How do you self host? Is the always free AWS package an option to do this?

Same here. I love owning my own identity.

I’m planning to self host - but just have one question, mostly a confirmation, as long as you’re not hosting communities, you can comment and interact with others, without needing other instances to explicitly sync with your insurance, right?

I kind of want my own instance just to control what communities I sync for my own account, but not going to host any myself, so defederation of some instances doesn’t affect me (unless I myself want to block them)