I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc.
As I spend more time here, I realise that it is practically impossible; especially for a newcomer, to setup any any usable self hosted web service without relying on these corporate behemoths.
I wanted to have my own little static website and alongside that run Immich, but I find that without Cloudflare, Google, and AWS, I run the risk of getting DDOSed or hacked. Also, since the physical server will be hosted at my home (to avoid AWS), there is a serious risk of infecting all devices at home as well (currently reading about VLANS to avoid this).
Am I correct in thinking that avoiding these corporations is impossible (and make peace with this situation), or are there ways to circumvent these giants and still have a good experience self hosting and using web services, even as a newcomer (all without draining my pockets too much)?
Edit: I was working on a lot of misconceptions and still have a lot of learn. Thank you all for your answers.
Is this some sort of insider I am not aware of? I always see these kind of replies and I never understand them. Why even write anything if you don’t have anything meaningful to add to the conversation? This is a genuine question to both of you. I mean, yes, it might be true that everything is fine and dandy if you follow good security practices? But how does that help a beginner? Its like saying driving a car with manual transmission is easy. You just need to know the numbers from 1 to 6 and that a higher number makes the car go faster. Even though this might be technically true, it doesn’t help anybody.