I host my own matrix instance.

I wouldn't mind hosting my own lemmy instance either, but as it's a public platform anyway I don't have the same qualms about using an instance hosted by someone else. So I opted not to take on any more work on that.

Not everyone needs to self host, you might get away with knowing someone who does. And no, I wouldn't accept a nextcloud account hosted by just anyone, but my siblings and parents happily utilize ones provided by me.

And back when teamspeak, mumble, ventrilo, minecraft servers, cs servers, etc. all had to be "self-hosted" there were plenty of service providers who would do all the technical work for the layman, in exchange for direct payment. Making all those services quite accessible to anyone.

That was so much better than how today we "pay" by getting datamined.