The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign • Hacker News Board

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#131

Post by wmf » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC

apitman wrote: post #72

I'm optimistic about self-hosting/self sovereignty (which both fall under the umbrella of what I call indie hosting) long term. But I think both of these articles gloss over the fact that end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people. Key management is a completely unsolved problem. If you don't have e2ee, with current tooling most people will need someone they trust to run th…

If Self-hosting doesn't have dissident-level privacy it's still dramatically better than centralized SaaS.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#132

Post by wmf » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #99

Re: "（Disclaimer: This blog post was drafted with the help of a language model, but all opinions expressed are my own.)" Anyone else appreciate the attribution to utilizing AI? I'd further appreciate if they were willing to provide a link or version of what model they used, and ideally the prompt they fed it with - and perhaps the version controlled history of the prompt(s) they used until it output as desired? Not n…

Nah, this kind of attribution is a lose-lose. It just gives AI haters an excuse to discount everything you say.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#133

Post by wmf » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:35 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #115

vaylian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example: https://pixelfed.org/ Which is literally the fediverse alternative to instagram.

If I choose a "community server", how does that differ from just using the Instagram "server" by using Instagram itself? Can't the community server ban me, or delete some of my data they don't like, for example? Or even sell my data?

In retrospect, community servers/instances were a mistake. You need your own domain.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#134

Post by wmf » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

can16358p wrote: post #43

jay_kyburz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you follow somebody, you put their public url in a list, then when you open the app it requests the photos from everybody on the list? I see no reason why everybody could not run a web server on their phone.

So if I follow 1000 people, I make 1000 requests every time I open the app or refresh my feed? Also not everyone can be on a stable connection with a public IP address with good upload speeds 7/24. In the ideal world: sure. In the real world: impossible (at least for any foreseeable near future).

This has all been solved with ActivityPub or AT Protocol. It's push-based not pull and yes there are still servers. Either you pay for your own server or you mooch on a community server.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#135

Post by fsflover » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

apitman wrote: post #72

I'm optimistic about self-hosting/self sovereignty (which both fall under the umbrella of what I call indie hosting) long term. But I think both of these articles gloss over the fact that end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people. Key management is a completely unsolved problem. If you don't have e2ee, with current tooling most people will need someone they trust to run th…

> end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people

Matrix has solved this problem.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#136

Post by lenkite » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #82

poisonborz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no incentives for the major vendors to implement protocols that will threaten their massive advertising revenues. In 1996 there were especially no incentives from corporations for a free operating system to exists, yet Linux was born on the back of a few hard working engineers and the whole industry catched up, it created a lot (if not the majority) of business. You can engineer ~free and easy self-hostin…

The weird thing is, LLMs do seem to create an environment, in which such shift is not impossible. By this I mean, I know I personally use search engines a lot less now ( and I suspect that here I am not that much different from other internet denizens ). If true, there is a possibility that the existing ad model will -- out of necessity -- have to adapt to a new venue. This did not seem to fully happen yet ( provider…

ChatGPT: Certainly! While I organize answers to your query, please view the following product and service offerings by my corporate sponsors - the more you click, the more I can answer!

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#137

Post by t-writescode » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #117

infinitezest wrote: post #75

> （Disclaimer: This blog post was drafted with the help of a language model, but all opinions expressed are my own.） This is when I head to an LLM to summarize the key take-aways. If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it. That said, I certainly agree with the summary! :P

Yeah I stopped reading when I saw that, I don't care what GPT thinks and am completely allergic to the idiosyncrasies of LLM writing. Plus, yeah the whole idea they couldn't be bothered to write it, or as a corollary to think it through.

So, to be clear, you’re upset by their transparency that they used LLMs while plenty of other writers use it to:

  * brainstorm
  * reword hard sections they garbage’d out on accident
  * catch typos / formatting / flow issues

But only because they chose strong transparency about their activity?

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#138

Post by fsflover » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #115

vaylian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example: https://pixelfed.org/ Which is literally the fediverse alternative to instagram.

If I choose a "community server", how does that differ from just using the Instagram "server" by using Instagram itself? Can't the community server ban me, or delete some of my data they don't like, for example? Or even sell my data?

> how does that differ from just using the Instagram "server"

1. You can move to another server if you don't like their rules, or to your own server. There is a competition between servers (and self-hosting!) making the network better for everyone.

2. There is no single point of failure for the whole network. Hackers and governments love single points of failure.

3. There's nobody who would forbid alternative clients or web access forcing you into a shitty app. There's no single entity owning everything and trying to extract as much money as possible from you. On Instagram, you're in a walled garden.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#139

Post by DocTomoe » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

monsieurbanana wrote: post #127

poisonborz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A server could be a $30 silent soap-sized box hanging on the router consuming 5 watts, you plug it in and it sets up services and domains ready to access. Why would this be a nightmare? It is already feasible on all levels. Assuming the house has fiber, reliability shouldn't be much of an issue.

A 30 dollars box will replace cloud storage, photo storage, video steaming, and all the other services people expect to have? I don't think you have though through what exactly you're trying to replace, we're not talking about tech people wanting to host their static blog here.

A Raspberry Pi 5 already does all of the examples you mentioned. Add a hard disk o it, and a somewhat-reliable power supply, and you're looking at a hundred bucks. We are not that far away from that.

Does it replicate Netflix? No. But honestly, most people do not host videos on Netflix.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#140

Post by survirtual » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

ants_everywhere wrote: post #86

> There is no shared protocol for identity, no agreed standard for portable, user-owned data, no common infrastructure for composable interaction. I've heard this idea in several forms, and it's not what I think most people want. I don't want to live in a world where everything is trackable to a stable identity. Since the stable identity is ultimately trackable to your socual security number, this is essentially a wo…

We need a system for digital identity that can be confidently connected to a singular living organism. That identity acts as a sort of credential. With that credential, you can anonymously take online action that is untraceable to the identity, besides knowing the anon identity is a real, singular human.

If you can follow that logic, you will see that this makes many, many things possible. Anonymous credentials are possible right now and extend to anything. It can represent "this anon identity is a PhD in physics", "this one is a lawyer with 5 years experience in criminal law", etc. But this sort of mechanism starts with being able to say "this is a singular person, with identity verified by X mechanism".

It is absolutely foundational and the opposite of dystopian. It allows us to combat every current dystopian mechanism without creating any additional compared to what already exists.