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Comment by beardedetim | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been noodling this idea for a few years. I think it’s a great idea and it being based on Atom/RSS is a great move.

The problem, I have found, is no one wants to pay for hosting. No one wants to self host. And by no one I mean no one that is using Facebook /Twitter / Insta / etc. and for this to really work, I think you need everyone hosting their own “log”.

Interested in seeing more work done in this space and am glad to see others feel the same as I do.

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>> The problem, I have found, is no one wants to pay for hosting. No one wants to self host.

Self hosting needs to be as easy as plugging a box into your router. This means some type of DNS or other way to find your node given all the ISPs failure to provide fixed IPs. Also a super easy management method and access controls (public, private, friends).

I have a lot more thoughts on that.

Do you think there needs to be the infra to support the self hosting or the “killer app” first to drive the early adopters?

I think an internet that is mostly self-hosted is a healthy one and unlocks a lot of things I’ve been noodling with over the years. I’m hopeful someone smarter than me is close to getting us there.

A few gaps in infrastructure need to be plugged first. We have most of the constituent parts, it's just that they lack administration layers suitable for modern internet users needs. It's work that requires overcoming inertia and tedium more than any particular smarts. (It'll likely go financially unrewarded too.)

indeed, what do you think about an onboarding like at https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/o/p/ac2gthz

I love the core idea too. Also static hosting keeps getting cheaper, free-tier can take you pretty far, and self-hosting keeps getting easier.

That's a big reason why I'm excited about repl.it. You can self-host a github repo in about 2 clicks (not including account setup). I could see it increasing the reach of self-hosted apps a lot.

Actually I made a little proof of concept for this a week ago: https://github.com/jacobobryant/Feedstuff

I don't think the issue is hosting the app itself, it's hosting each user's data. For the vast majority of users, hosting their own data is not even on the radar. They assume that whatever app they are using is hosting their data, and the only price they will accept for doing that is "free".

The app would include a database (perhaps sqlite), so that shouldn't be an issue unless I'm misunderstanding you. you can host it for free on replit already (albeit with sleeping/cold starts)

> The app would include a database (perhaps sqlite)

Meaning an sqlite database hosted with the app's code? How will "host it for free" scale when your app goes viral and you have a million plus (or a billion plus) users?

It'll scale because it's self-hosted. You don't serve everyone with the same app instance; everyone runs their own instance.

> It'll scale because it's self-hosted. You don't serve everyone with the same app instance; everyone runs their own instance.

So everyone has their own free hosting account with repl.it and runs an app instance on it? Yes, technically that's "free" as in "no cost", but it's not "free" as in "no effort". The latter is the kind of "free" that Facebook users expect.

It's hardly more effort than making a Facebook account, and replit is still young--it's only going to get easier.

> It's hardly more effort than making a Facebook account

I'm not talking about the effort involved in opening an account. I'm talking about the effort involved in managing one's own instance of an app. That is not zero, and nobody, not repl.it or anyone else, can magically make it zero. But it is zero for Facebook users, because they aren't managing anything; Facebook is.

If, OTOH, your idea is that repl.it does all the managing (what happens if the server hosting the app goes down? how is the data backed up? etc., etc.), then we're back to the scaling problem: how do you scale that to a huge number of users without either not being free, or adopting the same business model that Facebook has (the avoiding of which was supposed to be the reason for doing all this in the first place)?

my mother won't sign up at github.

This kind of thing might never hit mass-market (read Facebook-level) appeal, but I think if one branded it as an open-web network for creators (as opposed to Facebook, which is for mere “consumers”) you might reasonably avoid the hosting problem.

A “creator” will figure out how to host, be it a Wordpress.com site on the casual end, or something more specialized for the savvier creator.

Just of out curiosity, would you consider hosting your friends and families logs if there were a low friction way to do it?

sure I would.

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