but can I use a random old computer I have in my house to run an instance as long as there are a managable number of users? renting a server isnt self hosting. making one yourself is self hosting.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, you can.

You can easily run a PDS, that's the main public-facing part, you'd need port forwarding and a domain name for this.
Appviews are easier to host imo, https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite is what I use. You can run this on a PC right now, and log in with your bluesky account.

[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

thats not a whole instance though. thats just a place for an account to be. on activity pub platforms anyone can just make an entire indepent and independently functional instance of the platform.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

???
The PDS and the Appview combined are equivalent to an instance. Both run on shitware.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 3 days ago

No, you can't. You can have a custom domain ("PDS" is the term they invented for this) but it still relies on bluesky's servers.