Taullo :pride_heart:​ :naturist:​ Nakey Trash Gremlin :blobcatgooglytrash:​ on Nostr: Alright, I've taken a breath and I want to talk about what's been going on from the ...

Alright, I've taken a breath and I want to talk about what's been going on from the hosting end of Aethy.

Aethy has been fighting closure for months. We've had multiple fights with a ton of our service providers. People may remember the time Aethy was closed for a week because Wasabi dropped us with no notice.

Aethy consistently receives threats and has to jump providers in order to survive. If you want to see an example, trying accessing Aethy from an Irish IP Address. We had to block an entire country because they kept filing false CSAM reports with our service provider. For France, we have to maintain an entirely separate blocklist for content they deem unacceptable. They even tried to get us to censor all the lalafells at one point until we pushed back on it.

In a lot of cases, we can't even address the issue before the provider starts threatening us. And jumping providers takes a lot of time and money.

I think there's this idea that when you host a site, you can do whatever you want. It's not true. We're beholden to the people who handle our domain name, the people who handle our server, block hosting, CDN, etc. Then there's people who think it's just a matter of finding the right provider.

The issue is that providers intentionally write their terms of service in order to be as vague as possible. They write them so they can terminate you at any time for any reason. They're not going to say "we don't allow kink". They're gonna say "we don't allow 'harmful material'". If you ask them upfront, they're gonna give you a wishy washy answer on what's allowed. You're not gonna know what's allowed until someone throws a fit about it and reports you to the service provider.

And this is also not mentioning the financial aspect. We've been banned by every payment provider besides for Fanbox. This is why you can only support Aethy in JPN. There's no other way to accept payment.

This week, we got threatened by our service provider that handles the backend. They told us we had to remove content from our site that was "against their AUP". Mind you, this is a service provider that said they were fine hosting adult content. When pressed on what was allowed, I asked them point blank if BDSM between consenting adults was allowed.

They told me that since it was violent, it would be subject to removal. BDSM is too violent for them now.

This is the state of the internet right now. This has been ongoing for the entire duration of the site. But the past few months has been worse. As people brace for a Trump presidency, they're dropping adult content left and right. It sucks.

This isn't the only thing that led to Aethy's closure but this gives you a taste of what's going on from the technical end.