I hope the mods allow this, if not that's fine, just remove.
I wont be using my old username for obvious reasons, but I have laid the foundation for a news site that can withstand the current state of absolute shit that the world finds itself in today. I have dedicated hardware running in a datacenter behind CloudFlare, but will be moving to Epik's CND after chatting a bit with Rob.
I know that I can't write, I'm better at the backend stuff, but there are a few articles I am releasing over the next few weeks (I wont spam them here), which is why I am dropping in on a couple of spots I frequent looking for people with functional spines and something to say.
Have a look around, we have a forum ready to go (same board IGN uses, without the macho man abbey savage porn) if anyone is interested in trying to recreate a 2003 era SomethingAwful, or a pre-null-meltdown Kiwi Farms. Ya know, intelligent long-form discussions.
I've put thousands into this project, and I don't intend to stop, join if you like, we might be able to do some good.
Are you familiar with EVE Online, and particularly, Goonswarm?
I ask because they offer a good way about going about this.
EVE Online as a game is famous for its meta. More precisely, the meta is the only redeeming quality of the game, period. And Goonswarm plays the meta very well.
For a long time the "news" of eve was EVE Tribune, which did long form exposition. They were replaced by EVE News 24 which was more of the CNN Headline News. But they went partisan, and were eventually competed with Imperium.news, which is basically the Fox News of EVE.
I know a bit about Imperium.news because I was briefly involved in its immediate predecessor, TheMittani. They use discord and have a large stable of infrequent long form writers, and a smaller pool of regulars.
They do pay a bit for stories (I believe in PLEX, an EVE playtime coin), but mostly the biggest perk of contributing is being part of the newsroom discord, which is very social.
I hate to admit this, but I'm actually IN Goonswarm...
Not sure why the downvotes (probably because it's a bit hard to decipher your advice), but I do understand your points, and I'll look to them for direction.
Okay, so you built the server and are colocating it somewhere? Do you own the connection and bandwidth yourself? There's a point of failure.
I own the software
Then you might want to disable XML-RPC (or just pingbacks) in WordPress so that you stop leaking your hardware IP. I'd probably audit the other plugins and/or themes you're using (since you apparently "own" them, wtfever that means) so they don't leak as well. CloudFlare is nice, but it's not magic.
only I know where the server sits
See the above.
Once moved to Epik (like bitchute), it will take a court order to remove content, which I will fight in person till the bitter end.
lol it's not the DMCA that is going to deplatform you. It's going to be ISP related, or payment related. Ask NewProject2.
Explain a bit about the payment issue you forsee. I am self funding this and have the means to privately fund it for years to come without needing external income. Outside of that, BTC can be used for lightweight payment processor bypass, but it shouldn't be necessary anyway.
The real issue, like you mentioned, is the bandwidth/colo issue. Let me assure you, that I did not go and rent some colo space online and pop a desktop on a shelf on it's side. I have enterprise hardware buried away somewhere, and while you have shown how fragile the charade can be, I'm confident that with a combination of tunnels, I can truely hide the hardware by the time it becomes necessary.
Outside of that, I hope to be able to build a community that is strong enough to move past the concept of needing a centralized website if all else fails. I'm prepared to move off-internet if need be.
It's not necessarily an issue with your system. You seem to be more about articles and forum posts.
I've been toying with how to build an open source, decentralized replacement for social media and publishing platforms like YouTube, Patreon, etc.
The problem with crypto is normies are never going to deal with wallet keys and exchanges, especially with the way the SEC is trying to make sure they get their slice, and don't get me started on Libra.
From the little bit of the research I've done, to even build our own payment processor (not even the engineering side, I'd build it piece by piece if I had to) we'd need an undersigning bank.
Back to your project, if you would like me to run an a full audit (instead of the ten minutes I played around) and help you fix it, let me know. I've hardened WordPress blogs before, especially if you haven't moved to BitMitigate yet.
If you want to know the truth, I just don't believe that "Social Media" can be saved long-term.
Using reddit as an example, a new user can fire up their own completely hidden subreddit, invite a bunch of users to it, and start serving up CP, all before anyone can notice it's even happening. These types of services are just prone to festering, plain and simple. Forums and traditional websites are WYSIWYG, no easy way to hide that CP (I specifically use lossy compression of all images after upload to try and stamp out data hidden in image files). I am certainly open to more discussion though. (Come register and lets chat?)
As for the PP side, you would need to stand up your own bank to truely do what you want, which isn't actually hard to do, I know a few folks in the biz and it's honestly just a capitol issue. You'll need around $15mm to start, but after that you just rent a FISERV box and your off to the races. Sadly, this isn't something that is easy enough to fix for me to focus on at the moment.
Send me a PM with your thoughts on an audit. I have very functional knowledge of pen testing concepts, but don't have the knowledge to execute in a meaningful way.
What about starting a credit union? These are technically banks no? They issue their own bank cards, can do loans, borrow overnight money from the fed, have their own swift routing number etc.
If small immigrant communities less than 100k population, can open their ethnically themed credit union, why can't the pedes do the same?
He's got a bit of a point, though. They don't need to take your server down if they can pressure your ISP - or your ISP's ISP - to pull the plug, or if they can close down however it's funded.
I'm looking for people with something to say, but don't want to waste days writing and editing their article just to have it removed or delisted from the news site the minute someone complains (if it would even be posted at all).
I'm thinking News, Politics, Technology, Hobbies/Trades, Sporting, and Culture are good catagories to start off with.
I am curious as to how you plan to make a profitable news site that isn't shit.
News isn't profitable without outrage, and outrage is much easier to manufacture through lies by omission and selective reporting than it is to grow organically. SoJus and cancel culture are very prominent symptoms of this problem, but literally EVERY news org is guilty of this: CNN, Fox, Mother Jones, OAG, Slate, Breitbart, NPR, you name it.
Journalism as an industry is fucked, how do you plan to change that?
I hope you are successful, I really do. But I honestly think you are setting yourself up for a bad time.
If this isn't going to be a money maker, you'll have to do it in addition to your primary method of putting food on the table. For your hard work, you will be branded a racist, shadow banned from google searches, and anyone who works with you will be blacklisted in the job market.
Why? Because you won't preach the dogma and signal boost the outrage that the rest of them are profiting off of. They can't have someone deescalating their primary money printing narratives, its bad for business.
Best case scenario: your site falls into obscurity. Worst case scenario: you get popular, then subsequently found in your apartment by commiting suicide via 10 9mms to the back.
I am well aware of the pitfalls ahead, but I am in a special situation that affords me immunity from the things you have outlined. I won't go into much detail, but I feel that I am one of the few people who can successfully navigate this due to my experience in the legal world, and my unique funding situation.
Time shall tell. Sign up to the forums and post something interesting.
God speed my friend. I have no useful skills in that dept.
My nibba.
I hope the mods allow this, if not that's fine, just remove.
I wont be using my old username for obvious reasons, but I have laid the foundation for a news site that can withstand the current state of absolute shit that the world finds itself in today. I have dedicated hardware running in a datacenter behind CloudFlare, but will be moving to Epik's CND after chatting a bit with Rob.
I know that I can't write, I'm better at the backend stuff, but there are a few articles I am releasing over the next few weeks (I wont spam them here), which is why I am dropping in on a couple of spots I frequent looking for people with functional spines and something to say.
Have a look around, we have a forum ready to go (same board IGN uses, without the macho man abbey savage porn) if anyone is interested in trying to recreate a 2003 era SomethingAwful, or a pre-null-meltdown Kiwi Farms. Ya know, intelligent long-form discussions.
I've put thousands into this project, and I don't intend to stop, join if you like, we might be able to do some good.
I'll shoot you a message for sure, thanks.
Are you familiar with EVE Online, and particularly, Goonswarm?
I ask because they offer a good way about going about this.
EVE Online as a game is famous for its meta. More precisely, the meta is the only redeeming quality of the game, period. And Goonswarm plays the meta very well.
For a long time the "news" of eve was EVE Tribune, which did long form exposition. They were replaced by EVE News 24 which was more of the CNN Headline News. But they went partisan, and were eventually competed with Imperium.news, which is basically the Fox News of EVE.
I know a bit about Imperium.news because I was briefly involved in its immediate predecessor, TheMittani. They use discord and have a large stable of infrequent long form writers, and a smaller pool of regulars.
They do pay a bit for stories (I believe in PLEX, an EVE playtime coin), but mostly the biggest perk of contributing is being part of the newsroom discord, which is very social.
I hate to admit this, but I'm actually IN Goonswarm...
Not sure why the downvotes (probably because it's a bit hard to decipher your advice), but I do understand your points, and I'll look to them for direction.
Thanks man!
I assume there's some salty TEST guys here.
Not to be a dick, but your solution is a Wordpress blog?
How is any of this in any way durable to deplatforming?
Serious question.
I own the hardware, I own the software, only I know where the server sits.
Once moved to Epik (like bitchute), it will take a court order to remove content, which I will fight in person till the bitter end.
Okay, so you built the server and are colocating it somewhere? Do you own the connection and bandwidth yourself? There's a point of failure.
Then you might want to disable XML-RPC (or just pingbacks) in WordPress so that you stop leaking your hardware IP. I'd probably audit the other plugins and/or themes you're using (since you apparently "own" them, wtfever that means) so they don't leak as well. CloudFlare is nice, but it's not magic.
See the above.
lol it's not the DMCA that is going to deplatform you. It's going to be ISP related, or payment related. Ask NewProject2.
I've banned access to xmlrpc.php from the outside altogether. Can you verify?
You don't have to be a dick to make me hear you.
Verified.
Sorry, I see talk about this kind of thing all the time, but it's usually just smoke blown.
I'm more interested in figuring out how to properly address the payment issue, but if you want any engineering help, hit me up.
Explain a bit about the payment issue you forsee. I am self funding this and have the means to privately fund it for years to come without needing external income. Outside of that, BTC can be used for lightweight payment processor bypass, but it shouldn't be necessary anyway.
The real issue, like you mentioned, is the bandwidth/colo issue. Let me assure you, that I did not go and rent some colo space online and pop a desktop on a shelf on it's side. I have enterprise hardware buried away somewhere, and while you have shown how fragile the charade can be, I'm confident that with a combination of tunnels, I can truely hide the hardware by the time it becomes necessary.
Outside of that, I hope to be able to build a community that is strong enough to move past the concept of needing a centralized website if all else fails. I'm prepared to move off-internet if need be.
It's not necessarily an issue with your system. You seem to be more about articles and forum posts.
I've been toying with how to build an open source, decentralized replacement for social media and publishing platforms like YouTube, Patreon, etc.
The problem with crypto is normies are never going to deal with wallet keys and exchanges, especially with the way the SEC is trying to make sure they get their slice, and don't get me started on Libra.
From the little bit of the research I've done, to even build our own payment processor (not even the engineering side, I'd build it piece by piece if I had to) we'd need an undersigning bank.
Back to your project, if you would like me to run an a full audit (instead of the ten minutes I played around) and help you fix it, let me know. I've hardened WordPress blogs before, especially if you haven't moved to BitMitigate yet.
If you want to know the truth, I just don't believe that "Social Media" can be saved long-term.
Using reddit as an example, a new user can fire up their own completely hidden subreddit, invite a bunch of users to it, and start serving up CP, all before anyone can notice it's even happening. These types of services are just prone to festering, plain and simple. Forums and traditional websites are WYSIWYG, no easy way to hide that CP (I specifically use lossy compression of all images after upload to try and stamp out data hidden in image files). I am certainly open to more discussion though. (Come register and lets chat?)
As for the PP side, you would need to stand up your own bank to truely do what you want, which isn't actually hard to do, I know a few folks in the biz and it's honestly just a capitol issue. You'll need around $15mm to start, but after that you just rent a FISERV box and your off to the races. Sadly, this isn't something that is easy enough to fix for me to focus on at the moment.
Send me a PM with your thoughts on an audit. I have very functional knowledge of pen testing concepts, but don't have the knowledge to execute in a meaningful way.
Thanks for all the words.
What about starting a credit union? These are technically banks no? They issue their own bank cards, can do loans, borrow overnight money from the fed, have their own swift routing number etc.
If small immigrant communities less than 100k population, can open their ethnically themed credit union, why can't the pedes do the same?
He's got a bit of a point, though. They don't need to take your server down if they can pressure your ISP - or your ISP's ISP - to pull the plug, or if they can close down however it's funded.
Check my replies above and feel free to add your take.
Counterpoint, what is a newspaper other than a collection of blogs?
Very interested in more info on this. What are you looking for? Content? What general types? Factual news? Editorials/opinions?
I'm looking for people with something to say, but don't want to waste days writing and editing their article just to have it removed or delisted from the news site the minute someone complains (if it would even be posted at all).
I'm thinking News, Politics, Technology, Hobbies/Trades, Sporting, and Culture are good catagories to start off with.
Thoughts?
Serious question;
Why do you want to run a news site?
I don't really, but no one else seems to be able to.
That doesn't sound like a great reason, tbh.
I'm reminded of a quote from Jim Cornette (which I will now completely butcher from memory);
"How do you become a millionaire by starting a wrestling promotion? Begin as a billionaire."
I'll prove you wrong. ;)
I am curious as to how you plan to make a profitable news site that isn't shit.
News isn't profitable without outrage, and outrage is much easier to manufacture through lies by omission and selective reporting than it is to grow organically. SoJus and cancel culture are very prominent symptoms of this problem, but literally EVERY news org is guilty of this: CNN, Fox, Mother Jones, OAG, Slate, Breitbart, NPR, you name it.
Journalism as an industry is fucked, how do you plan to change that?
By not needing to be profitable.
No advertisers, no deplatform.
I hope you are successful, I really do. But I honestly think you are setting yourself up for a bad time.
If this isn't going to be a money maker, you'll have to do it in addition to your primary method of putting food on the table. For your hard work, you will be branded a racist, shadow banned from google searches, and anyone who works with you will be blacklisted in the job market.
Why? Because you won't preach the dogma and signal boost the outrage that the rest of them are profiting off of. They can't have someone deescalating their primary money printing narratives, its bad for business.
Best case scenario: your site falls into obscurity. Worst case scenario: you get popular, then subsequently found in your apartment by commiting suicide via 10 9mms to the back.
I hope I'm wrong
I get your concerns man, I really do.
I am well aware of the pitfalls ahead, but I am in a special situation that affords me immunity from the things you have outlined. I won't go into much detail, but I feel that I am one of the few people who can successfully navigate this due to my experience in the legal world, and my unique funding situation.
Time shall tell. Sign up to the forums and post something interesting.