Hi everyone,

I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.

To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.

🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls

This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.

If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.

Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project (luka.hrgarek@um.si)!

Cheers!

  • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pubEnglish
    14·
    3 days ago

    If I have a file, I have it.

    If google has my file, they say they have it. I’m told it’s there. For how long? I dunno. Private? Hell no. Forever? Likely not.

    This small discrepancy is the entire drive behind me selfhosting.

    I’m a minimalist with selfhosting, a raspberrypi with a vpn connection, syncthing and a samba share is all most anyone really need-needs.

    • Deebster@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Also there’s that a file on a cloud service might change. E.g. Amazon sometimes updates ebook covers to advertise that there’s a show - even for those who have paid extra to have the ad-free option.

      E.g. the sticker-type graphic on this and that the title is updated to “The Fires Of Heaven: Book 5 of the Wheel of Time (Now a major TV series)”:

    • BlindFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I downloaded music I bought online and copied it to my Google drive once. This was years back, mid 2010s, this album just came out for my favorite artist back then. I’d downloaded it back to another pc and a week later - poof. No more mp3s. @.@

      Edit: just that folder of that album’s mp3s, not my whole music library back then, just to be clear. Still, that was my first big burn from cloud services.

      • krish895@literature.cafeEnglish
        1·
        23 hours ago

        Can you elaborate? I keep a copy of my favorite music in Google drive just to download in different PCs or to keep a backup.

        • BlindFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          22 hours ago

          It was the Muse album Drones that I bought from the band’s website. I thiiiink I shared a link to the folder to my netbook with a different account to download to, and then I didn’t notice til later (maybe it was a week? A month?) the folder of just this muse album was empty.

          Idr checking the trash can for my Google drive or anything. I don’t think I got a notice because I searched “copyright” in my emails circa 2015, and nothing related to removing my files popped up.