Frequently Asked Questions

A Personal Data Server ('pod') stores all your content, whether it is photos, videos, documents, or other files. It also stores your social media posts, comments, and likes. Websites can use your pod to store your data. This means that you have full control over your data. You can change, delete, and, share it, or keep it private.

The Byoda personal data server is specifically developed to support social media services. It includes a data firewall that controls access to your content and data, and understands relations such as 'follow' or 'friend' that you have with other people that also run a Byoda pod. Byoda stands for 'Bring Your Own Data & Algorithms' and the software is open source.

BYO.Host offers a fully managed service for operating your pod. This means that you do not have to worry about installing and maintaining the software and protecting it against bad folks on the Internet. You can focus on experiencing the services that support Byoda, such as BYO.Tube.

Absolutely! If you know how to install a Linux container and open firewall ports, you can install the Byoda software yourself. We'd love for people to tinker with the software! Instructions for installing are available on GitHub.

Byoda Inc is a non-profit organization that develops the Byoda software stack and operates the BYO.Host and BYO.Tube services. Byoda will apply for 501(c)(3) status in the United States as soon we can put togther a board, expected before the end of 2024. The mission of Byoda is to enable better social media services. Better, as in, less bad for your mental health and less polarizing for our societies.

You first sign up for BYO.Host. After your pod is provisioned, the BYO.Host webpage will show a link to 'Go to your pod'. Click on that link and you will be directed to your pod. You will then have to log in with your 'pod username' and 'pod password' that you provided while signing up for BYO.Host. After you have logged in, you can click on the 'Go to BYO.Tube' button. You will then be redirected to the BYO.Tube service.

Each pod hosted by BYO.Host has its own domain, which consists of a unique handle that you can choose and the extension 'byoda.me'. You can always navigate to your pod by entering 'https://<handle>.byoda.me' so make sure to bookmark that address. The pod username and pod password are used to log in to your pod. To minimze confusion, BYO.Host has chosen to keep the usernames for the BYO.Host service and your pod the same. You can chose the 'pod password' yourself. Make sure to store this 'pod password' in your password manager when you sign up.

You can reach out to us on Discord or email us at support@byo.host.

Nothing is ever free. On Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube you pay with your data. On BYO.Host you pay with your money. You are our customer, not our product. Because we are a non-profit that does not look to attract venture capital, we do not have funding available to provide free services. We do provide services at cost + some money to keep the lights on. Thanks to the Microsoft for Startups program, we are able to offer 30 days of free hosting for your pod.

YouTube is not free for creators. YouTube takes 50% of the revenue generated by ads if they 'monetized' you, else they take 100%. BYO.Tube does not require revenue sharing.

You only have to pay for bandwidth if you upload content to your pod and people download it. We have included 10GB of bandwidth in each plan, which should be enough for most people that do not upload their own videos to byo.tube. If you are a creator, you will be able to buy bandwidth pre-paid. Any prepaid bandwidth can be returned to ByoHost for a refund of 90% of the purchase price, to account for payment transaction fees. Purchased prepaid bandwidth does not expire.

You only have to pay for storage if you upload content to your pod. We have included 10GB of storage in each plan, which should be enough for most people that do not upload their own videos to byo.tube. For extra storage, you have to pay upfront per Gigabyte per month. Any unused prepaid storage will carry over to the next month. Prepaid unused storage can be returned to ByoHost for a refund of 90% of the purchase price, to account for payment transaction fees.

We hope so! Anyone with the technical know-how can develop a service leveraging Byoda pods. A reference implementation for the backend is included in the Byoda source code to get you started and instructions are also available.

Today we provide hosting for pods and CDN delivery of video. we plan to add support for video re-encoding and live streaming in the future.

Until we have developed the functionality for the website to support changing settings, you can email support@BYO.Host for any changes you need. You can also join our Discord server and ask for help there.