Big Tech 0, Ricochet 1

 

We’ve all read the news: Twitter has banned the President of the United States and many of his supporters from their service. Hosting enterprises like Amazon Web Services have tossed conservative-leaning sites from their servers. Apple and Google have removed apps like Parler from their app stores.

So, is Ricochet vulnerable?

No. This community is hosted by Astroluxe, a hosting enterprise founded by like-minded businesspeople. One of them is an old friend of Ricochet’s, Charles Cooke, the original Conservatarian. The other is John Ekdahl, who in addition to being a web developer extraordinaire, is also a fierce 1st Amendment advocate. We’re proud to be in business with them.

Charlie had this to say about hosting Ricochet in this perilous moment: “The Internet was designed to be a distributed, open platform on which people could speak without permission and argue as they saw fit. Astroluxe is committed to that idea, even as others rush to abandon it. We’re proud to host Ricochet, and a host of other websites, on which a broad range of opinions are shared.”

All of which is to say this: Ricochet is here to stay. We’re not worried about being “deplatformed” or tossed off a hosting site. Our hosting partners and our members have the same unwavering bedrock commitment to liberty, freedom of speech, and spirited civil conversation.

To our fellow members, our deepest thanks. To those who have yet to join, we’re eager to have you. To the entire community, we are here to stay.

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There are 83 comments.

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  1. GFHandle Member
    GFHandle
    @GFHandle

    I see a HUGE money-making opportunity here. If you have the server and the software in place already, why not make it available for others to rebrand after they get de-platformed.

    I recently joined a Facebook group devoted to close reading of literature (tied to the Close Reads podcast of  the Circe Institute) and yesterday I saw posts from members complaining that they have to use Facebook to be part of that community. Some seemed to want to leave FB because it is a time drain but others seemed to want to leave for moral/political reasons.  Maybe such a group could migrate to a truly “safe space”?

     

    • #61
  2. GFHandle Member
    GFHandle
    @GFHandle

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):
    Ricochet is entirely vulnerable to being cut off by credit card processors and PayPal. 

    Time for someone to create a protected credit card? And if that can’t be done, there is alway Uncle Vito. Ways are always found.

    • #62
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    GFHandle (View Comment):
    Time for someone to create a protected credit card? And if that can’t be done, there is alway Uncle Vito. Ways are always found.

    There might be a fairly large-scale shift – or “pivot” as the kids seem to say now – to cash in many areas.

    • #63
  4. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Mark Steyn opines on why he dosn’t use social media.

    https://www.steynonline.com/10931/looking-for-the-great-escape

    • #64
  5. Charlotte Member
    Charlotte
    @Charlotte

    Hey, @britanicus! Nice to see you! I’m glad you’re still here.

    • #65
  6. Washington Square Member
    Washington Square
    @WashingtonSquare

    Dear Founders: Don’t you think it’s a little early to thump your chests about this?  The fun is just beginning.

    • #66
  7. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

     

    • #67
  8. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    Fake John/Jane Galt

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):
    One last thing: The Christmas Day bombing that blew up an AT&T site – one hell of a lot of traffic flowed through that location, including stuff for utilities, and the like. To say that there now won’t be a massive spend on hardening (stifle a chuckle at “hardening”), required now by the government, would likely be an error. I’m assuming fallout for this will go beyond small potatoes, as it impacted first responders, FirstNet, and data carried by utilities (not just for metering, either).

    The AT&T bombing is concerning. I have been around the internet for quite a while. It was designed to distributed and self healing. For that much data to flow through Nashville and be knocked off line by a single bombing sort of indicates a forcing of data channels for other means. Nashville going off line should have maybe had an effect on the local area but should not have knocked down significant functionality in KY, IN, TN, GA, NC, SC, AL.

    Back when we (the industry) was designing this stuff the key was distributed networks with lots of routes, data centers and syncs. Mainframes were dead because it meant choke points and single points of failure. We wanted DISTRIBUTED computing. For some reason we have decided to go back to the centralized model with all the issues were designed against in the first place.

    Those types of nodes are everywhere, though, and it’s largely built due to demand for data, for residential and commercial uses.  For utilities, roughly millions of devices in the field use carrier networks to send and receive data (AMI meters being a more obvious example), but not just to look at data, but to control devices in the field.

    Self-healing networks.  Reclosers.  More particularly, gas pipelines, which have pressure monitoring and controls to increase or decrease flows, and supply from 3rd-party providers of gas.

    It’s worse than a facility like AT&T.  Those pipelines and devices in the field are often laughably easy to break into, even if the devices are behind a cage.  They’re locked with a padlock, that any set of bolt cutters can cut easily.

    Or go the easy route and just set something on fire.  Then it won’t work.  But the vulnerabilities are legion, which is also why that bombing was so strange, no one got hurt, no big reason given.

    It would really take very little to set a municipality back six months.  Impact tens of thousands of people.  And here we are, worried about which chowderhead gets to beclown himself as president.

     

    • #68
  9. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):
    It would really take very little to set a municipality back six months. Impact tens of thousands of people. And here we are, worried about which chowderhead gets to beclown himself as president.

    The chowderhead president can impact tens or even hundreds of millions of people.

    • #69
  10. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Bitcoin and ETH

     

    • #70
  11. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Gab offers e-checks

    Visa cut them off last summer

     

    • #71
  12. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    ACH might have rules that prevent the credit-card chicanery.  Although I’m more wary of giving my bank info to a “chat service.”

    • #72
  13. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    kedavis – you can also mail them a check

    or pay with bitcoin

     

    • #73
  14. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    https://help.gab.com/faq/how-to-donate-gab-com

     

    • #74
  15. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):
    kedavis – you can also mail them a check

    Your checks have the same information on them:  bank routing number, and account number.

    Plus your home address…

    • #75
  16. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    kedavis (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):
    kedavis – you can also mail them a check

    Your checks have the same information on them: bank routing number, and account number.

    Plus your home address…

    A cashier’s check, then.

    • #76
  17. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Gab’s bitcoin address: 3DjemruRRvunHTHxNJbwoRCzCFWagw6vo2

     

    • #77
  18. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    kedavis

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):
    It would really take very little to set a municipality back six months. Impact tens of thousands of people. And here we are, worried about which chowderhead gets to beclown himself as president.

    The chowderhead president can impact tens or even hundreds of millions of people.

    Thanks honey.  You’ll note that that is always going to be true, regardless of which one is in office.

    Get the point?

    • #78
  19. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    It will be funny if the government stance against conservatives forces the abandonment of the American dollar as we all to for the bit coins of the world. 

    • #79
  20. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Sisyphus (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):
    kedavis – you can also mail them a check

    Your checks have the same information on them: bank routing number, and account number.

    Plus your home address…

    A cashier’s check, then.

    A cashier’s check won’t have your personal bank account numbers on it, but when you buy it from the bank it will have your name and home address on it.

    A money order could be traced too, back to where you bought it, and even if you paid cash for it the store might have you on video.

    • #80
  21. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):

    kedavis

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):
    It would really take very little to set a municipality back six months. Impact tens of thousands of people. And here we are, worried about which chowderhead gets to beclown himself as president.

    The chowderhead president can impact tens or even hundreds of millions of people.

    Thanks honey. You’ll note that that is always going to be true, regardless of which one is in office.

    Get the point?

    I’m not honey.

    But I do understand, although apparently you don’t.

    • #81
  22. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):

    kedavis

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):
    It would really take very little to set a municipality back six months. Impact tens of thousands of people. And here we are, worried about which chowderhead gets to beclown himself as president.

    The chowderhead president can impact tens or even hundreds of millions of people.

    Thanks honey. You’ll note that that is always going to be true, regardless of which one is in office.

    Get the point?

    I’m not honey.

    But I do understand, although apparently you don’t.

    Do too!  Do too understand!

    • #82
  23. carcat74 Member
    carcat74
    @carcat74

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    decentralized internet that runs on ETH blockchain is the future

    George Gilder said something similar in 2018

    https://www.hoover.org/research/george-gilder-forget-cloud-computing-blockchain-future

     

    Was this the article also referencing ham radio? Being a ‘ham’s myself, I am wondering….

    • #83
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