I want to self host a suite of services and make them public.
What kind of services? Well, all kinds. Matrix, lemmy, bookwyrm, and I may think of others in the future.
The problem? I don’t even know where to begin from a legal stand point. Not only that, I am a barely legal immigrant (vulnerable to deportation) from a country that is not very liked by the gov. I am afraid to put myself in a vulnerable position and get more trouble than the typical US citizen.
Is there a reasonable way to be able to self host public services without legal trouble? Is there a resource I can follow for best practices to avoid issues?
You can host overseas and use a proxy for hosting. I mostly don’t worry about it though because I don’t do anything illegal.
I don’t plan on doing anything illegal myself, but apparently that’s not enough.
Where overseas can I be free of legal issues? Can you elaborate on what you mean by using a proxy for hosting?
If you’re not doing anything illegal/copyright violating, then you can host whatever you want. Self-hosting isn’t illegal, in fact it’s what nearly every business does in some fashion. It’s just risky from an intrusion perspective
But if you’re going to host something, it should be via a secure channel - a VPN, Reverse Proxy from a VPS, Mesh Network (perhaps with a web-hosted entry point), etc.
He’s talking about user generated content from other users.
Assuming you are in the US legally you won’t have issues. If your illegal that’s a different story and you are going to be in trouble regardless