The dangerous remedy to the desperate disease of cloud hosting

Photo of Aaron Ginn

Aaron Ginn


February 8, 2023

There are two types of moments in history: those that feel like nothing happens and those that feel as if the world changes multiple times over in a single lifetime. The last decades have seen the rise of mega tech platforms that promised obvious efficiencies with few downsides. These platforms changed our entire society. What was promised was more choice and freedom for all with lower prices and what we got was an assault on our core identity as a society. Today, we have a choice — what do we want our future to be?


In the past decade, the single greatest accelerant of societal change was mega internet platforms. With widespread adoption and near infinite scale, big tech platforms were sold as a public good and innovation free from moral responsibilities for every consumer and business to benefit from. On the surface, things appeared harmless and basically free, like selling books or providing information. Underneath their full ownership of the core infrastructure stack for the free and open web, from domains to computing power, lurked increasing lock-in with walled gardens that grew into a power that was destined to be abused. Without a check, this type of absolute power will be corrupted.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton

Then, COVID changed everything and brought light to the brewing darkness that had been brewing behind the meticulously designed and crafted walled gardens. The mask was taken off, so mega-tech platforms attempted to mask the world. They executed a near autocrat-level control over global society at once. Convenience and subsidized lock-in with “free services” turned into a society-wide hostage situation. The wolf was in the hen house. With scale, came brutal centralized control that threatens every citizen and business.


With COVID, quiet conversations about censorship that only impact the fringe and politically involved now reached the mainstream. What previously impacted the 1% now suddenly impacted the other 99%. The world was in shock at the speed and intensity of this change. Business owners were thrown into jail for normal operations. Dissent led to mob-like censorship the likes infamous dictators would have been in awe of and public witch burning to unperson the heterodox made a massive comeback. People were literally arrested for surfing in the ocean and walking down the street without a cloth mask on.


I was a victim of the thumb of mega tech platforms. I wrote a piece in March of 2020 that was the first seminal criticism of lockdowns and COVID hysteria. It garnered millions and millions of views in less than 24 hours. My core argument warned that our politicians were taking things way too far and the evidence did not justify the rash and immoral dilution of basic freedoms. Then, I suffered a fate like many others — I was canceled. My predictions and assessments were accurate, yet my access to the internet was revoked. I was deemed a thought criminal and put into internet jail for expressing precise and well-supported views.


For the length of COVID hysteria, we watched the free and open internet suffocate under the weight of mega tech platforms. These platforms were founded to achieve scale but did so with a cornerstone of lock-in and centralization. These values prohibited the abilities of companies and people to freely operate and utilize the open web when it mattered the most. We asked for the promise of a free and open internet. Instead, we got an elimination of customer choice and mega tech profiting from lock-in by bundling sub-par products and abusing power without a second thought. Despite how much society is opposed, mega tech platforms have become too big to fail.


It is time to change that.


The world needs a new social contract with technology companies that won’t take away power but instead enables freedom, choice, sovereignty, and dignity. The world needs a new type of infrastructure platform that follows the initial vision of a free and open web with a renewed promise to ALWAYS give you choice and privacy for whatever your needs or priorities are. This is why I started Hydra Host with two longtime friends, Garrett and Ariel.


Hydra Host is here to offer real customer choice in hosting, web infrastructure, and most importantly, compute. Infrastructure is the heartbeat of how the internet works and is fundamental to the social contract between platforms and users. Infrastructure is how every company or individual accesses the web. Without sound infrastructure, you could be cut off from your right to the web. Hydra Host is here to fix that.


Let’s be real. No one really likes their hosting provider. The public cloud failed. It can’t do everything you want. Bills are confusing. In your gut, the price feels out of proportion compared to what you receive. There is constant pressure from providers to pull you further into their toolchains so you can’t leave. Their “free credits” feel like a gateway drug because you are always hearing about the better hosting provider down the road. Your infrastructure provider should not control your business or control you.


YOU should be in charge so YOU can do choose to do what is best for YOUR company and YOU should never be concerned about your cloud infrastructure provider deciding your company can’t do business.


From Hydra Host’s founding moment, we have followed the best security and privacy practices and adopted cutting-edge agnosticism and open-source frameworks. Our vision is for any user to have the ability to access any infrastructure provider in the world, whether for cost or security reasons, with a single API. At any time, you can decide to leave any provider or try a new provider. No refactoring. No complexity. Freedom to choose, freedom to move as easy as a click. The choice is yours.


Just like with Kayak or any other marketplace, you are in the driver’s seat. Hydra Host has standardized and simplified every point of the provisioning process. Each hosting company is a common and uniform node that you can access in a simple and single programmatic framework. With our API, we prevent you from getting locked in ever again. Our commitment with Hydra Host is to constantly deliver the best hosting possible while respecting our customer's and client’s privacy. We believe the internet should be accessible to every single person and company regardless of background, creed, faith, or tradition. You can test our initial Terraform provider API for yourself — https://github.com/Hydra-Host/terraform-provider-hydra


As we allow mega tech companies to control more and abuse their power, our ability to see what humanity can truly do is limited. We are choking humanity’s greatest asset for survival — creativity. The future is too important to let a handful of mega-tech companies determine what we’re allowed to do. It is harder than ever to see where the future could take us. At Hydra Host, we’re paving the way and working to ensure your right to the free and open web doesn’t ride or die on the whims of a random tech platform. With Hydra Host, we believe your future should be in your own hands.


Join us. Choose liberty and not tech tyranny. The time is now to storm centralized infrastructure and seize the future we want, for the people and the free and open web.

“A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.” — V for Vendetta