Totally understand your concern, and you're right, the assumption of cloud as a default can be frustrating in many ways.

That said, this framing partly reflects the state of the academic literature: in the past 10–15 years, cloud adoption (especially SaaS) has been extensively studied, to the point where it often feels "default" in research too. In contrast, self-hosting has been far less explored, which is exactly why we're doing this study—to help fill that gap and highlight its relevance, especially in academic contexts.

Thanks again for your thoughts and for the good wishes! :)

Thank you for your comment. The use of similar statements is a common practice in survey research, as it helps to capture various dimensions of a construct more reliably and provides a clearer understanding of individual perspectives.

Regarding your concern, the purpose of this study is not to ask anyone to justify or defend their choices, whether it’s about using third-party services or self-hosting. Instead, we aim to identify the factors that influence such decisions, from a scientific standpoint, to better understand the motivations behind them. The goal is not to judge whether one choice is better than another, but to gain insights into the different considerations that shape people’s decisions when it comes to managing their data and services. Thank you again for taking the time to complete the survey.

Thanks, much appreciated!

Thank you for your comment. The use of similar statements is a common practice in this type of research, as it helps to better capture different aspects of a construct and ensures reliability. I understand that privacy may not be your personal motivation for self-hosting, and that’s perfectly fine. The purpose of this survey is to explore a variety of factors that can influence why individuals choose to self-host, and to determine the relative importance of each. Even if certain factors don’t apply to you, your responses contribute to a broader understanding of the motivations behind self-hosting. Thank you again for taking the time to complete the survey.

Thank you so much, really appreciate it!

Thank you very much – I really appreciate your participation! Yes, the results will be published as part of my PhD dissertation, and also in one of the peer-reviewed journals in the field of Computer Science. Once everything is finalized and publicly available, I’ll definitely share a summary and a link to the publication here as well. Thanks again for your interest and support!

Thank you for completing the survey and for your thoughtful feedback. The similarity between some questions is intentional and follows common scientific practice when measuring complex or abstract concepts. Using multiple, slightly varied items that target the same construct increases the reliability and validity of the data by capturing subtle nuances and reducing the influence of random response variation. While your suggestion to show only a subset of such items through adaptive platforms is valid and worth exploring, fixed item sets are generally preferred in research settings to ensure consistent and robust measurement. We appreciate your input and will consider it in future survey design improvements.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback!

You’ve raised an important point: cloud service providers are not all the same, and their business models can significantly influence how much trust users place in them. We fully agree that there's a big difference between providers like Backblaze, whose value proposition is built on privacy and reliability, and companies like Google, where monetization often relies on extensive data collection.

The purpose of this section in the survey is to explore general perceptions and motivations behind, not to evaluate individual providers. However, we understand that this generalization can be limiting — especially for respondents who distinguish clearly between different types of services and trust models. Your situation, where you answered "Neither agree nor disagree" not out of indecision but due to the complexity of the issue, is very insightful.

Thanks again for taking the time to share this, it’s greatly appreciated!

Yeah, it surprised me too! If you want to read more about it, check out the paper titled "Towards Privacy and Security in Private Clouds: A Representative Survey on the Prevalence of Private Hosting and Administrator Characteristics" by Gröber et al. (2024).

That’s a very valid concern, and you’re absolutely right to bring it up.

One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users, which means that in order to get enough self-hosters from the general population for meaningful analysis, we’d need a very large sample.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the funding or resources to conduct such large-scale research through a representative panel or agency. That’s why this study is focusing on communities where self-hosting is already discussed, like this one.

That said, we’re definitely aware of this limitation, and we’re also sharing the survey in broader, more general-interest online communities where we expect non-self-hosters (or people unfamiliar with the concept) to be more present. This will allow us to include comparisons between the two groups in the analysis.

Really appreciate your thoughtful comment — thanks!

Thanks for the comment — that’s a valid observation, and I understand how the wording might feel a bit awkward.

Just to clarify: the statement comes from a standardized construct called Subjective Norms, and follows the phrasing from the paper "A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model" by Venkatesh & Davis (2000).

For all independent variables in the survey, we relied on validated scales and established practices from prior scientific research, to ensure consistency and reliability. That said, I really appreciate your feedback. :)

Thanks so much – I definitely will! The results will be published in my PhD dissertation, and since publication in a scientific journal is a requirement for completing the degree, they’ll be shared there as well. I’ll make sure to post a link here once everything is available! :)