centralization issues aside, why do people pay for hosting in the first place? you don't need a rack server to host something only used by yourself and some friends.
most 'cloud' services are not compute-bound. a 'server' is just an always-on computer that stores data you want to access over the network. i doubt your vps's util ever cracks 10%.
why pay for a vps each month when your core2duo desktop from 2009 can easily handle hosting 10 different services simultaneously for free, forever?
@gc old PCs like core2duo from 2009 are power hogs. Example Core2duo is 65W and that's just for the CPU. That's 1.56kWh/day or 46.8kWh/month. I pay $0.25/kWh for power, that's $11.70. Cheap VPS for personal use = $5/month, or replace the 2009 PC with a Raspberry Pi which uses about 5W.
@arden oh, and I forgot to mention that using a solar panel to power a raspberry pi for actually free, for actually forever, is a very popular and straightforward thing to do!
@gc yep, all for the self-hosting and saving $$ with Pi's and other efficient home devices (I have about a dozen here). It's just time to scrap/recycle those old Core2Duo's. They're old, loud (usually the fan bearings have started to go, like my knees), and inefficient, like my knees.
@arden I mean, $10/month in extra electricity bills ain't that hard to swallow if you're saving $30+/month from all the cloud software subscriptions you're no longer paying for lol.
I totally recognize that electricity costs are ridiculously high for some people, though. thankfully, like you said, raspberry pis are a great solution if that's an issue. they can host nearly all of the projects mentioned above, and only use 0.12kWh/$0.03 of power per day, or 3.6kWh/$0.90 per month.