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Comment by chris_engel | Hacker News Reader

I am irritated that "self hosted" seems to mean "in your own house" and everyone just agrees.

To me, self hosted also means I rent a machine with Hetzner and run the server software on it. Its cheap, stable, fast, secure and Hetzner wont screw me over with my data. I have a LOT less headache and I can rent a vserver for a long time until the hardware cost for a server running at home is surpassed.

I can also very simply assign a domain to it and am pretty sure that software like nextcloud offers oauth access so my friends would NOT be required to sign up for my "weird app". Well, technically they do but oauth automates it.

Am I missing something?

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Why do you claim that Hetzner won’t screw you over with your data?

What you’re doing with Hetzner is just a few less layers of abstraction compared to AWS or Azure. They can still theoretically take down the machine or steal your data, if they wanted to.

I don’t know what the correct definition of self hosted is, but there is a big ideological difference between what you’re doing and self-hosting actual, physical hardware in your home.

Sure, in theory Hetzner could pull the plug or access the data on my VPS. But that’s true of any infrastructure... just like someone could break into my house and steal my self-hosted server.

In fact, I’d argue the physical risk of loss, theft, or data compromise is much higher at home than in a professional datacenter with power redundancy, security controls, and constant uptime monitoring.

It’s a bit like saying, "Don’t trust the bank, they could take your money and freeze your account — keep all your money under the mattress." Technically possible, yes. But come on.

I never said any of those things, you’re literally arguing with made up points I didn’t make?

But my point Hetzner isn’t self-hosted. Similar to how storing money in a bank isn’t self-banking. Self-hosting means you host your content yourself in a server room that you have physical access to. Hetzner isn’t that.

And that’s fine, self-hosting is pretty silly for most use cases nowadays. And all of the positives you mentioned are true. But I hate how we’ve turned “self-hosting” into a political dog-whistle for hosting with companies that seem more trustworthy than the big guys. And there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to trust GCP or Azure - just don’t call it self hosting.

IMO, that is worst of both worlds. You still put your data out there on somebody else's computer but also get to maintain the infrastructure.

Unless you end-to-end encrypt your data, hosting on a VPS is just a marginal improvement over using Google or Apple's regular cloud.

To me self-hosted is having full control over the data. That includes where the data is stored, not just who's maintaining it.

You probably mean "federated is more important, cheaper, more practical than self-hosted at home", and I agree.

you are not, I consider both self hosting. I used hetzner for a long time and they were doing a great job. These days I run a server in my basement, because I had the hardware around. Most months of the year it also contributes to heating the house :D

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