Yeah, you need to have (I would argue basic) Linux sysadmin skills. If you don't have those skills, and aren't interested to learn them, then you shouldn't self-host, just because it's the hot new trend.

The thing I like the most is the area effect. I have those skills so 5-20 people get a self-hosted experience managed by me. But even so, many people will be left outside of any such area. This too, is fine.

My dad knows how to do basic woodworking, so if I need a simple piece of wooden furniture, I go to him. I have a friend who knows how to 3D print stuff (I know nothing about it) and another who's in medical school and gives me medical advice (including "go to the doctor" when the problem is not minor). But I don't have any friends which are good at car mechanics, so I go to the shop (and get charged) for all problems related to that.

Now, I do not live in the US, so maybe these sorts of relationships spanning wide fields are less common there, but the solution to rugged individualism doesn't seem to me to be "collectivism on a grand scale", be it corporations or the government. The solution seems to me to be "collectivism on a small scale", building friend-family groups that can solve the most common 80% of problems in most fields within themselves, and that reach into professionals from the larger collective for the other 20% of problems, or for the problems in fields they have no experience in.

This makes sense, but "area" self-hosting for friends & family is risky! For myriad reasons, but one critical issue is the persistence of other people's data.

If your friend becomes unavailable for medical advice, you go somewhere else. Disappointing but not tragic.

If you as the F&F host become unavailable (travel, exhaustion, illness, injury, or worse), then all of those people who depend on you are badly stuck.

Things will keep running in your absence (assuming they're set up well) for somewhere between "a while" and "unexpectedly, no time at all". How do your F&Fs migrate all of their data to some other set of providers (different for each media type?), port domains, set up security, etc, without LOTS of help?

You're the sole provider of a unique (and no-cost) service. This is fantastic, but a tenuous situation for your users.

I have grand ideas for how to solve that problem! But they may be too grand to attempt without funding. And I don't think there is meaningful commercial potential (who would understand this well enough to pay for it?), so it's not an attractive financial investment.

Edit: https://peergos.org/ is interesting.