TWG is exploring server hosting alternatives
Dan Phiffer
Public
Seen by 226
Hello all,
I've just sent this email to our server hosting provider, Hetzner, on behalf of the Tech Working Group. I'm posting it here as well for visibility within the coop and to get the word out that we're exploring server hosting alternatives.
Dear Hetzner team,
I’m writing as a representative of social.coop, a cooperatively operated Mastodon instance and a customer of Hetzner server hosting. We were dismayed to read about the deplatforming of your former customer tenforward.social. The same targeted abuse report could also be used to take our servers offline.
We ask that you reconsider your Terms and Conditions, section 8.2:
“The Customer is obligated not to publish any content that infringes on the rights of third parties or otherwise violates applicable law. This includes in particular, but is not limited to, pornographic or obscene material, extremist content or content that offends common decency, gambling, material that could seriously endanger the morals of children or young people or violate the rights of third parties (copyrights, name rights, trademark rights and data protection rights). This also includes the publication of defamatory content, insults or disparagement of persons or groups of persons.”
The difference between Hetzner policy and our own Code of Conduct creates a risk to our ability to run a Mastodon instance and as a result we may be forced to do business elsewhere. We would prefer to avoid a server migration, but such a pervasive threat to our stability may require it. We hope you can reconsider, and clarify publicly, your position with respect to the kinds of content you will consider grounds for termination in general, and particularly in the case of groups like ours which are trying to provide ethical social media services to a community.
Thank you,
Dan Phiffer
Social.coop
Member of Tech Working Group and Community Working Group ops teams
When I was discussing this letter with the Community Working Group ops team, we agreed that the letter would have more impact as a collective action. We'd welcome other instance admins jointly publishing a more public version of this (e.g., mastodon.social is also hosted on Hetzner), so sharing this on the fediverse is welcome.
Maybe you have thoughts on hosting providers, we'd welcome your input! You can reach TWG via [email protected] or on Matrix.
Lynn Foster Fri 1 Nov 2024 11:38AM
At the risk of putting more work on the TWG, I like a lot looking first at cooperative hosting, P6* and all that. So I support @Graham 's comment in general.
A quick look at Webarchitects' website looks promising in terms of their history and ethics, and they have been around for a while. I'm not qualified to judge technically in terms of capacity, resiliency, etc., and am happy to have TWG make the decision based on all criteria they think most important.
* P6 (Principle 6): Cooperation Among Cooperatives: Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local, national, regional, and international structures.
Dan Phiffer Sat 2 Nov 2024 12:33AM
Thanks for this input! I agree about favoring a cooperative hosting provider, in accordance with Principle 6. I've been in touch with Webarchitects and got a quote and while it wasn't as competitive as some other cooperative providers, they did say they were open to offering us a discount.
I still need to incorporate some of the providers mentioned in this thread, but here's where I've been putting my research findings: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h_gEnVagTZJi0WYWZE9oOKVYIM2WIGnpDHAolDItBz4/edit
Eduardo Mercovich Wed 6 Nov 2024 7:59PM
+1 to cooperative infrastructure. The more, the merrier.
And sorry for all the trouble that this is going to cost you all in the TWG.
Thank you all very much. :)
Billy Smith Fri 8 Nov 2024 7:00AM
Another hosting co-operative to look at is Webarchitects:
https://www.webarchitects.coop/
Like Autonomic, they are members of CoTech. :D
Billy Smith Sun 17 Nov 2024 2:12PM
I slap my forehead thrice.
Just realised that someone else had already posted about WebArchitects. :facepalm:
Danyl Strype · Sat 14 Dec 2024 4:27AM
@Ammar Great, thanks. I totally welcome anyone to pick my brains about this kind of stuff. As I just said to Jackie on SubSt, your best best is to hit me up via the fediverse (@[email protected]) or Matrix (@strypey:matrix.iridescent.nz) for more of a back-and-forth chat, or email ([email protected]) for more in-depth conversations.