[fragmede]

It exists on a spectrum. Time for hobbies including homelabbing is limited, so while someone who's retired and has all the time in the world to tinker can go self host every last single thing, I'd bet that more people just want to be able to have something that works without a huge depency on the cloud. As long as the bits are on the hard drive in my basement, how the packets get routed around is less critical, to some people, I imagine.

Everybody's got their own set of beliefs and understandings, and they get to decide how they want their homelab to work.

For me, tailscale fits in just right. Others can come to their own conclusion based on how they feel about networking and points of failure and depency and all that.