Centralization

2024-09-10

Roughly ten years ago I ditched GMail, and started the journey of hosting important software myself. The shutdown of Google Reader made it clear to me how dependent I became on Google and their services.

I tried different web hosting services - but always came back to uberspace. They are a small German company, offer SSH access to the server, have an incredible support team and their “pay what you want” policy is really great.

Over the years, I hosted miniflux as an RSS reader, tinyurl as an URL shortener, NextCloud for contacts, calendars and reminders, Ghost as a blogging software, and many more.

I realised that it requires commitment to keep the lights on on all those services. I needed to check if new updates are available, run the updates, renew certificates, do OS updates on the server, … For someone experienced with this not a big task, for sure, but for me it became a burden.

Slowly but steadily, I started using managed software again.

Today, I use iCloud as the backend for my RSS feeds (although I am not super happy with performance), my calendars, contacts, and reminders. It just works and is something less I need to take care off. Thinking about it, I think email and this blog are the only services that I have not yet handed over to one of the big companies again.

Of course I am aware that I am dependent on providers - again - and especially get more and more caught in the walled garden that Apple so nicely creates for us. For now, it works for me.

I have changed my tech stack multiple times in the past. It could very well be that at some point my personal evaluation between comfort and dependency swings in the other direction and I’ll start hosting once more.

Garrit has similar thoughts.