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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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How do/did You Get Your Friends into Selfhosting? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 2 months ago by gccalvin to c/selfhosted

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Most of my friends are in tech, and I think one of them would enjoy hosting their own services if they got into it. Currently, I do most of our hosting, from media servers to game servers, but I think the hardest part is to give people an enticement to host.

For example, maybe they saw the lights automatically come on through the use of home automation like Home Assistant or maybe they wanted to control their own music library.

I think the idea of managing your own hardware and services doesn't become enjoyable until you've already seen the outcome, such as having a resource or service available to you that you didn't before. When I first got into selfhosting, I also had the problem with identifying what I wanted to host.

How do/did you get your friends interested in selfhosting? What services did they look into hosting themselves?

I'm not going to force someone into a hobby they aren't interested in, I'm just curious how people brought the conversation up.

Thanks.

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[–] gccalvin 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's fair. I'm making the comparison to other hobbies. If someone is not interested in roller skating, but decides to try it out because one of their friends really likes it and invites them, they may find they enjoy it... or not, which in that case they won't go again, which is fine. Alternatively, they find a new hobby they enjoy, and selfhosting could give skills that turn into a potential career, but that's if they really enjoy it. I don't think it's uncommon for friend groups to have outsiders (me) and "force" them into trying new things, but maybe my comparison doesn't hold up here as this is a bit less about socializing.

[–] just_another_person 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I personally don't find that many people are approaching me saying something like "Hey, you should be into this thing because it's to your benefit". That's what insane US Christians do.

If someone mentioned a concern they were having with publicly available services, and I happened to have a self-hosted version of an alternative ready to discuss, sure.

By no means would I ever be out there trying to tell people "THIS IS BETTER. DONT YOU GET IT???", which is where you sound like you're coming from. It's also not a "hobby" and it takes a lot of skill and effort to not take an INSANE amount of time for people who aren't familiar. If you want to be tech support for a bunch of people, sure, go for it.

Totally unnecessary though.

[–] gccalvin 3 points 2 months ago

You're right, thanks.