This is true, self hosting doesn’t save you money. It is, in fact, more expensive and costs your time.
This is because modern technology isn’t sold to you as a product, it’s sold to you as a loss leader so that you use their products and let them spy on you so that they can sell that data to advertisers or anybody who can complete an ACH transfer.
Your options are
Use commercial services and sell your privacy in exchange for cheap consumer electronics which will be obsolete next year either by design or through engineered hardware failure.
Setup the services on your own devices and pay the cost in hardware and free time.
In one scenario you spend a bit more money, in the other scenario you don’t have privacy. Everyone gets to choose which is more important.
At the top end, they’re probably not subsidized… but if you’re getting by on a $100 phone, it’s likely a $100 piece of spyware that sold your data to pay for 2/3rds of your phone.
This is true, self hosting doesn’t save you money. It is, in fact, more expensive and costs your time.
This is because modern technology isn’t sold to you as a product, it’s sold to you as a loss leader so that you use their products and let them spy on you so that they can sell that data to advertisers or anybody who can complete an ACH transfer.
Your options are
Use commercial services and sell your privacy in exchange for cheap consumer electronics which will be obsolete next year either by design or through engineered hardware failure.
Setup the services on your own devices and pay the cost in hardware and free time.
In one scenario you spend a bit more money, in the other scenario you don’t have privacy. Everyone gets to choose which is more important.
I dont know that they are loss leaders, apple, google and samsung have €2k+ phones. But yeah its about data, control being sold as convenience.
I miss settings menus in everything.
At the top end, they’re probably not subsidized… but if you’re getting by on a $100 phone, it’s likely a $100 piece of spyware that sold your data to pay for 2/3rds of your phone.