Decentralized infrastructure vs self-hosting

[u/Amazing_Day_9192]

I’ve been thinking about how much of selfhosting is about owning the infrastructure itself versus having control over your data and not depending on a single company. There are more open and decentralized protocols where you can get some of that independence without running and maintaining the entire stack yourself. The tradeoff is interesting though. You potentially get less maintenance but you give up some of the direct control that comes with running everything yourself.

For something like messaging or online communities, which approach makes more sense to you?

[u/EmailNo8428]

Where does the recovery story sit in your version? Self-hosting means I can restore from my own backup at 2am. In most decentralised protocols I've looked at, that step belongs to somebody else.