home / posts /

why I host a website

2026.03.25

In 2026, it's considered somewhat unusual or even anachronistic to have a personal website, especially instead of social media, especially being a member of gen z. I thought I should try to explain why I do it.

I used to use social media a lot. I was an admin of one of the largest Facebook pages at my university. I had a vlog-style youtube channel. I had a fairly popular instagram page for my nature photography. Not anymore. I basically just have this website now.

1. If you post to a social media platform, and they go out of business, you are out of luck. Your stuff is gone. You may be able to get a copy of your data, but it will be very difficult or impossible to port it to another platform. This is on purpose. Why would they want you to be able to leave? This can happen with any social network, and is more likely than you think. Remember when the US almost banned Tiktok? Myspace? Vine? It could happen at any time, with no notice.

2. Even if the site is available, you may not be able to use it. They could decide to stop supporting your phone or computer's operating system. Clubhouse (remember them?) only supported iPhones at launch. Youtube, at one point, totally stopped working if you had an ad blocker installed. You often are all but forced to install the mobile app, because the web versions of these sites are intentionally clunky.

3. You could get banned without ever knowing why, or for a dumb reason, and you have no recourse. If you have ever experienced this, you know how hard it is to get in touch with a large social media service to even find out what happened, let alone get back into your account. If you are banned, you may also be banned from ever making a new account, and this is becoming increasingly difficult to evade.

4. A feature you love could suddenly be deleted. There was an uproar when Youtube got rid of the dislike button, or when Instagram removed the following tab, but there is nothing you can do. It's gone.

5. You are forced to see ads. Especially in the (heavily pushed) mobile app, where everything from your eye movements, your contacts, your clipboard, to what room in your house you're sitting in while you scroll, is tracked and analyzed. Platforms can, with a scary degree of accuracy, predict when you are going to be tired, hungry, emotionally vulnerable, or experiencing a big life disruption like illness or divorce [1]. And they will exploit it for profit.

6. You are at the mercy of the all-seeing, all-powerful algorithm. It can change overnight, suddenly making it so your friends will no longer see your posts. Or maybe your posts were never visible in the first place because the algorithm decided you are too ugly, poor, or disabled [2].

7. In the scientific community there is a strong consensus that social media use makes you less happy. I can confirm this from personal experience. After I left for what I thought was a short 30 day experiment, I never returned, because I felt so much better.

Okay. That's all pretty bad. What are the benefits of hosting your own content?

1. You are in control. You can set how things look and feel. The only limit is your creativity! You can decide what gets shown on the top of the front page, and what is locked behind a password. You can post or delete as much as you want, and nobody can tell you to stop.

2. You can decide not to show ads.

3. You can also decide not to heavily track and surveil your readers.

4. A simple website will work on almost any device. This site will be readable on a computer from 20 years ago, and will likely still be readable 20 years from now.

5. You can post any kind of content you want, from text, images, videos, songs, maps, books, even games or interative simulations. Nothing is too long, or too short. You have actual, real freedom of speech. The sky is the limit.

6. If your hosting provider shuts down or changes their policies, it's really easy to move to a different one. You can also host the website yourself, even on an old laptop in your closet.

7. You are forced to go face to face with the underlying technology. Behind the scenes, typing this post looks like this.

If you are not tech savvy, that can be pretty scary, but the good news is that there are even easier options. However, usually the shinier the product, the more it's out of your control. Remember that the more you understand, the harder you are to dupe. So it's worth understanding a little bit of what's going on underneath the surface. If you know your way around email and Word documents, you can probably get the hang of it in a day or two. I recommend Github Pages as an easy (and free) way to start. You'll get a free domain (yourusername.github.io) too, you can always move it to your own .com or even .fishing later when you feel more comfortable.

Anyways, I hope this made sense. I highly encourage everyone to put up their own website, just for fun. It's a great way to showcase your hobbies and side projects. If this inspired you to set up a website, please let me know, I would love to see what you made.

Footnotes

[1] CBS News (back in 2013!!! imagine what they can do now) Facebook may be able to predict divorce

[2] The Guardian TikTok 'tried to filter out videos from ugly, poor or disabled users'