I used to self-host because I liked tinkering. I worked tech support for a municipal fiber network, I ran Arch, I enjoyed the control. The privacy stuff was a nice bonus but honestly it was mostly about having my own playground.
That changed this week when I watched ICE murder a woman sitting in her car.
Before you roll your eyes about this getting political - stay with me, because this is directly about the infrastructure we're all running in our homelabs.
Here's what happened: A woman was reduced to a data point in a database - threat assessment score, deportation priority level, case number - and then she was killed. Not by some rogue actor, but by a system functioning exactly as designed. And that system? Built on infrastructure provided by the same tech companies most of us used to rely on before we started self-hosting.
Every service you don't self-host is a data point feeding the machine. Google knows your location history, your contacts, your communications. Microsoft has your documents and your calendar. Apple has your photos and your biometrics. And when the government comes knocking - and they are knocking, right now, today - these companies will hand it over. They have to. It's baked into the infrastructure.
Individual privacy is a losing game. You can't opt-out of surveillance when participation in society requires using their platforms. But here's what you can do: build parallel infrastructure that doesn't feed their systems at all.
When you run Nextcloud, you're not just protecting your files from Google - you're creating a node in a network they can't access. When you run Vaultwarden, your passwords aren't sitting in a database that can be subpoenaed. When you run Jellyfin, your viewing habits aren't being sold to data brokers who sell to ICE.
I watched my local municipal fiber network get acquired by TELUS. I watched a piece of community infrastructure get absorbed into the corporate extraction machine. That's when I realized: we can't rely on existing institutions to protect us. We have to build our own.
This isn't about being a prepper or going off-grid. This is about building infrastructure that operates on fundamentally different principles:
Communication that can't be shut down: Matrix, Mastodon, email servers you control
File storage that can't be subpoenaed: Nextcloud, Syncthing
Passwords that aren't in corporate databases: Vaultwarden, KeePass
Media that doesn't feed recommendation algorithms: Jellyfin, Navidrome
Code repositories not owned by Microsoft: Forgejo, Gitea
Every service you self-host is one less data point they have. But more importantly: every service you self-host is infrastructure that can be shared, that can support others, that makes the parallel network stronger.
Where to start if you're new:
Passwords first - Vaultwarden. This is your foundation.
Files second - Nextcloud. Get your documents out of Google/Microsoft.
Communication third - Matrix server, or join an existing instance you trust.
Media fourth - Jellyfin for your music/movies, Navidrome for music.
If you're already self-hosting:
Document your setup. Write guides. Make it easier for the next person.
Run services for friends and family, not just yourself.
Contribute to projects that build this infrastructure.
Support municipal and community network alternatives.
The goal isn't purity. You're probably still going to use some corporate services. That's fine. The goal is building enough parallel infrastructure that people have actual choices, and that there's a network that can't be dismantled by a single executive order.
I'm working on consulting services to help small businesses and community organizations migrate to self-hosted alternatives. Not because I think it'll be profitable, but because I've realized this is the actual material work of resistance in 2025. Infrastructure is how you fight infrastructure.
We're not just hobbyists anymore. Whether we wanted to be or not, we're building the resistance network. Every Raspberry Pi running services, every old laptop turned into a home server, every person who learns to self-host and teaches someone else - that's a node in a system they can't control.
They want us to be data points. Let's refuse.
What are you running? What do you wish more people would self-host? What's stopping people you know from taking this step?
EDIT: Appreciate the massive response here. To the folks in the comments debating whether I’m an AI: I’m flattered by the grammar check, but I'm just a guy in his moms basement with too much coffee and a background in municipal networking. If you think "rule of three" sentences are exclusive to LLMs, wait until you hear a tech support vet explain why your DNS is broken for the fourth time today.
More importantly, a few people asked about a "0 to 100" guide - or even just "0 to 50" for those who don't want to become full time sysadmins. After reading the suggestions, I want to update my "Where to start" list. If you want the absolute fastest, most user-friendly path to getting your data off the cloud this weekend, do this:
The Core: Install CasaOS, or the newly released (to me) ZimaOS. It gives you a smartphone style dashboard for your server. It’s the single best tool I’ve found for bridging the technical gap. It's appstore ecosystem is lovely to use and you can import docker compose files really easily.
The Photos: Use Immich. Syncthing is great for raw sync, but Immich is the first thing I’ve seen that actually feels like a near 1:1 replacement for Google Photos (AI tagging, map view, etc.) without the privacy nightmare.
The Connection: Use Tailscale. It’s a zero-config VPN that lets you access your stuff on the go without poking holes in your firewall.
I’m working on a Privacy Stack type repo that curates these one click style tools specifically to help people move fast. Infrastructure is only useful if people can actually use it. Stay safe out there.
The Charybde en Scylla analogy hits home. It is a classic mistake to think we can patch a logic flaw in society by just upgrading the hardware or switching to a new instance.
You are right about the marketplace mindset. When platforms treat humans as inventory, we start acting like products. We optimize our profiles like we are trying to rank on a search engine instead of just existing. It is exhausting and the only people winning are the ones running the servers and collecting the data. It is a full time job that pays nothing and costs us our sanity.
Living in a place where the local scene is thin makes the digital world feel like the only air available. It is easy to get stuck in the loop of looking for a perfect match online because the local options feel non-existent. But your point about being different together is interesting. Maybe the goal should not be finding a mirror image of my interests, but just finding someone who is system compatible even if they do not know their way around a config file.
I am still going to tinker with my home lab and keep my privacy stack tight, but I need to remember those are tools and not the actual life. The real exploit is figuring out how to be human in a world that wants us to be data points. Thanks for the perspective. It is a good reminder that even on the fediverse, the most important connections are the ones that happen when you actually step away from the keyboard.