Some people want to run their own servers
I&#x27;m glad to see this post, as it says exactly what I thought when I read the referenced sections in Moxie&#x27;s post. I know I live in a particular echo chamber but owning two ISPs has meant a sizeable proportion of my Dunbar&#x27;s Number are those who gladly host their own servers, run their own infrastructures, and decline the ongoing consolidation of the Internet. We generally consider being part of The Internet for example to mean being part of the DFZ (Default Free Zone), and anything less is to be a consumer. I know we are the extreme minority of users, but it&#x27;s users like us who keep the world connected and accessible. Without people running their own ASNs, hosting their own infrastructures, etc, we would all be reliant on a small (relatively) number of huge scale businesses. And these users permit disruptive Internet infrastructure businesses to exist.<p>Take for example the rural WISPs in the US or South and Eastern Europe who provide coverage for huge quantities of users in otherwise unserved locations. Or the organisations running Wikipedia and The Internet Archive. Hosters like OVH, Hetzner, even Digital Ocean. Broadcasters like BBC and Netflix. Fibre providers like B4RN and even new ISP models like Starlink.<p>If people didn&#x27;t want to run their own infrastructure the underpinnings of the Internet would become stagnant and opaque owned by a small quantity of hyper scale businesses. This isn&#x27;t the Internet promise that I grew up through.