I find the idea of self-hosting to be really appealing, but at the same time I find it to be incredibly scary. This is not because I lack the technical expertise, but because I have gotten the impression that everyone on the Internet would immediately try to hack into it to make it join their bot net. As a result, I would have to be constantly vigilant against this, yet one of the numerous assailants would only have to succeed once. Dealing with this constant threat seems like it would be frightening enough as a full-time job, but this would only be a hobby project for me.
How do the self-hosters on Lemmy avoid becoming one with the botnet?
I think most home lab/shelf hosters start off because they want to learn something. I think (generally, philosophically) many people never start something new even if it interests them because they are afraid. To this point, it sounds like you can either let the fear prevent you from doing what you want, or you can use the fear as a learning tool.
Start simple. Build something very easy and isolated, air gap it if you need to. Figure out how logs and monitoring work, maybe even try attacking it yourself, so you have confidence that even if it’s compromised you will see how and why. Then you can connect it to the internet, isolated from the rest of your network, and then you will learn how well- or un-founded those fears are. Learn even more about monitoring and defending, then start looking for a job as a cybersecurity professional because you are already well underway.