Owning My Corner of the Internet: Self-Hosting Decentralized Social Media
A few years ago I wrote a series about taking back your privacy, starting with the humble password manager. That series was about defense: stopping other people from reading your stuff. This post is about something adjacent but different — ownership. Who controls the place where you speak, and who can take it away? You’ve probably lived it: an account is suspended with no appeal. A platform changes its rules, its owner, or its algorithm overnight. A whole community disappeats because the company hosting it pivoted, got acquired, or simply switched off the lights. None of this requires malice or even a government, it’s the default failure mode of putting your entire online identity on infrastructure you don’t control. ...