[circuit]

> The reason I think this is needed is because a large percent of Internet users cannot afford hosting personal websites.

"For as little as $0.25, you can set up websites at NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, the masters of only pay for what you use hosting since 2002." [1]

Are you telling me people who can afford a smartphone cannot afford some simple static hosting?

[1] https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/

[_xivi]

Except, you don't own or control any of these sites or services. You're merely a tenant without any power. You're open for many threats outside your control:

1. Service shutdown

2. Price jacked up

3. Your account/instance terminated

4. Data abused

And many more. It's almost guaranteed you'll basically be hold hostage at one point.

So, if you're arguing against people having the ability to host on devices they own, you'd need a better argument, one that specifically show how that would be destructive and harmful so that they shouldn't have this freedom.

[troupe]

Running a webserver on your phone incurs all the same issues plus it might be out of range or your phone might be off. So having a webserver on your phone is actually worse.

[_xivi]

> Running a webserver on your phone incurs all the same issues

Huh, what? The issues I mentioned proceed from using services you don't own or have power over. How can I suffer from such issues on my own device?

> out of range or your phone might be off

and? If the owner is ok with that, where is the problem? Are people not permitted to walk because a car is faster?

[troupe]

Yes if none of those things are problems then it isn't an issue. Just that there aren't fewer issues with having a website on your phone by a company that doesn't have a core business of letting people serve http from their phone vs. having it hosted somewhere by a company where it IS their core business.

[jakelazaroff]

What if your service provider cuts you off?

[_xivi]

I change the provider?

Are you arguing I'm not allowed to host because a service can cut me off, so I need to open myself to more services that can cut me off?

[jakelazaroff]

No, I’m saying that trusting [Internet service provider whom you don’t control] to keep your site up is pragmatically identical to trusting [web hosting company whom you don’t control] to do the same.

[somsak2]

right, just like you can change the provider of your hosting.

[cma]

The third party doctrine means at any host your stuff can be warrantless searched, not the case for your phone except I guess that thing about anywhere 100 miles from a coast line or border or airport that covers most of the population.

[oneplane]

> You're merely a tenant without any power.

By that logic, that's what you are on your phone as well, unless you collected the silicon material, diffused and soldered and programmed it yourself.

Even if you assume 'a physical black box, but at least you hold it in your own hands', that is barely making that position stronger since you're still reliant upon networking which requires both a second party and rights to use it, neither of which you control.

Essentially, you will never, ever be some silly idea of a 'self made server owning person' because without mutual agreements and trusts, you get nothing. Not even spare electrons to flip the bits in the CPU registers.

The best we can do is make a balance between our risk appetite and how we want to spend our time. Turns out random phones that will turn into e-waste faster than you can sneeze is what people accept, and thus that is what the suppliers supply.

[_xivi]

> By that logic, that's what you are on your phone as well

I'm lost, how did you come the conclusion that tenants and owners lend the same power?

> unless you collected the silicon material, diffused and soldered and programmed it yourself.

You don't need to build a house to be its owner.

[oneplane]

You're focusing on the tenant part too much, it's about power. Their knowledge and means are generally not focused to be in power, no matter their tenancy.

Equating being able to run a webserver on a privileged port to power, and thus ownership is a bad take. That also goes for the other way around where it is equated to ownership first and power second: none of that is coupled to the ability to run a webserver on any port for that matter.

And on top of that, I made the case that even if you could, you're now just beholden to the power of the webserver maintainer, the OS maintainer and the baseband maintainer. You're not suddenly 'free' or 'empowered' by some sort of ideal.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's great that you can't always run arbitrary software, but staking power and tenancy on that seems pretty dumb to me.

[vorticalbox]

You can run a static site on github.com for free.

[stcroixx]

Surely without any content restrictions or consequences to the account.

[thenickdude]

Do you imagine these restrictions disappear when you host content using your cell provider? They have acceptable use and abuse policies too.

[nfRfqX5n]

looks like it can't handle a few clicks from hn

[opportune]

Micropayments aren’t more of a thing already for a reason. There is friction and overhead with signing up for a 3P subscription service even if the actual dollar cost is negligible.

[smallerfish]

The reason is high credit card fees. If payment gateways allowed micropayments they'd be more popular. (Square, for example, charges 31-33c on anything under $1.)

[MisterSandman]

If NearlyFreeSpeech.net needs to make $1 of profit to be sustainable, they would just charge $1.50 for their product, and I highly doubt there is anyone who can afford $1 but not $1.50

[dt3ft]

Down for me as well. I guess you get what you pay for ;)