Owning Your Own Data Is "Easy"
I have spent the last couple of years learning how to run software at home on my own metal, that allows me to keep the data I create in my hands and not in the hands of the billionaires. I have some understanding as to why people choose to give their data to companies that appear to provide value in respect to creating, storing, and presenting "user created content" on the Internet. Some of the reasons I depended on these companies was my own lack of resources. However, in the year 2025 I'm not sure that some of the reasons to give your data away in exchange for services isn't are as valid as they were a decade or two ago.
One of the co-founders of the computer chip company Intel, Alfred Moore observed that the number of transistors on computer chips was doubling roughly every 2 years or so. About half a decade since the first computer processing unit was in production, he saw no reason for the trend to discontinue for the next 10 years.
About 60 years later and the trend is only now starting to vary, and it might be due to outside influences like the seemingly natural capitalist effect of enshittification.
Even if the progress predicted by Moore's Law is slowing, the cost of computing, storage, and bandwidth has dropped to the point that it is generally affordable for the average computer user on the Internet to provide enough oomph for themselves. I started my own homelab with a laptop that I purchased over a decade ago and the old family router. I've since updated to a refurbished office PC with a vintage of 8 years which is still my main server and a pretty crappy modern wifi router. This year I splurged and got a mini pc with a two year old chip to run some of the more demanding software that the older server would've run just slow enough to be annoying. Add in some affordable storage upgrades and affordable fiberoptic home Internet connectivity and I had the edges of the puzzle put together and on the table.
The best part of learning how to selfhost software was possessing most of the tools that I would need without making too much of an extra investment in the infrastructure at home. I'm sure there's plenty that I'm doing incorrectly but so far I think I got something that's working reasonably well for my purposes. I haven't learned how to write the software, but learning how to run it has been rewarding.
There's quite a bit of value left in having a giant technology corporation have some of my data like how actually easy it is for the average computer user to take advantage of. When you are only depending on the Internet for storing your important photos and documents and don't have room for your local copies, you run the risk of having that corporation deciding that they don't need to be hosting your data "for free" anymore and expect you to start paying as your data grows larger in size on their servers. That said there's also a lot that we give to those companies that we don't need to anymore.
Social media is really just what they used to call "user created content" after all. Giving over your data is giving up some rights to the data. Companies will use that data however they want to and in some cases have even weaponized that data in ways that are difficult to understand the impact on the user as well as the world. The frog in the boiling pot isn't quite right, but it's close in my opinion.
I'm not intending on giving instructions on how to, or even sharing on how I selfhost stuff. There's tons of different ways to do the same thing, and I'm not entirely sure I know what I'm doing all the time. I'm sure I'm making mistakes that I don't even realize when it comes to this stuff. One mistake I'm trying not to make is giving my data to a company that will turn around and use it against me. Good luck, I'm sure.
