What sounds like gatekeeping is often a strongly worded emphasis on having the prerequisite knowledge to not just host your services, but do it in a way that is secure, resilient, and responsible. If you don’t know how to set up a network, set up a resilient storage, manage your backups, set up HTTPS and other encryption solutions, manage user authentication and privileges, and expose your services securely, you should not be self-hosting. You should be learning how to self-host responsibly.

Friends don’t let friends expose their networks like Nintendo advises.