I was on Voat for a while but the stuff that got them thrown out of Germany was explicitly vile. I support peoples right to express their feelings, even hateful, but not for monkey to sling digital poop online.

The reason I'm cautious about the US is as you point out, data collection. You have some excellent points, particularly for a public site that allows anonymous access. But those who access the site through clearnet will likely have their IP's logged by network taps and can have their RL ID's connected to their anonymous profiles through data analysis.

Understood. Although this site wasn't launched in response to accommodate a mass influx of users after a reddit ban wave (for example) I'm cool with organized areas of speech that others may find distasteful simply because I don't believe de-platforming changes hearts and minds. As I've said before, I'll tolerate things that even I disagree with because this isn't my personal blog or site. It's just a resource that's available to all. People will still be who they are at their core regardless if they have a place to talk or not, in my opinion, and they might as well have a safe place to do it.

With that said, as you can see, this place is more about privacy, technology, news related to those topics, alternative networks, etc. I would imagine we'll see some Voat refugees here, and they're welcome, but there are many other established places like Ruqqus with more features that the average Voat user may prefer. Perhaps some of the more privacy focused ones will come here, I guess time will tell. Either way, if they want to join in participate in good faith then I'm all for it.

Regarding the hosting, I do encourage and hope people will use whatever method of accessing the site that they feel most comfortable with. I have actually been eye-balling a second location that is technically outside of the whole 5/9/14 eyes realm but I'm not sure how well the network would hold up to DDOS attacks and it is a bit more expensive for a network that isn't "better" and in a country that may be less likely to cooperate with requests, but I'm still researching it. The idea however is that I personally can not share what I do not know, regardless of location, and that using the available methods of access that the users can determine their level of trust. Originally I wasn't going to have a clearnet website available but figured it would be a good idea to have one, if anything, to encourage those visitors to ditch the clearnet and use something like I2P or Tor (for example) to access the website and to support the networks that support their privacy.

Exactly the reasons I made this post. I checked out the system powering Ramble and eventually came across a list of other sites powered by Postmill. Didn't seem like people I'd want to share an online community with. After reading your thoughtful answer it is clear the way you want something different for Ramble.

Yeah... To me, it read that discussion read almost like satire. Everything from being pre-mad and pre-offended by events that haven't occurred to silencing what I was thought was professional discourse. They're a caricature of themselves.. And although I disagree with that site on most aspects politically I have no problem with their existence and if there was a mass exodus of their users, for example, they'd be just as welcomed here. I don't have to agree with someone to understand that they have a voice and in this modern digital age, sometimes it's hard or difficult to have it heard. But I've forked the codebase, hopefully there will be enough use of this site to warrant some custom development for features that this community wants.

That's life though, I guess.