Some weird, German communist, hello. He/him pronouns and all that. Obsessed with philosophy and history, secondarily obsessed with video games as a cultural medium. Also somewhat able to program.
Yeah, I personally wouldn’t choose them, but I think they do fill a niche for non-techie users, who will gladly pay a (sometimes hefty) premium for having less hassle on the setup and maintenance sides, when compared to getting A VPS or dedicated server somewhere (or setting smth up at home).
Their videos are also usually pretty informative, including e.g. the one about managing mastodon storage - since it’s topical here.
im sorry that i sound like trolling i hoped that it doesnt sound like that
The dilemma is: it’s impossible to tell from the outside, which is why I try to give advice while not indulging potential troll interests (e.g. spreading the post and forum as much as possible, creating concern). If you truly are in that situation, I don’t envy you, because of course part of those trolls’ interest is also to make things as hard as possible for people that really are caught up in it.
So, sadly, I don’t have any personal experience concerning giving tips to journalists. Looking up “giving anonymous tips to journalists” on DuckDuckGo gives a few potential links, though most are directed at whistleblowers in administration and corporations:
https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/sharing-sensitive-leaks-press/ - this is a guide that seems to go through things to consider pretty well. If you do your own search, you will find links to specific outlets as well, for example Reuters here and the NYT here. If you have reason to believe, that the US altogether is not a good idea, European outlets are also always able to understand English material, of course.
Again, I have my doubts, and sadly there is little to remove them, and I wouldn’t want you to doxx yourself. If you really are in that situation, just know that the downvotes and potential removal are not an indication of judgement of you, personally.
If you want to ask about something like this in the future, best try to hide anything sensitive behind spoiler tags or content warnings where available and not post links to the forum in any way openly - reduct the onion link itself for example, and only keep it available to people you trust to not spread it in malicious ways. And only show the topic list behind a disclaimer, of how this can be disturbing to read - those warnings aren’t there for censorship, but to protect victims/survivors of abuse, which is precisely, why it is a troll tactic to try and spread them without such warnings/disclaimers.
Sadly, it is hard to say if you are serious, or if this post is made by a troll, who wants to spread disturbing material for the sake of hurting people. The latter assumption is also the most likely explanation, why it was removed. Again, if you are serious, this is a catch-22, but do not spread this impulsively, this also goes to anyone reading this wanting to share it randomly out of concern. Firstly, you will have to add Content Warnings, the video you linked and topics discussed alone are enough to cause serious PTSD triggers. This, again, would be another factor why it gets removed (and why a troll wants to spread it).
Again: I am going to treat this like in good faith, even though I am aware that a troll wanting to perversely spread the fucked up shit happening to revel in the power and untouchability is sadly the more likely option. The “billionaire friends” are, for example, a bit sus in how the sentence goes.
In theory: Depending on where you live, the police and such would be the first to go to. If you have reason to assume that this will put you in danger, even an anonymous tip to journalists can help (including the material you posted here, but not in a semi-public forum, where it will reasonably be seen as trolling). I am sadly, no expert on who exactly to contact, but neither you, nor random internet people, should be the people handling this. That is what investigative Journalism flanked by therapists to help them go through shit like that is for.
Speaking of therapists, that would be another first line of people to talk to.
Sadly, speaking from my own experience from watching journalists in Germany investigating forums like that - the police often just let them stay up, partly out of incompetence, partly out of wanting the next success in catching people, instead of preventing forums to exist to begin with.
Now, again, I am here assuming you are serious and in good faith here, maybe against my better judgement, but to the other people coming across this post: Don’t get concerned into spreading this post simply “as is” impulsively. Chances are still higher, this is a troll getting somewhat off from spreading disturbing material.
I can’t be certain in this case, but the usual suspects are not being connected to as many servers (e.g. not scraping some because of robots.txt settings), delays in scraping the stats, or excluding some servers consciously because their stats are deemed a bit suspicious.
The one shown is from join-lemmy:
https://join-lemmy.org/instances
Also of interest for people that love statistics (which I do):
https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
EDIT: As you can see, the Fediverse being what it is, it’s basically impossible to get an exact, definitive count, so the numbers will always be a bit fuzzy. But they clearly show trends
The problem isn’t that the fediverse isn’t viable. The problem isn’t that it’s “too complicated.” The problem is that the giants of Silicon Valley have spent 20 years convincing us that anything outside their control isn’t worth our time.
And that’s just not bloody true.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Ah, that makes the context more understandable. Also, good job on providing that service, I think it’s actually great to have that in the ecosystem.
Actually, wow, yeah, having a quick look at your site, that is a very good and competitive offer for these prices and services provided, all things considered.