Why would we care so much about being a property owner and not renter if we don't care about whether a hosting company can just turn us off?
Why would we care so little about privacy that we'd willingly use services that negate privacy and introduce tracking? For instance, the author suggests using Cloudflare, Azure, AWS and more, and none of these aren't abusive. Funnily enough, the Cloudflare hosted images on the page didn't even load for me;)
Does the author not know that Mastodon is software and not a social media network? Sure, it's a minor thing, but when people use terms incorrectly, it makes me wonder if they really know what they're talking about (people who'd rather fight about whether it's a term "everyone uses" instead of whether it's correct seem to not get this point).
The author writes (or quotes) somewhat derisively:
> Well of course it’s better to host your own blog! Also, while you’re at it, put your Mastodon server in a DigitalOcean droplet, throw some Cloudflare CDN in front of it, run your own Raspberry Pi to monitor uptime, and you’re golden! Oh, and don’t forget to also make sure to log into the droplet every once in a while to update the container, do an occasional database migration, and ensure that you check the logs for intrusions.
This all-or-nothing attempt to make the idea of self-hosting seem ridiculous is by itself ridiculous. Nobody needs to do all that. On the other hand, the audience for what the author is advocating shouldn't have a problem setting up a simple machine or VM instance to host a web site, blog, perhaps even DNS server themselves. All or nothing is silly, so even making this example reduces credibility.
All in all, I'd love to see people take ownership of their own things on the Internet. Nobody needs to self-host, but people should if they could, and they should ignore people who say it's too complex because most of the too-complex argument is the suggestion that it needs to be much more than it does. A single VM, a single small computer, even a Pi, can host most things.
But whether people self host or use someone else, choosing where to host matters. Don't use companies that negate the benefits of owning your own things, whether by lock-in or by letting them do all the tracking that Facebook would normally do. Don't use companies that'll disable your account because some idiot wrote a letter. Don't use companies that're so big that you can't talk to a human!
This article makes for an odd juxtaposition between doing thoughtful things and doing things that negate some or much of that thoughtfulness. I'd have a hard time recommending it to others without qualifications.