Why You Need to Self-Host

by Byeman

On December 14, 2021, Google published a article titled "New Notifications When Drive Content Violates Abuse Program Policies".

This rolled out to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic, and Business customers.  What does this mean?  Whether you're a small business, an activist community, a Fortune 500 company, or an individual, Google is monitoring your data, data that you're paying Google to store, and deciding for you what you can and cannot save.  There is no admin control for this feature.

Google doesn't know, or care, about the context of the files stored.  Let's assume you run a non-profit fighting racism in your community.  You collect the hate mail you receive, the threats, pictures of the people protesting you and your work.  All Google sees is a bunch of hate speech stored in your account and, presto, your files are locked down.

If you're a Fortune 500 company, you clearly have resources to fight this.  And hopefully your legal team and IT department can advise you about what you should and should not store in the Google cloud.  Once again, the little guy is the victim.  What can be done?

Self-hosting!

I could use every single page in this magazine to tell you a fraction of what you need to know.  I haven't approached the folks at 2600 HQ about this, but, wait, wait, no they're shaking their heads, can't do it.  And honestly, I'm not qualified to do it.  What I am qualified to do is encourage you to dust off your hacker caps and get to work.

I hang out on several forums related to self-hosting and the various platforms that can be hosted.  I see people making the same, even worse, mistakes than what I made.  I'm new to this.  In the early months of the pandemic I needed a distraction.  I screwed up.  Oh lordy, I screwed up.  But you know what?  It was okay that I did.  I was learning.  And secondly, I chose to learn using a Raspberry Pi and a Virtual Private Server (VPS).  Why was this important?

Rule One:  You're a student, not a master.  Choose an inexpensive gateway to the drug that is self-hosting.  VPS hosting can be had for as little as $5 a month and a full-blown Raspberry Pi setup can be had for well under $100.  If I had decided self-hosting wasn't for me, I wasn't out much money.  But there's a second much overlooked benefit.  It's trivially easy to do a hard reset.  If you've completely hosed your server, just destroy it and create a new one.  This process takes about 15 minutes on a VPS and about the same on a RPi.  Which brings me to...

Rule Two:  Don't make any of this your daily driver.  You're not ready.  Continue to use Google Drive, OneNote, Dropbox, and Gmail.  I really feel bad for people when I see their pleas posted at 2 a.m. saying they had moved all of their photos into their Raspberry Pi and now the Pi won't boot and when they pop the SD card into their laptop, all it can offer is to format the memory card.  Before you migrate, be sure you're using robust hardware and have a backup strategy implemented before you move your data.

Rule Three:  The community will help you if you help yourself first.  It was rare that I had to post a question to any forum because I was not the first person to have the issue.  Use the search function first.  If you find a thread and still have questions, ask on the existing thread.  If you can't find it, start a new one, but in both cases you need to help us help you.  Asking for help on a poorly described problem will get you ignored and following up with, "Isn't anyone going to help me", will only make you a pariah.

At a minimum, we need to know your operating system, your hardware, what you were trying to do, what were you doing when the problem started.  Before you even think about asking for help, search the error message.  Review your logs and search on the error codes and descriptions you see.  You'll be amazed what you'll find.  If you show the community you did your homework and provide them with enough information, they'll be happy to help you.

Rule Four:  Give back.  If you post a problem and find a solution, tell us about it!  Please.  The next person with that problem will want that information.  As you learn, browse the forums and jump in to help whenever you can.  Believe me, the community will get to know you, will trust you, and will be more willing to help you as you continue to grow and get more advanced in your self-hosting journey.

How to get started?  Pull up your favorite search engine and ask "how to get started with self-hosting" or something along those lines.  Some of the better resources include:

I hope this inspires someone.  My next article will discuss cool tools you didn't know you needed that can be self-hosted, solving problems you didn't realize you even had.

Happy hacking!
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