It doesn't need to go exclusively dark web. What it needs is a dark web core so that clearnet users aren't scattered and lost when sites like this one are shut down.
Meanwhile what needs to happen is to spread out. Not to replace this site in advance as happened with the subreddit, but to have the replacement on hand as we did in the months leading up to the plebbit quarantine. However I think a main fallback such as this won't survive for very long, and that's where the hydra metaphor comes in.
This also goes for IRC. One main channel as a hub for many small channels on multiple networks, with a hidden channel hosted on its own server for the purpose of coordinating between these.
They're not afraid of anything. They are moving their agenda forward, and that agenda involves silencing dissent. Eventually it will involve silencing calls for help.
This site needs what the subreddit needed a year ago. We are going to get deplatformed sooner rather than later. Domain, hosting, ddos protection, you name it. Since the people doing this have become more brazen, we're going to need more than one solution.
- Spread out. Multiple small interlocking communties, some of them private.
- Not a single chat room but many low profile IRC channels.
- A text-only imageboard on Tor. This is the most important one.
- Fallbacks for that board.
The Washington Post may be trying to inch toward the right side of this mess:
No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there.
Tim Morrison on March 16
We sure as hell didn't manage all that through the power of market competition. Centralized executive direction was necessary and we need that now. Not bidding wars and volunteerism. Nationalize the medical supply chain.
Once all the ICU beds and equipment are being used, anyone who needs intensive care and especially a ventilator is much more likely to die. I'm far less afraid of catching this virus than I am of not having a functioning hospital I can go to in an emergency.
40% is the lowest estmate, but it goes down if we minimize contact between people. i don't think Cuomo's restrictions are quite enough, but last night I stood in the middle of the main drag in my part of Queens taking pictures, and only saw one car. It was 1am on a Saturday night. I was out and about for over and hour, just to get a little exercise and my mind off this shit. Not until late this morning did I realize I didn't see or hear a single ambulance. So maybe it's working, but the exemptions for restaurants and repair shops and a host of other shit has me on edge.
Are you okay with what's happening in Italy happening here? Or maybe you think it can't happen here. Okay, the virus is nothing and we're going to be fine and everybody needs to calm down. So why then did Trump just stop travel from Europe? Are you saying he's part of the panic?
The thinking here is that household products are either produced in China or rely on china for some component or step in the process. But with food the risk of a shortage involves who shows up for work. I don't see a lot of people refusing to make deliveries in the near future, or not showing up for work at the stores they themselves need for food and supplies.
If you think the end hasn't happen yet, then I think you must have joined after the end came. Reddit used to be where you went to speak your mind without fear of reprisal, doxxing, or even the toxicity and viciousness which is now standard all over the site. I remember being banned briefly from 4chan and saying to myself, "Fuck this, I'm going to Reddit where we're free to post what the hell we like." I'm not joking or exaggerating here at all.
Reddit died when the admins started banning its terrible users and closing its cesspool subreddits - not just because this was a line that should never have been crossed, but because it was a trick. What followed was a takeover of virtually every major subreddit, by the people who organized the takedown of those users and forums.
Now we are all Violentacres, and every subreddit we loved might as well be Creepshots.
I think the only long term solution to deplatforming of discussion groups may be a standalone client. Open source but probably not open development, peer-to-peer, text-only so agents provocateurs can't threaten its legality by posting illegal content; and distributed primarily over BitTorrent while being small enough for end users to share updates directly within the app, as well as the installer if needed. Also open format so that updates might never be required.
This would not act as a replacement for TD or anything else, but exist in tandem with TD and all other threatened discussion forums, since there would be no way to keep anyone off it or stop anyone from posting. It acts as a backup for all communities threatened with deplatforming, but what the end user sees and takes part in would depend entirely on his own subscriptions, whitelists, blocklists, word filters, and so forth.
Dissenter was a Gab project which got deplatformed without anything happening at all. The very idea of people viewing the same page in different places being able to talk to each other freaked out the usual assholes, who for years had made a campaign of ending the comments section as an institution all across the Web. They compared these communications to graffiti, as if they were hijacking bandwidth at the website being commented and forcing these discussions on people not participating.
There had been deplatforming of Gab before this, the usual denial of payment options and hosting, and this was in response to actual posts the platforms objected to. That doesn't make it okay, but it's nothing compared to the precedent established by what happened with Dissenter, taken down everywhere because of what might happen and absolute bullshit notions of ownership, trespassing, and vandalism that fly in the face of how the Internet works.
Several mods were forcibly removed without warning by Reddit admins, who then started a thread for the stated purpose of installing new ones. Again please read the stickies over there. The situation is entirely out of our legit mods' control, and appears to be designed for the subreddit's replacement with a fake version populated by concern trolls, for the purpose of creating a narrative where Trump's biggest support base slowly turns against him.
You need to go back and read about what exactly has happened. T_D mods didn't choose this, and the steps they have taken are designed to thwart what Reddit's admins are attempting; and to protect our users from automated actions (including possible bans just for voting) by the Reddit system.
It didn't just not take off, it was demonized as being a tool which "allows the far-right to ‘graffiti’ any website." As if it somehow inserted content onto the web server and forced other users to see it displayed. This bullshit was repeated all over the clowniverse and few if any of the people who knew better and could have spoken up bothered, because Gab was being painted as a hate speech site.