Choosing hosting and DNS outside US and EU jurisdictions, hedging against repression
It appears obvious by now that freedom of the press and freedom of speech is under attack in the EU and the US both.
In the EU, critics of Israels genocide in Gaza are being met with sanctions, closing bank accounts and imposing extra-legal status of civil death, under the odd pretext of this criticism of Israel is weakening the EU's war efforts in Ukraine. Blatant repression of political expression.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/weaponizing-civil-death-to-crush
In the US, well we got Orange Man and with Microsoft willing to close the accounts of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, account and data safety is beholden to state and corporate interests:
https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3
These developments have me considering a contingency plan for my email and webhosting needs. I was wondering what would be the least fragile, long-term choice of DNS and hosting outside EU and US. For a website with political content critical of the EU-US, Russia would be an obvious hedge against political repression. Any recommendations/experiences for providers in Russia? Other locations to consider?
Recent website closures appear to have been targeting DNS resolvers, to make website unavailable. How to protect against this?
The one semi-viable option I know of - that would still be beholden to EU sanctions, I think - is 1984.is based in Iceland. They have a history of fighting spurious take-down claims. https://litigation.1984.hosting
It might sound like I'm some sort of hosting wizard. I'm not. Please consider this if giving a technical response. Thanks for any input and thoughts.
I uhh. What. I need you to explain this to me about the country notorious for politically repressing people. No I know I removed the context, but I feel that doesn't matter as much. Once you're against the party line, regardless of your target, you may run into that repression.
That aside, I want to just simply ask you not to invest in a country actively waging an imperialist war as the invader. I can't stop you from doing so, which is why this is an open request.
...Sadly, I can see the logic. Russia represses its people, but their track record suggests they'd be totally on-board with anything critical of the US and/or EU. Russia spends a lot of money and resources instigating trolls, they'd probably love free legitimate criticism.
Still don't agree with using it for obvious reasons, but I get why it's the first option to come to mind.
It's the old joke:
You'd be remiss to stop the logic train there. Early in the conflict, simply calling it a war meant a knock on the door. Political repression in Russia goes beyond your intended target, it's about toeing the party line. If you're not willing to do that, you are going to run into the Russian political repression system.
I don't know where OP is from, though I presume the US or EU, but sanctions will likely prohibit them from doing business there anyway. But that's an assumption I left out of my earlier post because I obviously can't verify that.
Edit to add: there are also a lot more reasons besides not to invest in Russian hosting if "least fragile" is your concern. You're genuinely better off hosting in Ukraine for a more robust and redundant system.*
*The royal you of course.
Never said it was a good option, just that I could see the logic behind even considering it in the first place. Russia's whole thing is trying to sow discord by planting critique of the US and EU. It still wouldn't occur to me as an option though. (Personally, I'd be looking into countries used by pirating sites, at least as a starting point.)
Especially since part of the point against the EU is that they're claiming critique of Israel "is weakening the EU's war efforts in Ukraine". So at least some commentary would likely talk about the Ukraine war and thus Russia's role in it, which would be more likely to trigger Russian repression.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with my question. I'm curious about where you draw the line and for which reasons. Would it in your estimation be unethical to place orders also with US businesses?
Personally, I don't find many great options these days, if you are willingly to take an honest look at what empires and nation-state actors are perpetrating these days: EU-US backing Israels genocide in Gaza, (used to be) US-backed proxy war in Ukraine, the absence of political rights in China, the abhorrent Russian regime, and so on...
Also, when doing admin on small sites, I block everything I can from Russia. [In my experience], it's been the biggest source of spam and bad actors, with virtually no real users.
I really wouldn't recommend using Russia as a hedge against political repression. It really seems to me like you just have a proximity bias which makes you think EU/US sanctions are way more serious than they are and Russian ones are way less serious than they are.
Also, any country can just block any website in their country. If you somehow host an anti-US website that the US federal government decides to censor, they can just block it in the US, no matter where it's hosted.
Another US-based option which you can consider is https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
That being said though...
https://timeweb.cloud has all kinds of cloud services and DNS. Theyre probably the best Russian provider for small-scale hosting.Alright. Here's the actual EU sanctions citation on Dogru. It's not for criticizing genocide. It's for (allegedly) being deeply linked to Russian state-owned propaganda.
It may well be that there's a legitimate argument against sanctioning a journalist who happens to be backed by Russian state media, but it's important to discuss the full context of why Dogru is being sanctioned by the EU.
You are right, I did to a degree conflate the two in my description of the situation.
The European country in which I reside has had a lot of well-known athletes hosting shows on Russia Today (RT). I have yet to hear of any of them being sanctioned. So it can't be the economic connection alone.
I don't think someone having worked with Russian state media a long time ago is sufficient grounds for sanctioning them. In light of this I find the by now common EU propaganda the streets proclaiming 'free speech' and 'freedom of the press' pathetic.
From the quoted transcript you might also note the loaded language "anti-Israel rioters", leaving out context and the violence perpetrated by Israel, the repression by the German police of pro-Palestine protests.
I’m not sure specifically for DNS/hosting. I don’t see your concern, though. As long as you maintain backups of your website data and records, you can switch hosts and registrars even if your provider stops serving you. If you get blocked at the registry level, it doesn’t really matter who your provider is.
The real robustness for political action is a strong network of trusted people who are willing to publish and share your content through multiple different established platforms like Youtube, TikTok, the press, etc. Then, if you are ever actively censored, that network can help you / platform you. Wholly independent actors rarely create that much change, and so probably won’t be targeted by state censorship.
Key insight, thanks.