>That kind of standing up my own little server and running it myself while being accessible over the broader web feels decentralized.

I mean that is how the internet used to work.

>I can put whatever I want.

Then I make a series of false reports and copyright claims and your ISP boots you.

>anyone can access it.

Anyone can DDOS it, forcing you behind a centralized system like cloudflare.

The internet has turned into a dark forest. Standing out and saying something controversial will ensure something shows up to eat you.

I run multiple websites since I have been roughly 14 and I never had any of those problems. I am not saying they could theoretically happen. What I am saying is that to most people running small websites they don't.

I don't use cloudflare because there was never a reason to. And if there was a DDOS I'd just wait. My websites are important to me, but I don't give a damn if they are down for some time. This isn't critical infrastructure.

I have been running internet services on shared hosts, VPS, dedicated servers, colocated own hardware, since 1996, including larger projects that have their own Wikipedia entry etc, and have never needed to put anything behind cloudflare or other ddos protection layers. The providers I have worked with mostly passed on DMCA takedown requests without issues. The small internet is still fine.

No, it hasn't. The small web is quite healthy to this day. I haven't heard anyone who actually runs services like this complain about any of the problems you suggest.

Those problems only happen to large entities. There's simply nothing to gain from DDoSing frankshobbytrainsandflowers.com other than sheer malice, and then it only lasts for as long as you care to spend resources. Frank won't care and likely won't notice if his website is unreachable for any length of time.

Conflating the small web with enterprise problems is an extremely ignorant take.

Besides, the single biggest threat today is not some motivated attacker trying to deprive you of your three visitors a week, the threat is gigacorps exploiting the public commons with reckless abandon. The only thing small web admins are actually concerned about is LLM scrapers.

You should try actually talking to small web admins before spouting off nonsense like this.

Whilst I disagree with what you have written, it is disappointing to see your genuine statements being downvoted.

Downvoting is meant for comments that detract from the discussion. Downvoting a comment simply because you disagree (and can't be arsed typing a rebuttal) leads to groupthink and unpopular ideas being hidden. This place is slowly turning into Reddit. And no, that isn't a cliché, it is a statement of fact.