My (admittedly a bit tinfoil) take on the recent self-hosting boom is that it's highly compatible with individualist suburban capitalism; and that while there are elements of it that offer an alternative path to techno-feudalism, by itself it doesn't really challenge the underlying ideology. It's become highly consumerist, and seems more like a way of expressing taste/aesthetics than something that's genuinely revolutionary. Cooperative services (as you describe) seem like they offer a way more legitimate challenge, but I feel like that's a big reason why they don't see as much fete-ing in the mainstream tech media and industry channels.
I say all this as someone who's been self-hosting services in one form or another for almost a decade at this point. The market incorporation/consumerfication of the hobby has been so noticeable in the last five years. Even this AI thing seems like another step in that direction; now even non-experts can drop $350+ on consumer hardware and maybe $100 on some network gear so that they can control their $50/bulb Hue lights and manage their expansive personal media collection.
Interesting! I'm not sure how severe the consumerisation really is, but yeah I can totally see the whole home-automation thing playing into it too.
I don't think mainstream tech media is deliberately omitting co-ops in their reporting due to them challenging the status quo. I think it's rather that actually, there aren't really many initiatives in the space.
And I think that is due to a lot of tech people thinking that if only the technology becomes good enough, then the problem will be solved, then, finally, everyone can have their own cloud at home.
I think that's wrong though, I think the solution in this case is that we organize the service differently, with power structured in a different way. We don't need more software to solve the problem. We know how to build a cloud services, technically. We know how to do it will. It's just that if the service is run for-profit, counter to the interests of the users, it will eventually become a problem for the users. That's the problem to fix, and it's not one to fix with technology, but just with organizing it differently.
It works for housing, in some areas it also works for utilities like internet, there are also co-ops for food. Why shouldn't it also work for modern-day utilities like cloud storage and email?
As a techie, don't be content with just running your own self-hosted service. Run it for your family, run it for your friends, run it for your neighborhood! Band together!
> It's just that if the service is run for-profit, counter to the interests of the users, it will eventually become a problem for the users. That's the problem to fix, and it's not one to fix with technology, but just with organizing it differently.
100% agree with you here, and yeah I'm definitely leaning a bit too conspiratorial about it. It's probably not actually intentional, and instead just a product of the larger dynamics.
A while ago I read some interesting economic analysis about why more co-ops hadn't popped up specifically in the gig worker space, since it seems to natural to cut out the platform rent that eg. Uber extracts as profit. I'm failing to recall the specific conclusions, but IIRC the authors seemed to feel that there were some structural obstacles preventing co-ops from growing in those space. Something something capex and unit costs. It's certainly an area I'd be interested to see further analysis in.
Also you sounds like you might get a kick out of mayfirst.coop (if you're not familiar with them already). It's not exactly what you're describing, but the spirit is there. I use them for my web-hosting needs and have been extremely satisfied.
I say all this as someone who's been self-hosting services in one form or another for almost a decade at this point. The market incorporation/consumerfication of the hobby has been so noticeable in the last five years. Even this AI thing seems like another step in that direction; now even non-experts can drop $350+ on consumer hardware and maybe $100 on some network gear so that they can control their $50/bulb Hue lights and manage their expansive personal media collection.