I really appreciated this post. It goes much deeper than most critiques of cloud platforms, and I respect that the author didn’t just complain — he actually tried self-hosting, experienced its ups and downs, and came to an honest conclusion: self-hosting isn't the future.

I agree.

But I also believe that doesn’t mean we stop here. The real issue isn’t about where the server is — it’s about who owns the identity and the data, and whether we have a shared protocol layer to make true user agency possible.

In case it's useful to others thinking along similar lines, I wrote a response piece called “The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign” https://www.robertmao.com/blog/en/the-future-is-not-self-hos...

It builds on the same dilemma but goes further into decentralized identity (DID), protocol-level ownership, and why self-sovereign systems might be the real way forward — beyond both cloud and self-hosting.

Would love to hear what others here think about protocol vs platform thinking.