[peterwwillis]

First of all, it wasn't a confrontational comment, it was irony.

And no, self-hosting does not help you control your data. Control would imply some kind of access control or lock, which all hosted services provide. Privacy would imply encryption, which you should be applying to your self-hosted service's files anyway, and can also apply to a hosted service.

[davvolun]

It came off as confrontational to me..., and I don't see the irony (may be poor choice of word on that though, reductio ad absurdum perhaps?)

I would think someone working in marketing at American Apparel or some fashion magazine or something could get something useful in weaving their own cloth or sewing their own clothes. Similarly towards someone reading Hacker News and running their own server.

[madez]

It was confrontational because you ridiculed a point of what I said by extremely overdoing it.

Even the part you ridiculed — which wasn't the main point — is important. Learning and figuring stuff out by doing it yourself is very important. One doesn't need to go to the absurdly extreme like you ironically promoted.

I host my own server and virtually only I have access to it. Clearly, that gives me privacy to a large degree.