So, this might seem like a stupid question on face value, but I’ll go further in detail.
Everyone talks about getting a personal website so you can freely express yourself without getting beaten up by typical Social Media companies. While I fully agree with that, there are a few issues I have thought of:
Firstly, (assuming self-hosting isnt an option) won’t you have to use google or AWS to host your website? And if you post something “they don’t like”, nothing is stopping them from just ban-hammering your website.
Secondly, even if you get a stable host, getting a domain is a completely different issue with the same causes; they could just revoke your domain if, again, you say something “they don’t like”.
With all that being said, would anyone have any remedies for these issues? Are there any privacy/free-speech respecting web hosts and domain suppliers?
Thank you for your responses! :D
Firstly, (assuming self-hosting isnt an option) won’t you have to use google or AWS to host your website?
It makes me very sad, that there are many people who believe that the internet comes down to Google, Amazon and Facebook.
True. It pretty much does, sadly, but yeah.
A couple iceland based privacy respecting providers :)
If you want to be sure, what I would do is host it on my local machine and not use a typical domain, but set up and run it as an onion over tor.
Yes, just don’t assume that self-hosting is out of the question
Usually you pay a hosting provider like those you mentioned (there are several better choices) to host your website. This interaction and paying for service includes a contract and agreement between your parties. They have to honor that and can’t just kick you out on a whim like a social media platform does.
But they have to abide by the law. Once you start committing crimes, they are obliged to terminate service.
I like uberspace.de They recently lost a court case because they refused to take down Youtube-DL’s website.
Do you really think this? That a big tech company would have an interest in the content of a personal blog of such?
I’m not saying it is likely, I’m just saying it’s a possibility.
Also, Amazon and Google are still, well, Amazon and Google, so the more i can get my personal website out of their mitts the better.
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are just 3 places you can host from. If this is a personal website that’ll likely have low traffic, search for lowendbox. Tons of cheap hosting is available that isn’t big tech.
People here have made several suggestions for hosting. To add on that if you just want a simple and privacy oriented blog, check out write.as
The points you raise are true, but honestly they are not a deal breaker. There are many hosting companies and domain companies, with different policies. Also, a website can be served by anything, changing domain and hosting is a nuisance, but it is something that can be done almost instantly. Of course this is similar to creating a different account on social media platforms, but the difference is that the website runs on an open protocol, which is not the case for some social media.
Also I assume that when people say that websites enable expressions, it also means that you can customize absolutely every aspect of the website, including the look and feel, which it is still part of your expression.
Have you ever heard of stormfront?
I’m working on a “hosting protocol” I guess I could call it, maybe it’s a bit more but you can just throw up your website for the cost of sharing other “websites” (or parts of) yourself.
Without going technical, you don’t need a DNS or a registrar, but your website will be this special “link file”.
Just publish that file to who ever you want to (publicly to everyone to see, or privately) and they can follow your blog or website.
Would that be enough for what you’re searching for?
