I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc.

As I spend more time here, I realise that it is practically impossible; especially for a newcomer, to setup any any usable self hosted web service without relying on these corporate behemoths.

I wanted to have my own little static website and alongside that run Immich, but I find that without Cloudflare, Google, and AWS, I run the risk of getting DDOSed or hacked. Also, since the physical server will be hosted at my home (to avoid AWS), there is a serious risk of infecting all devices at home as well (currently reading about VLANS to avoid this).

Am I correct in thinking that avoiding these corporations is impossible (and make peace with this situation), or are there ways to circumvent these giants and still have a good experience self hosting and using web services, even as a newcomer (all without draining my pockets too much)?

Edit: I was working on a lot of misconceptions and still have a lot of learn. Thank you all for your answers.

  • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    You can simply set up a VPN for your home network (e.g. Tailscale, Netbird, Headscale, etc.) and you won’t have to worry about attacks. Public services require a little more work, you will need to rely on a service from a company, either a tunnel (e.g. Tailscale funnel) or a VPS.

      • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        No, I’m currently using Tailscale but have been considering switching to Netbird to not be reliant on Tailscale.

    • Catsrules@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      Public services require a little more work, you will need to rely on a service from a company, either a tunnel (e.g. Tailscale funnel) or a VPS.

      I have been hosting random public services for years publicly and it hasn’t been an issue.

      Edit, I might have miss understood the definition of public. I have hosted stuff publicly, however everything was protected by a login screen. So it wasn’t something a random person could make use of.