I’m not an anti-capitalist. I’m pretty middle-of-the-road in that I believe in a regulated and taxed market economy. But on a personal level there are some aspects of my life that I would rather not place in the hands of corporations whose incentives aren’t necessarily aligned with mine.
Google, Twitter, Reddit - I don’t really disagree with their right to exist (concerns about monopolies aside). But the less involved they are in my life the better.
Services vary a lot on how they are deployed and their dependencies, etc. The knowledge I have (and honestly I don’t have much) I just built over time, tinkering with different set-ups and trying to debug problems when they arose. So I guess just choose a few difference services and try to get them working (choose low-stakes ones at first, where the risk of getting pwned or losing everything is very low). Docker can abstract away a lot, so maybe try more direct deployments if you are interested in learning.