Yeah I'm finding the clients hard to navigate. I can do it for myself, but to recommend to people, I'm unable to decide which to pick.

Edit: What did you mean by can't recommend the switch?

Thank you! Also, what do you use for messaging?

As the other person who responded to you mentioned, things can get bad. At some level, trust is always going to be a factor with these things.

1. Matrix.org is still the most popular server - if I just tell people to download Element, they're going to pick matrix.org. Automatically, this builds a sort of lock in with the "default instance". Even if I host my own server, that's not something I can recommedn to everyone, nor do I have the resources to make it a public server.

2. Already there's trouble with hosting your own Matrix server due to how heavy the software is apparently. This coupled with point 1, things concentrating into the hands of the foundation is not a good thing.

3. Following from that, for example, what if they suddenly decide there's too many people with "radical" ideologies that are against their masters, the imperial powers? They have metadata (even if not content, because encryption) through the public servers they host that they can use to surveil.

The issue is not just that it's built by people with poor ideological rigour. It's that it's both a fragile structure that depends on trust and the people we're trusting have poor ideological rigour. That seems like a bad combo to me.

Imagine if they just wrote and worked on the protocol. That's it. No official apps, no official public servers. Then I wouldn't care coz it doesn't matter. People can check the protocol for suspicious stuff but that's it. Nothing else is in these organizations' control.

Yeah as soon as I read the sanctions bit I knew they must be using some shitty Cold War list from somewhere.

Which company involved is Israeli? That's the first I'm hearing of that.

Edited to correct typo

I'm concerned about the software again playing into capitalist, imperialist spirals like we've seen with everything else so far. I am also concerned about supporting such an organization/company by doing "marketing" for them through my circles. The whole reason I started this was as part of the BDS movement and it doesn't make sense to just jump from one highly problematic ecosystem to another.

And if you're okay with "lesser evils", sure. I'm not. I believe continually choosing lesser evils instead of building good things is why we're in this mess in the first place.

Thank you! That's pretty reassuring.

Thank you so much for the detailed response! I might be able to stretch out to 4GB RAM on the Pi

I've been finding it a bit difficult to understand the hardware part of things. For example, the hubzilla FAQ you shared says 512M and not MB. Does that not refer to RAM?

And I've also not been able to find any guides about the "levels" in hardware. If not the Pi, then what? How do I decide? How do I explore?

Thank you. That does sound annoying but .com is both boring and more expensive.

Ohh, I maybe should clarify. I don't intend to use my own server. I have a provider - disroot.

Thank you! Also, if I want different domains for different Hubzilla accounts within the same server, would that be possible? Like the server itself is a.hub, but an account in the hub wants to use b. space as it's domain, like username@b.space, would I be able to allow that?

Yeah I am not going to host my own email. I have a provider who I'm going to ask to attach the custom domain. Only the WordPress/Hubzilla instance I might host on my own.

Great! As a follow up question, for example I want to let a friend use my hubzilla server to host their hub. Can I "allow" them to bring their own domain name and let them use it?

Edit to add one more question: Is there a restriction on what top level domain can be used for what purpose (fedi, email, website) or anything goes?

Sort of. I feel like I need to know my own priorities better because I'm not sure what I want wrt hosting. Because of general trust and privacy issues, of course self-hosting (at home) is the ultimate best option, but I think that might only be a long term thing and I can't do it now. So I'm wondering what to prioritize right now - cost, reputation, or simplicity - because I've found quite a few options that differ in these aspects.

Writefreely is simple and can be free, but I can't find very many public instances and have no way of verifying reputation.

Similarly, wordpress.com has been under fire for a lot of things and I'm not sure how I feel about hosting with them &- free or otherwise.

Everything else like random VPS providers feels like a gamble because I know nothing about them and it seems like a black box. And obviously, cost increases for what is essentially going to be a bunch of writings from one person.

WriteFreely looks pretty good!

Would you recommend WordPress as a hosting service? I'm not able to understand the structure of it all to figure out if it:'s ethical and what with the recent fights with WP Engine and stuff, I'm unsure how it all actually works.

Makes sense if that's something you're worried about. I just meant that it seems to me like people immediately jump to cloud storage without even considering use cases and options. I wish I'd known about this setup that I'm using now a long time ago so I thought it'd be good to put the option out there.

You can use Thunderbird with Mailbox and I think Posteo too? Does disroot even have an app? Even their official pages directed me to other clients like Thunderbird

He said times have changed and Republicans are now the party for the little guys. He later deleted that, but did not clarify or apologize.

He also said he likes the Trump nominee to the cabinet for antitrust issues. But people were quick to point out that that person used to work for Big Tech lobby groups. I don't think he ever took this back or clarified.

Why we should care - this is multifold, but I'll just tell you how I feel. I'm not going to immediately delete all my proton stuff over one guy's words. But I am definitely considering.

As I see it, there's two possibilities (both come from a very generous place if I may say so myself). First is that he's kissing ass like every other tech CEO right now (you can see the Trump inauguration pic), which is a really really bad thing because you need a spine if you claim to be fighting for freedom and privacy. Second possibility is that he's naive enough to think that some nominee Trump got in will mean good things for anything to do with privacy, which is also a really really bad thing because the other thing you need for advocating privacy and freedom is actually being able to read between the lines and see what are the upcoming challenges and how to prepare for them.

And guess who's going to pay for the naivete or the cowardice? The end consumer of these services - us, and a lot of other really vulnerable folks who use such sensitive services.

To wrap it up, I want to go to my earlier statement about not jumping ship because of one man's words. The problem is, it's been a while since that one man said this stuff and no one from the company or foundation has issued a retraction or taken any action. If anything they just seem to have doubled and offer more "explanations" that still don't mean much.

Unless you're somehow looking for tonnes of storage, I don't think you need cloud services. I've set up just my 3 devices (phone laptop PC) to sync with each other using Syncthing. And that's plenty of space for just personal stuff (including photos). And it's so cheap (only the cost of the devices you're already using, and no subscriptions). It's something I wish most people did because of how prevalent Drive has become, even though it doesn't seem like it's necessary for a lot of use cases. You're situation might be different though, just a suggestion.

There are a few alternatives in mind for me. Mailbox, posteo, disroot. Disroot is the only one among these with a free email. But posteo and mailbox do have cheap tiers. Posteo doesn't have support for custom domains last I checked.

That's just email. I've already not been using proton for almost everything else. KeepassXC for passwords, Addy.io for aliases, Syncthing and offline storage across my 3 devices instead of any Drive. VPN I rarely use so free proton is enough for that. Mullvad exists on the off chance I need it for a while (it's a constant price per month how many ever months you choose, and you can just "top up" with some amount and it will last you the appropriate number of days).