[Roosh]

It should be clear to everyone here that in the wake of Charlottesville, our days are numbered. Within two years, I estimate we have a 50% chance of having one or all of my domains seized under one of the following pretextes:

• A ROK article that makes fun of women going viral
• A deadly shooting by a man falsely linked to RVF or the manosphere
• Heavy outrage from me trying to do a speaking event

I've carefully watched the seizing of the Andrew Anglin's Daily Stormer and how it is difficult for him to remain online outside of Tor. Once you're targeted for a shut down, certain groups like the SPLC or ADL will work with the domain authority ICANN to prevent you from coming back up. It's clear that the domains I own are not my own property, and that I'm in fact "renting" it from an organizing body that has no objection to shutting down dissidents.

I'm less interested in fighting back through legal means than I am in maintaining continuity of operations to continue my passion of writing and male community building. Therefore I would like to solicit your feedback on the feasibility of creating an underground internet that is resistant to being shut down.

My instinct is to move to a blockchain, something that users like Valentine and Isaac Jordan are highly familiar with. Since data on a blockchain is stored on multiple locations, there is no one point where we can be shut down. This may mean we have to create our own cryptocurrency.

There are many other crypto platforms out there, but I'm hesitant to put faith in other developers who may succumb to pressure from the powers-that-be. The fact that Tor complained about Daily Stormer, even though their network contains child porn, is enough to make me think we need to create a platform that only we control, but if there is an existing platform we can use, I'm open to it since it will be far easier than starting from scratch.

To see if a solution is out there for us, there are two pieces of information we need:

A. What are the minimum requirements for our free speech platform?
B. What technology is available or needed that meets our requirements?

Let's start with A for this thread. Here are some requirements off the top of my head:

• Decentralized, can't be shut down with a flick of the switch
• Independent of ICANN or any other organizing body
• Provide a platform for two starter apps: a blog like Wordpress and a community forum
• Be able to expand in the future to allow anyone to create their own blogs or forums if they pay the platform's token
• Incentive for those to maintain the blockchain (receiving tokens)

What other requirements should be absolutely essential? Once we have those down, we can start discussing the technical details.

Like the Chinese proverb goes, in every crisis is an opportunity. We have enough smart minds here that I think we can create a solution for this dark period of history where our speech is being actively targeted. If this works, we'll won't have to worry about losing the internet as an important outlet for our speech.

[The Beast1]

Beyond the Tor Foundation's bitching, was there really any real outcome from that? I still was able to access the Daily Stormer without issue when they were on Tor during the whole debacle.

We could easily have a backup Tor link to another forum that has a backup of the forum database.

A reliable backup solution of the forum is the most important. The collective knowledge and stories of ourselves are the most important. I hope there have been hourly backups to a location that can't have SJWs preventing its recovery.

If we lose that, we lose us.

Edit: I recall you mentioning that you're hosting is in South Florida. Have you considered hosting this site in Russia with a Russian registrar?

[John Michael Kane]

Excellent ideas. We need to be proactive in protecting our freedom of speech, not just reactive.

There needs to be a rally point in case RVF is ever shut down without warning.

One method would be to email the entire user database with instructions on how to reach the new system. For continuity, it is important to have a plan in place to notify members how to find the new service.

A mass email might be one of them, but alternatives could include an IRC server or a BitTorrent upload to popular file sharing sites with a text file on how to access the new system.

Because many members, including myself, use burner email addresses, having more than one system of contact would be required.

I will post some additional thoughts when I get back to my desktop, as this topic is of great concern to those of us who do not wish to see these great communities taken offline by some petty SJW in Silicon Valley or Washington DC.

[HighSpeed_LowDrag]

I would strongly suggest that this be moved to the Private Forum.

[Roosh]

(09-15-2017 06:51 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Edit: I recall you mentioning that you're hosting is in South Florida. Have you considered hosting this site in Russia with a Russian registrar?

Russia shut down DailyStormer.ru, so I doubt they are an improvement.

(09-15-2017 07:18 AM)HighSpeed_LowDrag Wrote:  

I would strongly suggest that this be moved to the Private Forum.

When it comes to actual planning/implementation, it will be done in a private group. To solicit ideas I want to cast a wide net.

[Silver_Tube]

Part B of your question:

i2p is a darknet that can host sites and services in a peer to peer anonymous fashion. It may be a more suitable solution than tor, since their exit nodes are monitored and their organization clearly has no interest in protecting us.

https://www.opennic.org/ is an alternative DNS root that is explicitly anti censorship, I haven't heard of any incidents where that has been put to the test yet. It would be a pain to get everyone to switch dns providers on all their devices.

I looked into IPFS but I don't like it very much. With the content addressing, it seems like bad servers could collect hashes of wrongthink content and offer to host it, then collect IP's of everyone who hits them with requests for it.

The manosphere as a whole needs a disaster recovery plan, darknet backup sites and mirrors at the very least. Payment processing is a big worry that I'd like to know more about. Visa is the main bottleneck.

[Silver_Tube]

I wish there was a payment processor that made the bitcoin layer transparent. Buyer puts in their card, behind the curtain it exchanges for bitcoin and goes to the merchant. A lot of people just cant be arsed to maintain a crypto wallet.

[polar]

This looks potentially promising, or at least a stopgap.

https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-foun...ce-170419/

Here's a selection from the article:

With Njalla, customers don’t buy the domain names themselves, they let the company do it for them. This adds an extra layer of protection but also requires some trust.

A separate agreement grants the customer full usage rights to the domain. This also means that people are free to transfer it elsewhere if they want to.

“Think of us as your friendly drunk (but responsibly so) straw person that takes the blame for your expressions,” Njalla notes.

TorrentFreak spoke to Peter Sunde who says that the service is needed to ensure that people can register domain names without having to worry about being exposed.

“Njalla is needed because we’re going the wrong way in society regarding people’s right to be anonymous. With social media pressuring us to be less anonymous and services being centralized, we need alternatives,” Sunde says.

The current domain privacy services aren’t really providing anonymity, Sunde believes, that’s why he decided to fill this gap.

“All key parts of the Internet need to have options for anonymity, and the domain name area is something which was never really protected. At best you can buy a domain name using ‘privacy by proxy’ services, which are aimed more at limiting spam than actually protecting your privacy.”

As co-founder of The Pirate Bay, Njalla might also get some pirate sites as customers. Since Njalla owns the domain names, this could lead to some pressure from rightsholders, but Sunde isn’t really worried about this.

“The domain name itself is not really what they’re after. They’re after the content that the domain name points to. So we’re never helping with anything that might infringe on anything anyhow, so it’s a non-question for us,” Sunde says.

For those who are interested, Njalla just opened its website for business. The company is registered with the fitting name 1337 LLC and is based in Nevis, a small island in the Caribbean Sea.

[Valentine]

(09-15-2017 06:34 AM)Roosh Wrote:  

To see if a solution is out there for us, there are two pieces of information we need:

A. What are the minimum requirements for our free speech platform?
B. What technology is available or needed that meets our requirements?

Let's start with A for this thread. Here are some requirements off the top of my head:

• Decentralized, can't be shut down with a flick of the switch
• Independent of ICANN or any other organizing body
• Provide a platform for two starter apps: a blog like Wordpress and a community forum
• Be able to expand in the future to allow anyone to create their own blogs or forums if they pay the platform's token
• Incentive for those to maintain the blockchain (receiving tokens)

What other requirements should be absolutely essential? Once we have those down, we can start discussing the technical details.

Additionally:

1) Optional I2P and/or Tor integration to maximise anonymity

It will already be difficult to track users due to the number of nodes which will host the network but full anonymity will make everyone rest easier and prevent social cooling.

2) Incentives for all types of maintainers: the founders, the content creators and the hosts of the blockchain

Hosts will earn tokens just like every other blockchain.

Content creators should earn tokens for their contributions, probably best to follow a similar model to Steem.

Founders: As far as I know there is no technology which "out of the box" provides all the functionality we need. Thus startup capital (from an ICO for example) will be necessary to add all the functionality, as well as maintain the growth of the platform to integrate new features, fix bugs, promote, etc as and when needed.

Funds can also be accrued in a number of ways post-launch too such as a cost per post (e.g. 10c per post like Yours network), a % of the total earnings of every post (like Steem), etc.

This funding pot can also go to hosting virtual or in-person events, crowdfunding for allied websites/blockchains/thought leaders/political candidates, developing new platforms or software to benefit the community, etc.

B. What technology is available or needed that meets our requirements?

A dApp must be used to have both decentralised hosting of the application as well as token incentives.

The best way to start is by forking an existing dApp and adding a bit more functionality so that at least one of the two starter apps can be hosted feasibly on it - but as a Minimum Viable Product version, so it won't be perfect just yet.

Then launch an ICO to get the development funds necessary to build an awesome version of the two starter apps as well allow others to create their own blogs or forums.

[Roosh]

(09-15-2017 07:46 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  

Part B of your question:

i2p is a darknet that can host sites and services in a peer to peer anonymous fashion. It may be a more suitable solution than tor, since their exit nodes are monitored and their organization clearly has no interest in protecting us.

https://www.opennic.org/ is an alternative DNS root that is explicitly anti censorship, I haven't heard of any incidents where that has been put to the test yet. It would be a pain to get everyone to switch dns providers on all their devices.

Do you have examples of i2p sites that I can check out? I would have to download the client first, correct?

Opennic requires you to change your DNS server, right?

[Roosh]

(09-15-2017 12:38 PM)Valentine Wrote:  

Founders: As far as I know there is no technology which "out of the box" provides all the functionality we need. Thus startup capital (from an ICO for example) will be necessary to add all the functionality, as well as maintain the growth of the platform to integrate new features, fix bugs, promote, etc as and when needed.

How much finds do you think we'd need in an ICO to attract developers with the right talent?

Quote:

B. What technology is available or needed that meets our requirements?

A dApp must be used to have both decentralised hosting of the application as well as token incentives.

The best way to start is by forking an existing dApp and adding a bit more functionality so that at least one of the two starter apps can be hosted feasibly on it - but as a Minimum Viable Product version, so it won't be perfect just yet.

Is there an existing dApp that is close to providing the functionality we need?

[Valentine]

(09-15-2017 01:34 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

How much finds do you think we'd need in an ICO to attract developers with the right talent?

Depends on your contacts and experience working with developers firstly, but I'd first estimate $80k/year for a full-time developer with the needed skills (experience in Solidity/Javascript/DB design/API development etc) if going for an Ethereum dApp developer.

This mainly depends on whether an Ethereum dApp or non-Ethereum dApp will be used, and which blockchain will be used as a foundation.

The target amount also depends on whether you have additional employees e.g. technical leads, project managers, digital marketers etc to ensure project success or if there's any other funding goals that the ICO is to be used for.

Quote:

Is there an existing dApp that is close to providing the functionality we need?

AKASHA (Twitter/Gab-like) is due to go open-source before the end of the year, that would be ideal as it's based on the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS (torrent-based hosting for multimedia). This would only require forking to make a new ERC20 token (ROOSH or something), some UI changes to make it more like a blog/forum and modifying the incentives layer.



Steem is open-source and could be the base for a blog or forum also, the challenge with using this codebase is that the Steem blockchain is essentially a text content and metadata database rather than a smart contract/arbitrary code running platform like Ethereum.

This means right now it would be limited to the same style of dApp used by Particl (another non-Ethereum dApp) - you'd have to download a normal desktop app (e.g. eSteem) which would then read the content from the decentralised blockchain.

The limitation here is that if someone can't find somewhere to download the desktop app from then they can't access RVF 2.0. Basically the application download is centralised but the database it reads from is decentralised. You can have Tor sites or torrents hosting the desktop app downloads but it's not quite as resilient as an Ethereum dApp, and similarly to creating a Tor site you've limited your audience reach as it's harder to access.

Ethereum dApps on the other hand can be accessed on mobile via Status, on desktop via Mist or browser via MetaMask. Since these dApp browsers are used for every Ethereum dApp they won't be censored and thus access to RVF 2.0 can't be either.

I'm not sure just how difficult it'd be to modify the Steem codebase so that it can be run as an Ethereum dApp. Essentially it'd have to interface with the Ethereum blockchain for the dApp component and a fork of the Steem blockchain for the text content/metadata layer.

An Ethereum dApp for a Steem fork might appear like overkill but for usability/audience reach/decentralisation it's the best choice, though it would likely be far more difficult to implement.

A non-Ethereum dApp for a Steem fork on the other hand will basically just require modifying a Steem desktop app like eSteem to have the forum+blog UIs, Tor/I2P integration and use the ROOSH blockchain instead. As well as important bits to prevent spam like admin moderation features.

It might be best to create a non-Ethereum dApp for a Steem fork (ROOSHcoin) and this will be the first version. Then wait until AKASHA or Yours or a similar Ethereum dApp posts their source code so that can be used as the foundation for an Ethereum dApp version.

[ScrapperTL]

What once was old eventually becomes anew.
Maybe it is time to revive the oldschool BBS.
1) There is very high likelihood that no women has ever been on a BBS.
2) Electronic Bulletin Board Systems are far too ugly for the modern SJW eyes to handle.

Here is a step by step guide to quickly and affordably get a BBS running:
BBS Walkthrough

Additionally, if you are interested in learning how to access BBS to get a feel for them, start here:
Getting Started Accessing Electronic Bulletin Board Systems

For those of you using Ubuntu like myself, simply open the Terminal and type in "telnet"

[Oz.]

Roosh if all else fails we can hold off the grid private meetings in Cuba. Don't worry I will handle the commies.

[redbeard]

Somewhat off-topic, but everyone should note that free speech alternatives will grow in popularity as the thought police increases.

Right now it's Gab, but in the very near future, free speech alternatives for Wordpress, YouTube, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, BB (forum software) will be very popular.

If I had the cash and/or skills, I would definitely be building these.

People are hungry for the truth. Cable news is tanking as everyone switches to YouTube/Twitter. We want Freedom, and the people will get it.

[rpg]

Everybody feeling the heat should have a backup tor site. The more normal people on tor the better.

[TooFineAPoint]

More than anything, I am concerned with losing contact with members that I want to connect with in the future but have had no reason to yet.

Is there any way to move the whole forum to Telegram or Slack just so we can at least communicate with each other in the event of a blackout? Or is that too easily compromised?

[puckerman]

Figure out a way to back up this forum every day, Roosh. The first backup will probably be huge. Then just do incremental backups. I am sorry I don't have any recommendations.

[John Michael Kane]

(09-15-2017 11:35 PM)puckerman Wrote:  

Figure out a way to back up this forum every day, Roosh. The first backup will probably be huge. Then just do incremental backups. I am sorry I don't have any recommendations.

Just make sure that you have offline access to the database backups just in case your web host goes rogue and starts deleting stuff at the request of some SJW. Roosh, please make sure you're backing up RVF and ROK frequently to some type of offline backup that your I.T. personnel do NOT have access to. Chain of custody matters when it comes to backups!

[Conscious Pirate]

I really wish I could help in this arena, but my talents are much more disposed toward the upcoming apocalypse so I will have to wait till then to do any heavy lifting around here.

[RatInTheWoods]

I am an old guy and used to use BBS type service in the old days before the internet....

The tech was very simple, and I think it would be adaptable easily to fit modern day technology.

My idea is that users/subscribers get emailed the updates to each forum in zipped, encrypted emails which a local client upacks and recreates the identical display to the current forum.
Edits and new posts are done "offline" in the client and emailed as a batch by each user zipped and encrypted to a central location where they are put together by the host software and posted out the next day.

You could lower the refresh cycle to hourly or make it user configurable, not live, but still works the way most users want it to.

Its not hosted, can't be shut down and is all encrypted and secure. Internet providers don't even know what they are hosting or transmitting.

It wouldn't take more than a few days to set up this software and system.

Anyone see downsides to this?

[Valentine]

(09-15-2017 11:52 PM)John Michael Kane Wrote:  

(09-15-2017 11:35 PM)puckerman Wrote:  

Figure out a way to back up this forum every day, Roosh. The first backup will probably be huge. Then just do incremental backups. I am sorry I don't have any recommendations.

Just make sure that you have offline access to the database backups just in case your web host goes rogue and starts deleting stuff at the request of some SJW. Roosh, please make sure you're backing up RVF and ROK frequently to some type of offline backup that your I.T. personnel do NOT have access to. Chain of custody matters when it comes to backups!

I'm sure he already has a cluster for redundancy, from there you can have one of the servers do incremental backups to a different server.

For offline copies it depends on whether you have a person who can run a home server for you and physically swap out hard drives or if you have to rely on one of the major service providers and their cold storage options.

(09-16-2017 01:18 AM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  

I am an old guy and used to use BBS type service in the old days before the internet....

The tech was very simple, and I think it would be adaptable easily to fit modern day technology.

My idea is that users/subscribers get emailed the updates to each forum in zipped, encrypted emails which a local client upacks and recreates the identical display to the current forum.
Edits and new posts are done "offline" in the client and emailed as a batch by each user zipped and encrypted to a central location where they are put together by the host software and posted out the next day.

You could lower the refresh cycle to hourly or make it user configurable, not live, but still works the way most users want it to.

Its not hosted, can't be shut down and is all encrypted and secure. Internet providers don't even know what they are hosting or transmitting.

It wouldn't take more than a few days to set up this software and system.

Anyone see downsides to this?

The metadata trail with email is huge. It's like sending a text message or a postcard - the government and many service providers would immediately know who is a user. With a dApp there can be I2P/Tor integration for full anonymity.

It's also far easier to prevent emails from reaching the user since the sender is centralised rather than decentralised. It could be through labeling all the emails as spam, having them silently fail or kicking the sender off the main SMTP provider platforms. There's only a handful of major email sending companies, once you're off those email delivery can become much harder.

In this instance new tech is superior to old tech as it's basically impossible to censor access to a blockchain.

[polar]

(09-15-2017 09:57 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  

More than anything, I am concerned with losing contact with members that I want to connect with in the future but have had no reason to yet.

Why wait? Connect today.

[John Michael Kane]

When I want to connect with a member, I send them a private message and exchange Skype, Telegram, Viber, etc. info. Then I delete my private message I sent them, and empty the forum trash folder for messages. I also instruct the recipient to do likewise. This helps prevent doxxing in case RVF is ever hacked. You can protect your information while still forging good male friendships.

[Dusty]

(09-15-2017 06:34 AM)Roosh Wrote:  

Once you're targeted for a shut down, certain groups like the SPLC or ADL will work with the domain authority ICANN to prevent you from coming back up.

Actual photo of the ADL on the phone with ICANN: