I sort of fit that category. I am aware of self-hosting, even somewhat interested. But I know absolutely nothing about it, and if I’m being honest, too lazy to research it.
Truthfully, I haven’t owned my own PC/Laptop in over a decade. I just use the one I get from work if I need to do something on a computer. I preferred gaming on a PS4/5 so I could just relax on the couch with a controller instead of sitting in a chair at a desk. I recently got a steam deck and love it. I want to poke around desktop mode some more so I can get more familiar with Linux.
SelfhostedResearch@lemmy.world 4 days ago
That’s a very valid concern, and you’re absolutely right to bring it up.
One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users, which means that in order to get enough self-hosters from the general population for meaningful analysis, we’d need a very large sample.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the funding or resources to conduct such large-scale research through a representative panel or agency. That’s why this study is focusing on communities where self-hosting is already discussed, like this one.
That said, we’re definitely aware of this limitation, and we’re also sharing the survey in broader, more general-interest online communities where we expect non-self-hosters (or people unfamiliar with the concept) to be more present. This will allow us to include comparisons between the two groups in the analysis.
Really appreciate your thoughtful comment — thanks!
grue@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Wow! That’s a lot higher than I would’ve expected. My guess would’ve been about 1%, or maybe even an order of magnitude or so less than that.
SelfhostedResearch@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah, it surprised me too! If you want to read more about it, check out the paper titled “Towards Privacy and Security in Private Clouds: A Representative Survey on the Prevalence of Private Hosting and Administrator Characteristics” by Gröber et al. (2024).
kernelle@0d.gs 4 days ago
Thanks for the source, super interesting read! I would’ve guessed 1-5% as well.
Mniot@programming.dev 4 days ago
Thanks for linking that. Reading the paper, it looks like the majority of the “self-host” population they’re capturing is people who have a WordPress site. By my reading, the wording of the paper would disqualify a wordpress.com-hosted site as “self-hosted”. But I’d be very suspicious of their methodology and would expect that quite a few people who use WP-hosted reported as self-hosted because the language is pretty confusing.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
My guess is that it also included things like the 12 year old hosting a Minecraft server.
nickhammes@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I suspect there’s a tendency of experts in something to think of people who do it narrowly as people doing at least as much as they are.
The people who have a bunch of docker services, or complex multi-machine infrastructure are self-hosted software users, and probably in that 1-2% range. People who heard piholes are useful, so they bought a pi 3 and set it up are self-hosted software users. Somebody using an old desktop they got on Facebook marketplace for running Plex media are self-hosted software users… and so on. So are the people in their houses, some of their friends and family.
Using that inclusive definition, being closer to 10% than 1% makes sense to me.