Words have meaning. Insisting on proper usage is not gatekeeping. It’s like this with every new word; everybody wants to appropriate it to mean whatever they themselves are doing, in order to unfairly, and dishonestly, capitalize on the value the word signals. See also, for example, “ecological”, or “open source”. And they all complain about gatekeeping when they are called out, too.
The meaning of words is defined by the people that use them and how they're understood by others.
"Full control over the whole stack, full stop, no exceptions" is not how people generally use or understand the term "self hosting", and if we were to prescriptively define it as that it would make self hosting unattainable and useless as a term.
I proposed a useful way to draw the line. How would you propose we define it?
IMHO, unless you own the hardware, it’s not “self-hosting”.
IMHO, unless you have said hardware running in a location under your personal control (i.e. a room, building or house you either own or rent), it’s not “self-hosting”.
Both of these are not unattainable, or were not so in the relatively recent past.
But I will concede that it’s not always easy to distinguish in the gray zones. It’s like where you sleep. The differences are gradual from “owning”, “renting”, “apartment by the week”, “dorms”, “hotel room”, “airbnb”, “hostel”, “flophouse”, “tent”, “homeless”. Which of these constitutes a “home”? Opinions vary.
That said, however, resorting to “The meaning of words is defined by the people that use them” is also something which people arguing in bad faith almost always do.
You said self hosting means you own the entire stack yourself.
What makes "the hardware and the physical location" anything but arbitrary in terms of that? Why is that "the whole stack"? Why is the hardware and location more important than how I, or anyone else in the world, actually accesses it, when basically all of us are relying on some external party for internet access? What justifies a line that prevents me from deriding anything as "not self hosting" if someone hasn't set up their own tier 1 network?
Why does putting a server in my house, but relying on an ISP, an external box for access, and a bunch of other stuff count as "self hosting" but sticking an old rack mount server at a friend's place because they have symmetric gigabit fibre and my acreage has 5/0.3 DSL not self hosting?
Why would purchasing a server and colocating it at a data centre with a fully encrypted drive be less "self hosting" than putting a raspberry pi in my utility room behind tailscale to bypass the CGNAT? How is putting a server in a data centre different than putting it in a rented apartment?
If I run a MUD on my laptop that's online whenever I check in to a hostel and have internet, am I self-hosting the MUD? If I'm not, who would you say is hosting it?
Circling back to my original comment--what is the actual benefit to "your own hardware on property you own"? Is it "taking control over your dependencies, data, and privacy"? Because then anything that accomplishes that should probably be included on a spectrum of self hosting. Somebody hosting a matrix server on an Digital Ocean VPS as a social network for their friends is still closer to that goal than somebody setting up a Discord server. Somebody hosting a Kubernetes cluster in their closet on a residental ISP is closer. Somebody racking a bunch of gear at a DC is closer.
There's no reason to tell any of these people "you're doing it wrong".
On a separate note: I feel I've got a fair point here, one that you've practically admitted in your own comment. Going on to strongly imply I'm arguing in bad faith really came across as a dick move.
Trying to redefine “self-hosted” to suit your purposes does not benefit anybody but people trying to make “self-hosted” a feel-good meaningless marketing term.
> There's no reason to tell any of these people "you're doing it wrong".
I’m saying they’re not self-hosting. Everything else is you hearing things.
I would normally obey the rules of debate and answer your litany of questions, but I think that in this case it would not help anybody, as you already know the answers.