Since EH is getting DDOSed it is finally time to tell you that you should enrich the fediverse by making your own instance.
Requirements:
- Spare computer or an old android phone
- Domain
Things that might be useful:
- Static IP
- Ability to port forward
- Ability to use navigate trough the terminal on Linux
If you can use linux just follow the instructions here. If you can’t use it I can help you set it up or directly set it up for you.
Edit: yes, I do have my own instance, but since there was a XSS vulnerability recently and I cannot update it, I am not running it
(c/linux crosspost here)
I would like to add that if you plan to do free speech (or even if you don’t) it is probably a good idea to do anonymous hosting and domain name registration in order to avoid risks from hackers/doxxing.
E. g. If you just install on an old laptop/phone/etc on your home network, consider what might happen if some butthurt trannyfag hacktivist decided to hack your server and they gained access to a device on your home network. Was before I started messing around on lemmy, but from what I understand that was basically what happened to the chudbuds instance awhile back. Not sure how bad their security practices were, but I heard people saying their server was on a spare pc and they had nudes, tax docs leaked, were doxxed and even swatted (false reporting to swat team that you are armed and have hostages).
So hosting on a third party server is worth it imo. IIRC linode, digital ocean, and vultr are all Linux friendly. But not really sure how they fare in terms of pushing back against cancel culture bullshit.
Njal.la is probably your best bet for domains. After that comes everything that accepts crypto and offers whois privacy.
As far as server rental go there was a list on dread in the “dark web” for anonymous and tor friendly vps providers.
If we all self-host, then that’s going to do something very interesting – the idiot activist will have to do the same amount of effort to hack one instance as they did before, but instead of having hundreds or thousands of users affected, it will affect a handful. Take a look at a DDOS attack where many different computers are hijacked in order to attack one target. This is sort of a reverse of that, where there are many targets, and the value of each one goes way down. If our enemies had to attack 100 websites in order to be effective, or even better a thousand websites, they are going to need an attack 100 or 1000 times more intense to get the same effect.
The beauty of self hosting and decentralization