# Self-hosting together
(a-reader-in-the-making)
__PUBLISH__
# Vocabulary/ies
* digital autonomy
* digital interdependencies
* digital resilience
* affective infrastructures
* affective technological realities
* federated networks
* and-and-networks
* interdependent networks
* transitional infrastructures
* digital entanglements
* digital selves-organisation
* digital so-and-sovereignty
*Dear Reader, here are some trans*feminist reworkings of vocabularies and imaginaries linked to 'sovereignity', 'freedom', 'independence' and 'autonomy'.* <https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/interdependencies>
--> Mirror at <https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/interdependencies>
# Hosting Practices
## Self-hosting
Self-hosting as an individual thing to do.
*FreedomBox is designed to be your own inexpensive server at home.*
* <https://freedombox.org/>
## Homebrewing
*Unlike many in the self-hosting movement, the homebrewserver.club takes the ‘home’ in homebrew literally and the ‘self’ in self-hosting figuratively.* - <
https://homebrewserver.club>
* <https://homebrewserver.club> (Rotterdam & online)
* <https://freedombone.net/>
## Artist-run servers
The following links are mainly based on this presentation by Dusan Barok called "Artist-run Servers and Community Work": <http://display.cz/en/events/de-platformization-ethics-and-alternative-social-media> (25-09-2020). The outline of this talk:
> The story of artist-run servers stretches back to the 1990s to communities such as Xs4all in Amsterdam, kein.org in Berlin or servus.at in Linz. These and many other groups found themselves expanding the idea of the personal computer to a community resource. These resources provided simple services such as e-mail clients, mailing lists, website hosting, shell access and audiovisual streaming for their milieus, supporting free expression and experimental approaches. Countering the stereotype of self-contained nerd culture, they were very much localised and embedded in various cultural scenes, often operating out of artist-run spaces. The impetus behind was not only to counter the environment controlled by commercial providers but perhaps more importantly community awareness and the need to maintain shared social spaces. Twenty years later, the centralisation of the internet has brought new dimensions to their continuing relevance. They provide means for building an autonomous infrastructure operating the nodes of distributed and libre networks (https://libreho.st/, self-hosting, etc.). They also provide safer spaces, regulated by communities themselves. They are however often taken for granted and rarely feature in discussions about alternative internet. In this presentation I will briefly discuss their genealogies, varieties and dilemmas.
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<https://monoskop.org/Art_servers>
### Servers/organisations
* <http://www.netbase.org/t0/intro> (Netbase [Austria, Vienna])
** "a net culture institution and early internet provider, established in 1994", <http://www.netbase.org/t0/info/01/1075474394/?lang=en>
** <https://monoskop.org/Public_Netbase/t0>
* <https://t0.or.at> (Institute for New Culture Technologies [Austria, Vienna])
** now: <https://world-information.net/de/>
** project: <http://future-nonstop.org/>
* <https://core.servus.at/de/toolbox/servus-toolbox> (Servus [Austria, Linz])
** main site: <https://servus.at>
** festival: <https://www.radical-openness.org/en> (AMRO)
* <https://bak.spc.org/> (Backspace [UK, London])
** about: <https://bak.spc.org/bakspc.html>
** nice: <https://bak.spc.org/homepages/index.cgi> (!)
** more: <https://monoskop.org/Backspace>
** conference/net.radio event: Art Servers Unlimited <http://asu.sil.at/>
*** <http://web.archive.org/web/19981202183653/http://asu.sil.at/>
*** <https://monoskop.org/Art_Servers_Unlimited>
*** <https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/to-serve-your-culture-art-servers-unlimited-ica>
* <http://kein.org> (Kein.org [Germany, Berlin])
** "KEIN.ORG is a strictly non-commercial project that offers free webhosting to artists and activists."
** http://web.archive.org/web/20150801220017/http://kein.org/
** http://web.archive.org/web/20150512060757/http://www.kein.org/manifesto
* <https://mur.at/> (Mur.at [Austria, Graz])
* <http://lo-res.org/> (Lo-RES)
** "Historical note: 1999 the page looked like this:
during the last weeks of april 1998 lo-res.org was started on the initiative of x and rost.
the following days were characterized by bashing together working machines out of leftover computer parts.
some time in may 1998 lo-res.org went online providing all services for itself.
since then we have survived the loss of a complete system due to more than one HD crash because of overheating;
a power supply because of the rather creative approach of our Kunstwerk neighbours to electricity and the loss of a mainboard to unknown forces.
yet we have managed to keep our downtime to a minimum for no other reason than the fun of it all.
since then we have managed to even serve some content here and to - slowly - expand our system.
If we can survive the Y2K bug count on us to be there in the future.
<br><br>
Hihih... the Y2K bug! I am not so sure if so much changed ... HDs still crashed but well, what the heck we are ok... :) "
### Servers/Festivals/Events
* <https://multiplace.org/wiki/server.html> (Sanchez [= name of the server], Multiplace)
** <https://multiplace.org>, annual festival of media art and network culture, held since 2002 in multiple locations
** <https://monoskop.org/Multiplace>
## Feminist servers
Mixing feminist and queer studies, with thinking about network technologies.
Where hosting becomes an activist practice.
*The need for feminist servers is a response to: the unethical practices of multinational ICT companies acting as moral and hypocrite censors; gender based online violence in the form of trolling and hateful machoists harassing feminist or women activists online and offline; the centralization of the internet and its transformation into a consumption sanctuary and a space of surveillance, control and tracking of dissent voices by government agencies among others.* - <https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Servers:_From_autonomous_servers_to_feminist_servers>
Feminist Server Manifesto
* <https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/feministserver> (Published by Constant in 2014, Brussels)
* <https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/Summit_afterlife.xhtml>
* <https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/Summit.xhtml>
* <https://anarchaserver.org/> (Calafou & more)
* <https://systerserver.net/> (Calafou & more)
** they also have a Mastodon instance <https://systerserver.town/about>
* <https://kefir.red/> (Mexico)
* <https://vedetas.org/> (Brazil)
* <https://www.diebin.at/> (Austria)
### Techno Feminist Groups
* <https://calafou.org/en/content/about> (Calafou)
* <https://pechblenda.hotglue.me/?transhackfeminism_en> (Calafou?)
* <http://samedi.collectifs.net/> (Brussels)
* <https://lereset.org/en.html> (Paris)
* <https://marialab.org/> (Brazil)
## Hosting initiatives
Another type of initiatives, mostly rooted in free software communities.
(Small) (local) service providers, hosting a digital infrastructure for others.
* <https://framasoft.org/en/> (Lyon, France)
* <https://www.autistici.org/> (Italy)
* <http://allmende.io/> (Germany)
* <https://disroot.org/> (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
* <https://core.servus.at/> (Linz, Austria)
* <https://riseup.net> (Seattle, US)
* <https://snopyta.org/> (Germany, Finland)
Networks of libre hosters.
* <https://chatons.org/> (France)
* <https://libreho.st/> (non-French speaking countries)
## Full package providers
Thinking about hosting on a bigger scale, ready to scale up.
Service providers.
* <https://librem.one/> (US, hardware + Libre* services)
** "A growing bundle of ethical services"
## Fediverse
Mastodon is a project that has been attracted a lot of renewed enthusiasm and energy around 2016 is the Fediverse.
In the context of US elections, gamergate, online harassment, queer groups looking for safe spaces.
But at the same time, departing from projects that already existed for a long time (GNUSocial, Friendica, Diaspora).
To develop forms of social media that federate with each other. (Like email, and the earlier mentioned XMPP chat protocol.)
This means that you can enter the Fediverse through one of the projects.
* <http://joinpeertube.org/>
* <https://join.funkwhale.audio/>
* <https://pixelfed.social/>
* <https://joinmastodon.org/>
A federated network, different projects & different servers exchanging with eachother.
<https://post.lurk.org/api/v1/instance/peers>
Features that are introduced through Mastodon:
* option to de-federate specific servers
* no full text search
* less focus on counts of favs and boosts
* option to set publishing reach
* content warnings
* custom emojies per instance
## Federation & webpages
* <https://indienet.info/hallo.gent/> collaboration between Indienet (Aral Balkan) and the city of Gent (BE). The idea is to provide every citizen with a personal webpage, hosted by the city (?), built with the Indie Site software, which makes the webpage speak AP.
# Links
* <https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/elephant> "Elephant in a Room" by Constant
* <https://varia.zone/en/there-is-an-elephant-in-the-room.html> "There is an Elephant in the Room" workshop during the Autonomous Fabric symposium in April 2019, hosted by Varia
* <https://riseup.net/en/security/resources/radical-servers> longer list of radical server hosting
* <https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Servers:_From_autonomous_servers_to_feminist_servers> ANOTHER LIST
* <https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/> Projects and discussions in Brussels (2013)
* <http://www.autonomedia.org/> *Autonomedia is an autonomous zone for arts radicals in both old and new media*
* <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-guerra-feminism-00> Feminism and protocols
* <https://www.giswatch.org/en/internet-rights/feminist-autonomous-infrastructures> *Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) is a collaborative community committed to building an open, inclusive and sustainable information society*
* <http://anarchaserver.org/mediawiki/index.php/BAFIF_Meeting_in_Valencia> *BAFIF Meeting*
* <http://anarchaserver.org/mediawiki/images/a/a2/Servidoras-feministas.pdf> *Servidoras Feministas*
## Books
* Technological Sovereignty, Vol. 2: <http://hacklabbo.indivia.net/book/sobtec2/en/>
## Exercises
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We take 15 minutes observing time, to explore different Mastodon servers.
1. Go to <https://joinmastodon.org/> and scroll down to sign up section
2. Choose a Mastodon server and register an account.<sup>◑</sup>
3. Explore this server. Who is there? What are the topics discussed? Is there a code of conduct, and if so, what does it state?<sup>◩</sup>
◑ If you don't manage/want to register an account, you can browse through the server by visiting URL/about or URL/public (if they updated to the latest version of the software), for example: <https://social.coop/about> or <https://mastodon.social/public>
◩ You can find a code of conduct most often at URL/about/more, for example: <https://mastodon.social/about/more>
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