A Year Since the Big Switch - Part IV - Intimidation Against the Host/ISP, Which Offered Help Relocating to a Safer Haven
Robust hosting helps sites prevail for decades, not years
SINCE nearly 3 years ago we've been aware that the site's host had been receiving threats. Those included all sorts of cheesy legal threats, no matter how baseless. The intention was to intimidate, to scare, to chill. In 2022 we began working on an SSG (revisit Part I) and discussed ways to tackle censorship attempts (see Part II; it actually goes back to 2021). In 2023 it came to the point where people were committing actual crimes against us and then pretended they were somehow the victims (see Part III) because they saw no other way to slow us down, get under our skin, and hasten our process of migrating to the new SSG (already well underway at the time). In September 2023, i.e. a year ago, we finally made the leap, albeit prematurely.
"Rianne and I sent messages by email," I said to the host, but "we're [we are] suffering COVID-19" (that day). So the migration happened a little later than that (I almost fully recovered from COVID-19 within 1 or 1.5 days; Rianne had already shown mild symptoms earlier in the week and was barely affected; she thought it was just a flu or cold as COVID-19 tests came out negative at the time). Rianne's site was back online about a day later at the new host and Techrights was a bigger project to migrate (it's far more complex as site, plus it has Git, IRC, Gemini and so on).
At the time, threats were made to the prior host (and had been made for a while). I told her "we'll move [the] images to other hosting to reduce the strain on you" and it happened less than a day later. I expressed gratitude and said "we are grateful for what you have done" (about 5 years of hosting, virtually for no money or at no cost other than voluntary donations). Looking back, it's somewhat understandable because if you give someone free hosting and then receive all sorts of abusive messages, then it's just simply unfair. She said she was "unwilling to tolerate any entanglement in this legal situation." (Remember we belatedly filed lawsuits 3 weeks ago [1, 2]; those were well overdue, not cheap, but necessary)
We generally agreed that we'd move the images to the new host, but I wa feeling unwell due to COVID-19 that day, so I said I "will go back to bed now to recover" (I came back many hours later; during the infection I was sleeping like a bear in wintertime, sometimes like 9 hours a day or more).
As a side note, the main impact the first COVID-19 had on me was, it made me sleep a lot. It also caused discomfort, but I could carry on working.
About a day later she said she "can bring up the VM in a rescue environment, such as Finnix, which will allow the recovery of the data." That would allow initiating the transfer of the data from old CentOS to new Debian images in a place more robust to threats, blackmail etc. (with a dedicated legal team that can assess the merits of any random threat made).
To the credit of the new hosts, they are very difficult to intimidate. Some tried and always failed. But that's another story. As noted in prior parts, attempts to censor this site are as old as the site itself and efforts to censor me or take me offline - as without being online I cannot say/write anything - are older than this site (it started about 20 years ago).
I sort of got used to it and adapted. Lessons learned along the way.
The prior host told me that the persistent threat - however baseless (it was based on falsehoods) - "represents too large of a risk to our operations to continue sponsorship of techrights."
So we moved. Not the best timing, but I was already recovering within a day or so (COVID-19 was becoming a thing of the past). She said, "please let me know when you have time to retrieve your data, and I will facilitate limited access to do so." (Access over SSH etc. for migration)
Hours later: "SSH access (and only SSH access) has been restored" (as requested).
So the following day we already passed everything to Debian, then started using the SSG we had built since 2022. It actually happened faster than we envisioned and there were no obstacles, except for some IRC niggles. As we're not really ircd gurus (unlike the prior host, who had done this for decades) we needed not any technical pointers but network-related assistance, which she was happy to provide. It only took minutes to sort out* and shortly after that our IRC network was back online. Everyone (the community) came back to the channels and things were back to normal. This time it was hosted by a company that wouldn't facilitate/entertain abusers and criminals demanding ridiculous actions. Over a year has passed and we've had no issues; none anymore. Now we're seeking justice for the abuses and crimes we've been subjected to for years. The truth will come out eventually. The truth always comes out and truth tends to prevail. █
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* For full transparency (with more sensitive parts redacted tactfully and names omitted):
<schestowitz> trying to connect from the ergodb containers outwards over ssh seems to result in dns-related timeout. was some related service put down?
<st> DNS should be functional
<schestowitz> it says ssh: Could not resolve hostname techrights.org: Try again
<st> weird
<schestowitz> i set up an alpine instance and wanted to pass on the settings to it
<schestowitz> even typing ip addresses, not domain names, results in timeout when connecting outwards. I'm sure it worked before because I used to back up the settings that way.
<st> what ip addresses are these
<schestowitz> [redacted]
<st> and the other?
<st> like what is the ip of the VM you connect from?
<schestowitz> i try from ergo/ircd
<st> ok give me a sec
<schestowitz> thanks a lot!
<st> try now
<schestowitz> excellent!