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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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How to self host public services without legal trouble? (USA resident) (lemy.lol)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I want to self host a suite of services and make them public.

What kind of services? Well, all kinds. Matrix, lemmy, bookwyrm, and I may think of others in the future.

The problem? I don't even know where to begin from a legal stand point. Not only that, I am a barely legal immigrant (vulnerable to deportation) from a country that is not very liked by the gov. I am afraid to put myself in a vulnerable position and get more trouble than the typical US citizen.

Is there a reasonable way to be able to self host public services without legal trouble? Is there a resource I can follow for best practices to avoid issues?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Truth be told, I haven't really considered legality when hosting anything. Most of my stuff is self created with open source software for personal use. I'm going to guess and say all that is good.

The only legally questionable stuff I can think of is sharing public access to licensed software or somesort of copyrighted media downloader. Stay clear of those and you should be good.

There are also legal things such as TOR and, yes sometimes VPN, that can raise eyebrows. While they aren't illegal, many sites and services block them. I ran a TOR node for a few days, and within a week it seemed like 1/4 of the internet blacklisted me. Wasn't really fun. Had to change my MAC address and snag a new IP address from my ISP.

I don't really open my servers to non-family and friends. I don't want to spend the time being a babysitter for 20 sites. If that's a concern, perhaps rethink who you give access to.

Trust your gut. You kinda know if you're walking a line.

Good luck!