Self-Hosting
Protects against the following threat(s):
Using self-hosted software and services can be a way to achieve a higher level of privacy through digital sovereignty, particularly independence from cloud servers controlled by product developers or vendors. By self-hosting, we mean hosting applications and data on your own hardware.
Self-hosting your own solutions requires advanced technical knowledge and a deep understanding of the associated risks. By becoming the host for yourself and possibly others, you take on responsibilities you might not otherwise have. Self-hosting privacy software improperly can leave you worse off than using e.g. an end-to-end encrypted service provider, so it is best avoided if you are not already comfortable doing so.
Email Servers
Social Networks
Self-hosting your own instance of a social network software can help circumvent potential censorship on a server level by a public server's administrator or admin team.
Mastodon
Mastodon is a social network based on open web protocols and free, open-source software. It uses the decentralized ActivityPub protocol.
Mastodon integrates with the Tor network for more extreme scenarios where even your underlying hosting provider is subject to censorship, but this may limit who can access your content to only other servers which integrate with Tor (like most other hidden services).
Mastodon benefits greatly from a large and active self-hosting community, and its administration is comprehensively documented. While many other ActivityPub platforms can require extensive technical knowledge to run and troubleshoot, Mastodon has very stable and tested releases, and it can generally be run securely without issue by anyone who can use the Linux command line and follow step-by-step instructions.
Element
Element is the flagship client for the Matrix protocol, an open standard that enables decentralized communication by way of federated chat rooms.
Frontends
Self-hosting your own instance of a web-based frontend can help you circumvent rate limits that you may encounter on high-traffic, public instances. It is important that you have other people using your instance as well in order for you to blend in. You should be careful with where and how you are hosting, as other peoples' usage will be linked to your hosting.
More Tools...
Tool recommendations in other categories of the website also provide a self-hosted option, so you could consider this if you are confident in your ability to host the software after reading their documentation.
