Requesting some more information about Ramble

Posted by RichardButte in Ramble

This site looks interesting and I might stick around to interact with the community and contribute content. Before I decide to try to settle in, I'd like to ask some questions:

Where are the server/s hosted?

Are there any kind of protection in place for disruption of service-attacks (primarily DDOS) Is ramble a private undertaking or is it run by a company?

What are the short- and long term plans for Ramble?

How do you plan to implement additional rules to the site? (Arbitrary admin decisions, community discussion etc).

Thank you.

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Rambler wrote (edited )

Welcome to the site. It's still very new and I'm hoping to get the wiki finalized today to push some of these questions that I anticipate will be common over time.

You're about to learn why I'm Rambler:

Where are the server/s hosted?

Love it or hate it, the USA still has the highest ranking freedom of expression anywhere in the world and great organizations that will fight tooth and nails to ensure that right continues to exists.

The concern most people have with the US is their data collecting, and it's a rightful and legitimate concern. When you consider options that fall outside of the 5/9/14 eyes of intelligence sharing you're severely limited to nations with weaker network infrastructures. But as I've mentioned before: What is even collected? You provide a (probably) random username upon sign up, a unique password to this site as you should for all sites. You do not need an email address.

What's interesting about being integrated in the various networks that we are on is that all Tor Onion Service traffic looks internal (EX: 172.0.0.1) so it's impossible to determine the difference between Tor_UserA and Tor_UserB. All LokiNet traffic looks internal as well (EX: 172.0.0.2) so all users on that network share the same IP and no way to tell the difference between Loki_UserA and Loki_UserB. The same can be said for I2P too, though that isn't running internally but all I2P network users will appear to be stemming from the IP of the I2P router, and from the router, I can't tell what's coming here and what's going elsewhere since it's pushing constant traffic through/around the I2P network. A bit more on a thread about our warrant cannary here

So in short: The USA. You can stay stuff in the USA that you can not say elsewhere. Even voat learned this lesson the hard way when their German host kicked them to the curb years ago. Don't confuse press index freedom with free speech. One is for the media, one is for you and me.

I have a very good relationship with my provider and know the owner personally and have for years. When this site launched I reached out to him and wanted to double, double check it was within their AUP considering we had someone wanting to list links to some Darknet Markets. His response was:

Dude,

If freedom of speech is your concern (which it sounds like), then you want to be in the States.

If you raise your arm the wrong way in Europe you'll get arrested.

Your site is perfectly fine and we have no problem defending freedom of speech.

There's a frickin' [redacted] article about us because we wouldn't shut some sites down.

They've been in business a very long time, own their own hardware and I've been a longtime customer of them for about 8 years now. Although I have a small list of go-to providers, they've always been my 'production quality' one.

Are there any kind of protection in place for disruption of service-attacks (primarily DDOS)

Absolutely. That's one of the reasons why I chose the company I did. They have a very strong network that can sustain multi-100Gbps DDoS attacks as I've experienced in the past when running a site that did not make some people happy. It hummed along (though albeit noticeable slower) while getting fucking hammered.

Is ramble a private undertaking or is it run by a company?

Private undertaking. I started it out of frustration towards big-tech. I started it because I'm unemployed and it's giving me something to do other than dwell on life. Although I am actively seeking work in my local area, the site will obviously remain online even if I'm not home within arms reach of a device to check it all day. There is no Ramble Incorporated. I don't want to sell ads. I want this site to remain as free as possible with no outside influence that isn't the community itself. (Ex: listening to the community) The servers are paid for until February, and when the time comes to renew I will renew again, out of pocket. If it ever comes to a point where I can no longer financially sustain the website out of pocket, I will probably ask for donations but we're not there yet. (With that said there is a donate link in the wik)

Although I am working on a side project / start up, it'll be Spring at the earliest (if lucky) that I could ever launch and it's not something that would interfere with this website and I'd prefer to keep the two things separate. Think of this more as my personal project where I want to remain relatively anonymous versus a professional project that'll have my name on it.

What are the short- and long term plans for Ramble?

Short term: Simply continue what we're doing. Be available through various networks, share content related to privacy, technology, and alterantive networks.

Long term: Hopefully wake some people up that big-tech is cancer and that their privacy is being invaded at almost every avenue online. Hopefully more people will start using and supporting the various anonymity networks as well as a means of preserving their privacy and helping these various networks grow. By just using this site, you and everyone else is helping push quality content to these networks that hopefully people will return to view and interact with.

Free speech and good opsec practices are just tools, just like using an anonymity network like Tor or I2P is a tool. Combined, you can stay pretty private online.

How do you plan to implement additional rules to the site? (Arbitrary admin decisions, community discussion etc).

I've been going back and forth on this as you don't want to start off with a bunch of rules but you also don't want to add rules later in response. It's hard to predict the future and what issues I may encounter, but let me say this:

  • I've not banned a single user for anything they've posted. Shortly after this site opened someone decided to troll and post some gore and some out of context terms to replies. I PM'ed him and more or less told him that I removed his posts, he's not banned, and if he wanted to share images of gaping assholes and stab wounds and just say the N-word a bunch, be my guest, but please create the appropriate forums to do so.

So, I wouldn't really consider that heavy handed moderation or an attack on free speech. All mod logs are public on their respective forum via the sidebar and you can see why something was removed.

To put my philosophy in perspective: I got banned from the support forum and lost product support for the open source software powering this site because it's main coder does not support freedom of speech. She is a far far leftist and when grilling me on my stance on free speech I finally told her: I'd welcome a proud boy's forum just as much as I'd welcome an antifa forum. I don't have to agree with either personally, but as long as other people do, they deserve a place to discuss. Then I was banned for 'giving nazis a platform' or something and told the answer to any question I have via email will be, "No". Look, it's not illegal to be ignorant or hateful and talking about it. Funny, because even though I don't agree with her at all politically I had inquired about her thoughts on doing paid development for feature requests the community had made. I guess I'm the bad guy for tolerating people who aren't like me though, even if I don't like them. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

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RichardButte OP wrote

You're about to learn why I'm Rambler

I've not seen a single wasted sentence in your answer, it has been a joy to read.

Love it or hate it, the USA

Hate it. I'm not too bothered about free speech in the traditional sense, 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.

There's also the remote possibility that there could be more direct clowning around by the US government, national security letters I think it was called. Not Ramble nor your host, but further upstream. It's sad to say but I look at US servers today the same way I used to look at .ru-servers in the late 90's.

Private undertaking. I started it out of frustration towards big-tech.

Respect. I have something similar but more geared toward social networking as a private alternative for friends (federerated, no walled gardens).

I got banned from the support forum and lost product support for the open source software powering this site because it's main coder does not support freedom of speech. She is a far far leftist---

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.

Thank you for your thoughful and thurough answer.

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Rambler wrote (edited )

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.

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1122332211 wrote

"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." unrelated to this discussion i would love to hear more about this. might be worth a new post.

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Rambler wrote

"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." unrelated to this discussion i would love to hear more about this. might be worth a new post.

Basically, I'm not a developer. I have a lot of random skills but I'm not a 'master' at any of them. I've been hosting websites in some capacity for almost 20 years, however. You'd think in that time I'd have graduated past some basic php/python/bash scripting, but nope. :)

In the future I'd like to get some custom development done to implement some of the features some of you have requested. The only reason I'm not pushing that hard right now is because I want to see if the site continues to grow, as it's only been two weeks since it's launch, and because I'm unemployed and simply can't afford to offer anything in return for custom development at this time. (But hoping that will change in the future, as I continue to look for local work). Hosting is covered however, as it's 'cheap' in comparison to that of custom dev work.

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