Self-Hosted Users Seek Privacy & Control
11 posts since Jul 2026, all from r/selfhosted.
“I'm curious, why is it that you guys migrated to self-hosting rather than keeping your iCloud/Google Drive/Microsoft Onedrive/etc. Was it because of privacy concerns, pricing, need for full control (technically intertwines with privacy concerns but I'll keep it separate), or…”
“Well, a new era for me. I've been self-hosting apps for the past few years, and I love having control over services and data. I've been the main consumer, but the family has been increasing using our Android TV boxes to consume local media. The new era I mentioned comes from the…”
“Genuine question, not trying to start a fight. I self host everything I can on principle, because the whole point is that privacy becomes a property of the system instead of a promise from some vendor. No IP in a log, no retention window, nobody upstream who can be compelled…”
Users are motivated to self-host applications to enhance digital privacy and avoid reliance on centralized services. They desire greater control over their data and infrastructure, moving away from architectures dependent on large cloud providers.
SOURCES (12)
“I'm curious, why is it that you guys migrated to self-hosting rather than keeping your iCloud/Google Drive/Microsoft Onedrive/etc. Was it because of privacy concerns, pricing, need for full control (technically intertwines with privacy concerns but I'll keep it separate), or perhaps something else? submitted by…”
“Interesting. I built a self-hosted agent that uses WebRTC datachannels for direct p2p mobile access. Avoiding cloud relays was one of my main requirements. Any plans to support fully self-hosted coordination for individual users? [re: Expose a local TCP/UDP service to exactly one peer, no port forwarding, access expires automatically (open source, Rust)]”
“The whole point of me self-hosting is to keep my weird recipe collection and dodgy watch history firmly away from everyone else's eyeballs, cheers. [re: Self-Hosted Federation Protocol ?]”
“How does self-hosting work? How does it affect privacy? Is self-hosting universal to all self-hostable services, or does each service need a different self-host method? How does it affect internet speeds? What's a reccomended starter server client? Does self-hosting turns itself off once you get too far from your device you use to self-host? Do different self-host methods affect privacy and internet speeds? Sorry if all of this is basic stuff I need to learn, but I am COMPLETELY new to this”
“How does self-hosting work? How does it affect privacy? Is self-hosting universal to all self-hostable services, or do each service needs a different self-host method? How does it affect internet speeds? What's a reccomended starter server client? Does self-hosting deactivate itself once you get too far from your self-host device? Do different self-host methods affect privacy and internet speeds? submitted by /u/Every-Asparagus-9762 [link] [comments]”
“Well, a new era for me. I've been self-hosting apps for the past few years, and I love having control over services and data. I've been the main consumer, but the family has been increasing using our Android TV boxes to consume local media. The new era I mentioned comes from the fact that my son just left for college and suddenly he can't sit down at the TV to watch a show or movie and has requested I set him up an account. Since the family has just been using the Apps on the TV boxe”
“I’ve been thinking about how much of selfhosting is about owning the infrastructure itself versus having control over your data and not depending on a single company. There are more open and decentralized protocols where you can get some of that independence without running and maintaining the entire stack yourself. The tradeoff is interesting though. You potentially get less maintenance but you give up some of the direct control that comes with running everything yourself. For something like me”
“I'm interested in the whole idea of the federated social networks and also self hosted private social networks like Matrix. It's something I've been looking into and something I want to explore more from a technical standpoint. I do want to move away from foreign companies with my data and big tech, and I wonder what the best way to start hosting a personal mastodon instance would be. Is it best to go with a VPS who could accidentally delete my server or nuke it? Or is it best for it”
“Genuine question, not trying to start a fight. I self host everything I can on principle, because the whole point is that privacy becomes a property of the system instead of a promise from some vendor. No IP in a log, no retention window, nobody upstream who can be compelled. The OpenAl preservation order made why this matters concrete: a court told them to keep every output including deleted chats, and the users who tried to object got ruled non-parties to their own conversations. You cannot su”
“There’s many and varied roles that a selfhosted stack will play in your lives. There’s those of you that have a Jellyfin server publicly exposed because somehow you have 10-20 friends that you are freely serving up media for, and there’s those of you that have 2-5 end users that can easily use VPN systems or are within your home network boundary. When I’m planning my networks I try to apply the same layers of security that would be present in any well secured infrastructure (within reason, we’re”
“To enhance digital privacy by avoiding centralization. Something like Reddit can entirely be hosted on people's phones and handle millions of users without a data center. This is different from fediverse apps like BlueSky and Mastodon that require you to select and join a server, which often times runs on AWS leading us back to a centralized architecture.”