than purely self-hosted or purely centralized.