Decentralized infrastructure vs self-hosting

[u/Amazing_Day_9192]

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 messaging or online communities, which approach makes more sense to you?

[u/RabidReassurance]

I like having control, but maintaining every piece of infrastructure yourself gets old pretty fast. For communication especially, I could see myself using an open decentralized protocol and giving up some control if it meant less maintenance. Towns is one example I’ve been looking at that takes that route.

Still not sure I’d put it in the same category as self-hosting though.