Sad times. :(

I will admit that I am not tech savvy enough to understand all the nuances. What I know is what I’ve read which is most likely popular opinion. So I definitely will credit your point.

This is a slight deviation from the topic at hand, but I do want to state that I have been thinking about pre… Web 2.0 I suppose we could call it? That sweet spot when the internet was fairly new but becoming popular enough that plenty of (youngish, at the time) people could navigate it. And there were a lot of challenges to get things people wanted to do. I remember struggling with image hosting so I could put a pretty picture in my signature on the forums I frequented. But where there is a will, there is a way. A lot of people figured out some sort of solution. It took varying levels of commitment and creativity. And I think that’s actually a good thing. I think it taught valuable skills and fostered curious mindsets. I don’t think it would be a bad thing if some of the tools of ease and convenience were taken away and people had to start figuring out alternative solutions, especially younger generations who haven’t been forced to do that.

Would they? I’m not sure. I’d like to be optimistic and say yes. But the pessimistic part of me thinks that if a web service giant were to fall, all it would do is create a vacuum for someone else to take their place. If Imgur were to somehow disappear because they were unprofitable, some other website would pop up in its place, promising everything users want and more, for free no less. Backed by venture capitalist money perhaps. Then, over time, succumbing to the same situation that it feels like every mainstream service does, trying to claw back that investment money and start turning a profit.

This is a bit of a rambling reply, I know, so apologies for making you read all this. I’m not looking to pick a fight. But I do stand by my pithy reaction image. I’m not sympathetic to Imgur. I’m not sure what the ‘best’ solution is, but I don’t think the constant pattern we’ve been seeing is the only one, let alone a good one.

There are a lot of servers, and anyone can spin up one if they want to and have the capability. I thought the point of the fediverse was to decentralize–and ideally there wouldn’t be any singularly “big” instances. I know there are, but there doesn’t necessarily have to be.

At any rate I donate to Zip because I think they’re great and I can and I do want them to continue. No need for them to do anything more than that to earn my desire to support them.

Honestly I think it’s a great way to get into self-hosting without having to worry too much! I don’t have any one specific guide to point you towards. I just got started a few weeks ago myself, and mostly brushed off some old skills I’d known from other projects and doing a LOT of searching of videos and posts and articles and just figuring things out as I went. So the best I can do is tell you some topics you’re going to want to learn about.

Assuming you’ll want to start small and easy (not needing to expose anything to the internet, just local area network stuff), I recommend you search up the following topics:

• Linux commands (if you don’t know them already)
• Running a virtual machine (if you don’t have some hardware lying around that you can use to run as your ‘server.’ Old laptops are a fantastic starting point if you do. But if not you can definitely experiment with a VM on your PC!)
• Docker & Docker Compose (in that order if you don’t find some two-in-one resource)

That should give you enough to start toying around and trying things out. And once you start doing that, you start unearthing what you don’t know and that’ll point you towards the next thing you need to learn. :)

Without knowing specifically what issue you ran into, it might not be user error. A lot of public instances for privacy frontends wind up going down for all sorts of reasons (server overload/scraped to death by bots, had to end server due to costs, API changes to the underlying service breaking something, just to name a few.) Part of the reason I started looking into self-hosting stuff was just to prop up some privacy frontends for my own use.

Might be worth checking out WAFRN if you want something tumblr-like!

If it can’t be monetised then it will die.