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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We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.
Useful Lists
Spore can join the wall of shame of companies I have seen personally either pull a bait-and-switch, shutdown services unexpectedly, or paywall features unexpectedly to force a mandatory (sometimes huge) price increase:
dmarcian
Rentec Direct
gmelius
ECI Mark Systems
odoo
SignNow
Intuit
It was actually the noise all the drives in my desktop PC made. That prompted me to build a NAS to put them in that I could put in the cupboard. The obsession with self hosting just grew out of having that headless Linux machine running all the time and not doing a whole lot.
In the early days of Google Drive a few of my files disappeared. I also had a scare where I was temporarily locked out of my account and realized there is no recourse to customer support. Installed OwnCloud soon after.
the passing of the DMCA
I was never radicalized myself. I've always self-hosted. I spent time in centralized ecosystems like most here, but ultimately I still self-host because I like to have some level of control
For me, it was getting into retro computing and just remembering the old days when not everything was some fucking cloud subscription.
Nothing. Initially I wanted some resources to educate myself and experiment with various tools used in software, in process discovered tons of free, open source software that I could use in my daily life.
The enshittification of services, e.g. chefkoch.de suddenly coming up with premium cooking receipts, and other sites moving this behind paywalls. Tandoor for the win.
Youtube and the ad war - metube, tubearchivist.
My son being hooked up by "Paw patrol", resulting in some big meltdowns and fights. Another win for tubearchivist.
ll the services which increase their prices (Spotify, Disynes, Netflix) - the arr collection and 60 TB storage on my NAS, with Jellyfin and tubearchivist.
Google becoming the most evil company - moved to Protonmail, with my own domain and my own email address.
Ads in general, but especially YT - ublock origin, AdGuard Home.
The simplicity of installing complex software thanks to docker, and the possibility to embed anything in the network thx to Ubound and Opnsense.
And so on.
I feel it is becoming more and more a battle against the internet, and not surfing/enjoying it. Everything monetized, all of them want you to drag you into subscribing to another service, adding up into hundreds of dollars/month cost, and after hooking you up, increase the prices.
It's not difficult to save your pictures from Snapchat. You're overreacting
For me, the constant outrage and fear that newsnews outlets produce turned me into a minor doomsday pepper. I'm mostly prepared for a natural disaster. But that hobby kept growing. I started to become a data hoarder. Lots of books, movies, etc.
The next step was the shift from physical media to streaming services. I started to feel like my ability to have access to media without the internet was dwindling and thus I invested in a NAS.
Then I started to get fascinated by psychedelic assisted therapy. Because of the nature of my job, I felt like I needed to increase my privacy because of the things I was looking into. I haven't yet taken the step to fully host all my chat apps and what not, but I'm in this phase now. Right now, the extent of my "privacy centric" actions extends to just Signal and a VPN.
Do you have a faraday cage? Honestly that's probably the first thing I would do if I was a prepped, put a ton of technical manuals and textbooks on a hard drive and stick it in there.
Archiving ASMR Youtube Channels TBH
My age.
I remember about a decade ago when wiping your phone daily to install the new ROM was not that much big deal. I think a lot of stuff was unstable more unstable than it is now but we relied less on it. Now. I can not imagine loosing some data or some things that are important to me.
Also regulation. I worked in ecosystem that if it was a cloud service you would have to sooo much extra time on paperwork for only a chance of not getting denied. There was also some other legislation out right eliminated a number of services. Local became only real option.
Wait…Spore is gone? I got that game forever ago, and due to life haven’t played in probably 15 years….are you telling me I can never play it again?
I used Lightroom CC and I loved it... but one day I looked at there pricing and realised that if I ever go above 1TB the cost will go significantly up, and so I decided to look for something better, I always had the full library on my notebook and used the cloud features mainly to view photos on my tablet and phone. Darktable + PhotoPrism can do the same so why not?