The opposite of self-hosted would be managed service.

You run it yourself at your own location however you want it

Vs

Someone runs it for you at their location. However the want it

VPS is someone loans you a VM at their location that you run yourself however you want to.

It’s still relevant to self-hosted because you still have to do all the work, you were just using their network, power, air conditioning, hardware and fire suppression. You’re still in the hook for installs and patches, configuration, and software issues.

I’m really not happy about bluesky their fragmentation of the fediverse protocols

shrug, I wish they were with us, but they are also a big ole corporate entity, so I’m kind ok with us staying our our side of the fence. As they need to implement payment and corporate protections to their network, we’re free to be free over here.

is only going to harm us in the long run.

We don’t have to play ball. not with them anyway,

I think, If we have any credible threat, it’s going to be from the Governmental gross anti-tampering laws, forced moderation, or backup regulations. They could make it legally difficulty for us to exist.