Skip Navigation
53 comments

  • The real issue is lack of community-run ISPs. We can self-host all we want, but we're still using the network paths of major providers when data is in transit.

    More community run mesh networks. More community run fiber networks. Generally, just more community, less business.

    • There are many community networks out there, but they require more dedication and funding than simply paying an ISP, for a worse service. It's a hard sell to the average doomscroller.

      The EFF scaled down their efforts for OpenWireless.org after it became obvious that they'd have to support hundreds of different hardware models, and ultimately abandoned the project.

      A couple decades ago, Fon tried to build a mixed community-commercial network with their own standardized hardware, but even the commercial incentive was not enough to keep it afloat in the long run. Some of the hardware got repurposed for community projects, but most of the best placed hotspots ended up in the trash, replaced by municipal and ISP networks.

      In many places, fiber is a no-go. Like, in my city there was a large move to get fiber to most houses over a decade ago, but after the first deployment of a handful of ISPs, the city stopped giving permits for additional deployments: lease from one of the existing ISPs, or you're SOL.

    • I think the most feasible solution is municipal internet, where the city owns its own fiber lines and essentially runs it like a non profit. Good cities that do this don't see it as a profit center; they see it as providing a critical service to their residents. Some of the maintenance cost comes from taxes, just like roads, public schools, etc.

      Palo Alto California is doing this. They're modernizing their electricity grid, so they're also running fiber at the same time as running the new electrical lines. Electricity in Palo Alto is run by the city, and as a result, electricity there is less than 1/3 of the price of electricity with PG&E, the investor-owned utility company that supplies most of Northern California.

      More community run mesh networks

      That's kinda what settlement-free peering at an IX (internet exchange) is. Multiple networks agree to connect to each other for free. Of course, the networks are usually large ones, so that kinda goes against your other points.

    • I'm only aware of people using ham radio for community mesh networks.

      Are there more sophisticated community networks? Or do you just mean something like an ISP cooperative group?

  • Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Leverage email hosting services) → Score: 18/20

    Is it really self-hosting if someone else controls the data and software?

    • I run my own mail server since sometime late last century, and it's gotten progressively more difficult over the years. Not setting up the server, that part is easy. Hardening it is a bit more work. But what's making it nearly impossible is the big players' anti-spam (or should that be in quotes) measures.
      \ My mail server checks all the boxes it should - TLS, SPF, DomainKeys, DMARC, a domain name that's been around for decades, same hostname and IP address for years, never been on any block list, ... yet still e-mails relayed by it are tagged as spam for increasingly ridiculous reasons: it's a residential IP (actually it's not), the PTR record doesn't match the A/AAA record (yes, that server has multiple jobs and multiple host names - not that unusual), the domain name is suspicious (same owner and tech-c for decades, same IP and SPF records for years), ... if I didn't know better, I'd suspect that MS, Google etc. just use their spam filters to make life difficult for anyone outside their oligopoly. But that's probably just beause I'm a cynic.

      • Spam protection is hard given SMTP was never designed with it in mind.

        I also self-host my email, but I use an outbound SMTP relay to avoid having to deal with all that stuff. My server sends outbound emails to a company that's got that all figured out.

        Maybe that's not "true" self hosting, but it's really no different to people that self-host but put Cloudflare in front of their server, apart from the direction (Cloudflare is for inbound traffic whereas SMTP relaying is for outbound traffic).

  • i like this scoring system, and not one piece of information surprises me.

    • What surprises me is that they count using an email service as self-hosting. With that logic wouldn't bluesky get a high score because people can bring their own domain easily?

      • email can be run using hundreds of servers on dozens of platforms even from your own house and interact with the email network.

        youre not doing anything like that with bluesky. even with the domain thing, there is only a single bluesky router that everyone connects to.

        no one is self hosting a bluesky router

  • Technical ease of running your own backend. Full points for Docker/simple setup with good docs.

    Oof, they neef a column for security to mark back down all the services that use docker.

    • How does Docker reduce security?

      • It downloads things without checking signatures by default. And even if you enable DCT, it TOFUs every key without even asking or checking against a WoT

        Basically, using docker means you could run malicious code (arbitrary code execution) in your container because it doesn't verify what it downloads.

53 comments