AnnaleeAug 7, 2023

Whenever news breaks of bad decisions from a popular product, there's a flurry of recommendations of various alternatives, and in that mix there's always folks extolling the virtues of hosting your own.

As a person who works on security for an open source project, my spicy take is this: unless you enjoy being your own sysadmin (some folks do!), any hosted solution from a vendor that is currently reputable and currently has acceptable terms is a better, safer option than self-hosting.

Show threadAnnaleeAug 7, 2023
That's not to say you shouldn't self-host if you want to. It's certainly not to say that we should accept shitty data usage policies. We shouldn't. Even if they're the only game in town and there ARE no self-hosted options, we shouldn't.
Show threadAnnaleeAug 7, 2023

BUT folks who are all in on hosting their own stuff are folks who've already accepted all the trade-offs. And the ones who are dogmatic about it to the point of claiming it's the only good option have not just accepted the trade-offs, but have either forgotten them or are intentionally minimizing them.

Even leaving aside time, cost, and convenience: a hosted solution is likely to protect your security and privacy better than you do.

Show threadNaomi P
@Annalee self-hosting properly is work I’m not trained to do, and if I decide to do that, I’ll have to spend time learning how and on doing maintenance that I feel is better spent on other pursuits.
Aug 7, 2023 at 12:18pmWeb