So this is a blog stating to be an owner and not a renter, and then proceeds to talk about how to rent hosting.. Sorry, but if it's not your hardware, on your property, then you're renting.
Regulations have been waay too lose on, especially, american ISPs where I understand they are allowed to not only refuse you a public routable IP but also dictate what kind of traffic you're allowed to send and receive (for example, whether the traffic flowing is of "commercial" character and therefore should be on on a different subscription), this insanity should be illegal. Internet is a utility, and everyone should have the right to the same type of access, regardless of their need (those who do not need/want, can simply chose not to use it, but ISPs should not be allowed to differentiate).
I've hosted my own web, and other servers on my own hardware since I was 13 years old, when I bought my first domain, I had to use a fax machine for the first time in my life, and fax my request form, along with my passport, to the agency responsible for the top level domain of my country. It was kind of convoluted back then, but everyone were helpful, and it was not that difficult, the technology was well understood, supporters were competent, and it was expected that people were going to use the internet for internet things.
Today is my 39th birthday, and while the server hosting my stuff is mostly still located 3 meters from me, the path to having it online has nothing but degenerated, it's an uphill battle just to be on the internet these days.. The mail stuff is the easier part (dkim, dmarc, spf, certificates).. But the simple act of getting your f..king computer connected to the f..king internet like it was 1999, that's the real hassle.. ISP NAT, supporters beyond incompetent, blocked ports, missing (or unknown) relay hosts.. It's a joke.
I generally agree with the sentiment (and yes, internet should be treated as an utility). However, the reality is that the vast majority of people will not be able to self-host on their own hardware for a myriad of reasons (lack of skill, lack of money, lack of interest, etc.) That's not a reason to gatekeep them from having their own corner and claim it as theirs.
If you have a domain and your own site, even hosted on a colocated rack or in the cloud, you're already miles ahead of those that don't. And if you have a domain and can manage DNS records, then in the future that doesn't preclude you from "graduating" to your own hardware, if you so desire. The goal here is more or less self-sufficiency with web properties rather than a pure interpretation of "rent" vs. "own." Because at some point you have to rent something from someone (say, you're not running your own domain registry and registrar).
I don't want to gatekeep, I want to gate-unkeep! The way things are going, we're divinding the people and the companies into two classes, with the former having fewer rights and privileges than the latter.
I want everyone to have the RIGHT to participate in the Internet, should they have the interest to learn how to do it. That right is under pressure when we accept this division, when we use the excuse that "most people don't know how to", to justify taking away everyones right to even try.
If only companies have the right to participate on the internet, they are empowered even more to chose who should be allowed to even run a website.. It's a slippery slope that ends up in a very bad place, participation wise.
It becomes like the airline industry, where the companies pushing hardest for more regulation and red-tape are the oldest, those who made their fortunes back when it was easier and cheaper, and who now use their enourmous wealth to make it harder for new players to enter their market.
It's the same everywhere, when you start allowing power to concentrate.
There is a simple way though : have the ISPs provide all of this. If they can provide you a personal website, an email account and a NAS, they can also provide you a a personal website and an email account ON that NAS. (Especially now, with IPv6.)
(Which of course assumes that there are laws in place against lock-in, just like there are already laws in place against lock-in for your pick of ISPs and obligations for mobile carriers to transfer your phone number to another carrier.)
I think this only shifts the problem, the whole idea with the internet is a distributed network of computers that talk with each other, and if the computers at the edge (end users) can't do that, then it's no longer the internet, it's something else, more akin to cable-tv where there are "providers" and "consumers". The playing field stops being level.
Ah, I took it as you suggesting the ISPs providing VPS services for people..
Thing is, that edge infrastructure has been there from the beginning of broadband and is only recently beginning to slip away, with the advent of ISP NAT, agressive IP rotations, blocking of ports and not providing public IPs at all.
I think the sentiment was to keep your content (and audience) portable, not specifically that you don't rely on anyone else's services. If you post everything on Twitter and Twitter decides they don't like you, then that's the end of you. If you host on a personal domain and your rented web host decides to block you, there's plenty more options and you can take your audience with you and they will never know the difference.
I know it was, but the click-baity headline makes it seem like you're becoming independent of the whims of private companies, which you are very much not if you're renting a host somewhere. You're definitely not a property owner, you might be a domain owner (renter still, I don't know of any domains which you can pay for and keep forever).
As long as the services you're renting are commoditizated, you are independent of their whims.
You can easily replace a VPS provider with a different provider that will give you exactly the same service. You can't replace Facebook with a different Facebook.
There's a huge difference between being a renter on a VPS or on a social network platform.
Youtube can demonetize or delete a channel and the creator is more or less fucked. They can find another platform, but they need to build their audience almost from scratch.
By contrast, if my VPS provider kicks me out, I just clone it or restore from backup to any one of the thousands of competing providers, change a few DNS records and my audience (not that I have one) wouldn't even know that anything changed.
Servers and domain names are transferable and neutral, platforms and usernames aren't.
I started to self host my own personal website last year and found it relatively easy. I may have been somewhat lucky with my ISP and that I was already paying for a static IP but the hardest part was setting up cloudflare to mask my IP (and learning how to setup a Linux VM from scratch).
Regulations have been waay too lose on, especially, american ISPs where I understand they are allowed to not only refuse you a public routable IP but also dictate what kind of traffic you're allowed to send and receive (for example, whether the traffic flowing is of "commercial" character and therefore should be on on a different subscription), this insanity should be illegal. Internet is a utility, and everyone should have the right to the same type of access, regardless of their need (those who do not need/want, can simply chose not to use it, but ISPs should not be allowed to differentiate).
I've hosted my own web, and other servers on my own hardware since I was 13 years old, when I bought my first domain, I had to use a fax machine for the first time in my life, and fax my request form, along with my passport, to the agency responsible for the top level domain of my country. It was kind of convoluted back then, but everyone were helpful, and it was not that difficult, the technology was well understood, supporters were competent, and it was expected that people were going to use the internet for internet things. Today is my 39th birthday, and while the server hosting my stuff is mostly still located 3 meters from me, the path to having it online has nothing but degenerated, it's an uphill battle just to be on the internet these days.. The mail stuff is the easier part (dkim, dmarc, spf, certificates).. But the simple act of getting your f..king computer connected to the f..king internet like it was 1999, that's the real hassle.. ISP NAT, supporters beyond incompetent, blocked ports, missing (or unknown) relay hosts.. It's a joke.