Can we have WhatsApp without Meta? | Can't we self host everything?

A large majority of people think we cannot have our own communication platforms or other social media services without depending on big tech. On the other end a small minority thinks they can self host everything they need.

But in the real world, even though we can theoretically self host many things, there are different challenges when we self host, from paying the bill every month to troubleshooting issues as they come up.

We need to share efforts and pool money to be able to run these without putting a lot of pressure on a small number of volunteers.

This talk aims to cover some of the common challenges and invites people to join self hosting communities like prav, durare or fsci.

we can self host many services

there are many more challenges to hosted services than software we install on our personal devices

recurring costs of hosting and continues maintenance efforts

we can pool funds and share effort to get off big tech dependency

we really need to collaborate to effectively resist big tech more than software on personal devices