I'm surprised people are advocating self-hosting as a viable solution. It takes a lot of knowledge to do sync and backup yourself, most of it implicit knowledge that people here don't realize we have and so for us it seems very easy.
There was a comment in another post on the front page about how anyone "remotely technical" can set up a docker container, and I think this is a good example because the mechanics of it are simple (edit a couple text files, run a couple commands), but half the world couldn't tell you what a terminal is and they're focused on other things in life instead of learning how computers work. Cloud succeeded because cloud is easy (at least in the beginning), it's that simple.
If we are to solve this problem, we're going to have to make self-hosting easy enough for the average 7-8 year old to do it without struggling. One promising way forward is with local-first E2EE sync and backup. The only good implementation I know of personally is Obsidian Sync, which has a UX that I adore, and hope to see more of in the future. There's other good options too, but none that I'd feel comfortable trusting a seven-year-old to execute correctly first try.
There was a comment in another post on the front page about how anyone "remotely technical" can set up a docker container, and I think this is a good example because the mechanics of it are simple (edit a couple text files, run a couple commands), but half the world couldn't tell you what a terminal is and they're focused on other things in life instead of learning how computers work. Cloud succeeded because cloud is easy (at least in the beginning), it's that simple.
If we are to solve this problem, we're going to have to make self-hosting easy enough for the average 7-8 year old to do it without struggling. One promising way forward is with local-first E2EE sync and backup. The only good implementation I know of personally is Obsidian Sync, which has a UX that I adore, and hope to see more of in the future. There's other good options too, but none that I'd feel comfortable trusting a seven-year-old to execute correctly first try.