Loomio
Wed 30 Oct 2024 6:05PM

TWG is exploring server hosting alternatives

DP Dan Phiffer Public Seen by 223

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.

SK

Stéphane Klein Thu 31 Oct 2024 11:53AM

Hi @dphiffer , thank you for your initiative and your very clear message.

Maybe you have thoughts on hosting providers, we'd welcome your input!

As far as I'm concerned, I have a positive experience with the French cloud provider Scaleway (ex Dedibox).

I've been a customer since 2006. I even worked for Scaleway for a while in 2018. I still have a few contacts there.

Scaleway's prices are very close to those of Hetzner.

I see one limitation of Scaleway compared to Hetzner: Scaleway servers can only be located in Paris, Amsterdam or Warsaw.

I see that the server hosting social.coop is currently located in Helsinki.

dig social.coop +short
65.109.113.162
$ curl -s ipinfo.io/65.109.113.162 | jq
{
  “ip": ‘65.109.113.162’,
  “hostname": ‘static.162.113.109.65.clients.your-server.de’,
  “city": ‘Helsinki’,
  “region": ‘Uusimaa’,
  “country": ‘FI’,
  “loc": ‘60.1695,24.9354’,
  “org": ‘AS24940 Hetzner Online GmbH’,
  “postal": ‘00100’,
  “timezone": ‘Europe/Helsinki’,
  “readme": ”https://ipinfo.io/missingauth”
}

As the server is already hosted in Europe, I don't think there would be any change in network latency to move it to Paris, Amsterdam or Warsaw.

Alternatively, there's the OVH option, which also offers servers at competitive prices.

Don't hesitate to contact me if needed, I'll do what I can to help.

Have a nice day,
Stéphane

DP

Dan Phiffer Thu 31 Oct 2024 1:50PM

@Stéphane Klein thanks for these suggestions! I'll take a look...

DP

Dan Phiffer Thu 31 Oct 2024 1:50PM

We got a reply on our support ticket:

Dear Client,

According to 8.2. of our terms and conditions, pornographic or obscene material, content that offends common decency, as well as material that is likely to endanger children or young people morally are not allowed.

Pornographic content is basically understood to be the depiction of sexual acts which, on the one hand, depict a real sex-related event or, on the other hand, also include the depiction of a fictitious event. This includes all materials, not only videos.

We therefore accept e.g. stores for sex toys, as long as these pages are tastefully designed, but e.g. no hentai pages and no "sex-dating"-sites that allow explicit pictures and/or texts. Of course, the customer must always pay attention to the protection of minors.

As our ToS are clearly formulated in this respect, we see no need to amend or adapt them or to make a public clarification in this regard.

Kind regards
Michael Mattlener
Corporate Lawyer

NS

Nathan Schneider Thu 31 Oct 2024 3:04PM

Have we discussed this with Autonomic? https://autonomic.zone/, e.g., https://coopcloud.tech?

TB

Thomas Beckett Thu 31 Oct 2024 3:09PM

I support TWG's concern here and their decision on what to do next.

G

Graham Fri 1 Nov 2024 10:12AM

Personally I'd be arguing to use a cooperative hosting provider. I know this limits choice and also likely increases costs, but I'm not sure that cost is a key issue here? I work very closely with webarchitects.coop - a cooperative hosting provider based in the UK that owns and runs it's own hardware. It is (fingers crossed) close to closing a funding deal that will see it offering a new high performing cloud hosting service utilising the open source Openstack platform. Prices will be competitive.

DS

Danyl Strype Wed 6 Nov 2024 1:03AM

@Graham 

Personally I'd be arguing to use a cooperative hosting provider.

I just want to +1 this, and @Lynn Foster's point that this would be an application of cooperative principle 6. (Re-)decentralising the net requires experimenting with commons approaches at every level of the stack. Every time an infrastructure chokepoint is exposed, we need to interpret it as damage and organise around it.

A

Ammar Fri 22 Nov 2024 4:11AM

@Danyl Strype do you know the author of this article or who took/is in this picture? It’s in Seattle and I wonder if it’s a group of activists the me and my friends can work with! (I live in Seattle)

LF

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.

DP

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

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