All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc I think the people who code and say such things can't imagine what anyone would do other than coding. If they *could* imagine, they moght just stop coding
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@annasdtc no. what you need is people with the ability and the resources to host stuff for friends. I do it, on a tiny scale, I'd like to do more of it but I don't have the hardware or the security
@freya @annasdtc yeah, that is an old problem…
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@annasdtc For me, the way forward is not for everyone to self-host his email, etc. It's that the provider of these services need to stop being large companies, but instead of cooperatives whose workers or executive groups comes from circles you share values with. Something like e.g having your email hosted by a sysadmin co-op that hosting services only to residents of a city, for exemple, I don't know ... Same applies to open source software: it gets forked all the time, so you keep using the fork maintained by the university/coop/whatever you trust.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc Perhaps ironically, it also seems like a very stereotypically American worldview.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc I find it goes a long way to find services that you pay for, rather than the vast bulk of people who look for "free" services that use surveillance as the means to extract revenue.
The fediverse is almost uniquely populated with people who *can* approach a vast number of these problems by self-hosting — and are tempted to do so for themselves. I think many who talk about that as a solution, really mean just for themselves. They're not actually advocating it as a general solution.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc I really appreciated the GamersNexus/Level1Techs collab video on Youtube recently, where they talked about self-hosting with ideas like 'buddy backups'... except they specifically called out that it needs to be a communal thing where (poorly paraphrased) if you know how to do stuff like this, that means that it's *your* obligation to do that work and maintain that infrastructure for your social groups
it's a sentiment I don't see a lot, but it *has* thankfully been becoming more widespread over the past few years, even in self-hosting circles, that realization that it can't work as an individualist thing -
All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc Yes! We've had professional specialisation into baker, farmer, blacksmith and sysadmin for millennia!
I'm even in IT and still don't have the knowledge or proficience, nor the time or energy to gain it.
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@annasdtc For me, the way forward is not for everyone to self-host his email, etc. It's that the provider of these services need to stop being large companies, but instead of cooperatives whose workers or executive groups comes from circles you share values with. Something like e.g having your email hosted by a sysadmin co-op that hosting services only to residents of a city, for exemple, I don't know ... Same applies to open source software: it gets forked all the time, so you keep using the fork maintained by the university/coop/whatever you trust.
@ered @annasdtc pretty much this.
Compare how e.g. the book shop business has been squeezed by the likes of Amazon, and partly in a reaction to the resulting dysfunction of the market, some authors have taken to self-publishing. In a properly functioning market, an author shouldn't need to run their own publishing house and book shop. -
@annasdtc I find it goes a long way to find services that you pay for, rather than the vast bulk of people who look for "free" services that use surveillance as the means to extract revenue.
The fediverse is almost uniquely populated with people who *can* approach a vast number of these problems by self-hosting — and are tempted to do so for themselves. I think many who talk about that as a solution, really mean just for themselves. They're not actually advocating it as a general solution.
@stevendbrewer Yeah. I am happy to pay for digital stuff in the same way I pay for physical stuff. But, indeed, the answers to my toot (and to @redjives 's original toot I quoted) are 90% based on being capable and knowledgeable to self-host or small-cooperative host or stuff. And I do actually think that many of them see it as a general solution (probably because most folks around them are similar to them and don't see that other people may not have the same inclination).
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@annasdtc Problen is: If people ain't paying for their hosting, they ain't the customer but the product.
- And if people are too complicit and used to all the "free" bs they refuse to acknowledge the problem…
- People need to acknowledge that they also #pay for #MicroSlop and other #GAGAM garbage…
There are groups like @systemli, @disroot and @riseup as well as hosters like @ubernauten that do tackle that, but unless we truly socialize compute resources and #TechLiteracy this is a problem.
- However things get better by the day: Youvcan use #Monero instead of #CreditCards for example in an increasing number of places…
@Netzblockierer @systemli @riseup @ubernauten I am happy to pay for the hosting!!! In fact my household's current de-Googling process involves multiple payments. What I really don't want is to add sysadmin to the long list of obligations and chores we already have. Analogous example: a friend thinks we all should learn to mend our clothes. By contrast, I am happy to pay the neighborhood tailor for repairs I can't do in five minutes. I don't want to take on yet another time-consuming skill/chore.
- And if people are too complicit and used to all the "free" bs they refuse to acknowledge the problem…
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc The actual problem is that people need to pay less problematic companies to do it.
I absolutely have the skills to self host e-mail and web, I used to do it professionally and could do it again with some effort. Instead I pay six pounds a month to @beasts for my e-mail and web, and it's only that much because I have a lot of e-mail.
I could have carried on using Google for free for my e-mail, but I'd rather not. The roundcube/exim e-mail of Beasts is also less friendly than Gmail, but in the end it does the job.
I also have zero interest in setting up community hosting for a load of people. Pay me.
Communties could get together and pay Beasts (or others) money, it'll cost less in aggregate than individual customers paying per month.
If people can't commit to paying slightly more than 2 GBP a month, they are part of the problem.
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@annasdtc For me, the way forward is not for everyone to self-host his email, etc. It's that the provider of these services need to stop being large companies, but instead of cooperatives whose workers or executive groups comes from circles you share values with. Something like e.g having your email hosted by a sysadmin co-op that hosting services only to residents of a city, for exemple, I don't know ... Same applies to open source software: it gets forked all the time, so you keep using the fork maintained by the university/coop/whatever you trust.
@ered @annasdtc
Indeed. That's what pretty much all economists (since Adam Smith) who are not gung-ho for authoritarianism (either left or right) argue. Government has to regulate to ensure that no company can become too big to fail. Not to stop them from existing, just to stop them from overreaching. And that applies to tech just as much as it does to groceries. And if something is critical enough to be considered a utility then it should not be run by a private body at all. -
@annasdtc On the other hand, the fact that there are only a few big hosting providers leads to the situation we are in. Defending self-hosting is a way to fight against this so that smaller hosting providers can continue to exist. If there are no more people who self-host, the next victims will be the small hosting providers
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc Well, it could be instead to collaborate with each other to build something new…
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@annasdtc Perhaps ironically, it also seems like a very stereotypically American worldview.
@datarama indeed!
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@annasdtc I think the people who code and say such things can't imagine what anyone would do other than coding. If they *could* imagine, they moght just stop coding
@Bumblefish that's also part of my suspicion. We all tend to mingle with folks similar to ourselves, and some folks can't just imagine there are other people with different skills and interests than themselves. (This also applies to other social circles.)
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@annasdtc The actual problem is that people need to pay less problematic companies to do it.
I absolutely have the skills to self host e-mail and web, I used to do it professionally and could do it again with some effort. Instead I pay six pounds a month to @beasts for my e-mail and web, and it's only that much because I have a lot of e-mail.
I could have carried on using Google for free for my e-mail, but I'd rather not. The roundcube/exim e-mail of Beasts is also less friendly than Gmail, but in the end it does the job.
I also have zero interest in setting up community hosting for a load of people. Pay me.
Communties could get together and pay Beasts (or others) money, it'll cost less in aggregate than individual customers paying per month.
If people can't commit to paying slightly more than 2 GBP a month, they are part of the problem.
@syllopsium @beasts Very much. As part of my household's de-Googling we're paying for stuff like cloud space, calendar, email, etc. Everyone pays for physical products and services, and digital stuff should not be different.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
It isn't just about skill.
Many of us with the skills don't want to do this in their spare time.
Most people don't have the time to.
And many do not have the dosh to pay for hosting.
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All this self-host techie discourse sounds, to me, a bit like a self-sufficiency dystopia. If we were discussing how bad public transportation is, and someone replied "just transport yourself", most of us would say "that's not it". But when we discuss wanting to get out of large American tech or of nazi-sympathyzing companies, the solution can't be "just host your services yourself". Having to do everything yourself is not my idea of a functioning society.
@annasdtc personally self-hosting vs big services is similar to gardening and farming as in: gardening is a great hobby and allows one to learn a lot about plants and soil (and can be a nice addition to gain personal independence!), but one would be mistaken to assume everybeing wants/can get into gardening (and even more mistaken to decry anybeing not willing to switch to gardening as bad!)
