I self hosted a Lemmy instance for a little while, but I stopped over concerns of malicious actors posting CSAM which would then get federated over to my server. I don’t have the appetite to deal with that, and I’m glad I shut it down because just a few weeks later there was a big instance of it happening all over Lemmy, and I’m sure I would have had to deal with cleaning it up on my server too. Just something to keep in mind.
Otherwise though, the setup process isn’t too complex.
Sure, but then you’re left with text only and are relying on your blocklist for URLs, which is just going to be a game of whack-a-mole. I personally didn’t want to have to worry about that in my free time, but I’m sure other folks feel differently.