Actually, since we're Belize-based, not US based, we can stand up for free speech to the max. It's extremely difficult to legally threaten a Belize-based company to censor anyone or hand over data due to it's lack of MLATs (check my comments, I explained this in a reply a few weeks ago).
One example - there's still a fair amount of Steem witnesses who use our services, we just don't actively assist them with Steem-specific packages. While we morally disagree on what Steemit Inc. has done, and their witnesses - we try to stand neutral, and won't "ban" anyone for anything that isn't clearly illegal (child porn, terrorism, etc.)
Recently, @privex was labelled as "Bulletproof Hosting" on a large Japanese wiki due to us refusing to comply with the Japanese police in the name of free speech :)
https://krsw-wiki.org/wiki/%E9%98%B2%E5%BC%BE%E3%83%9B%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0
Nice, so #Privex might be better than #AWS and other alternatives, but Witnesses who own their own Hardware is even more secure than that @someguy123.
There is also the issue of:
Companies AND Countries changing or even breaking their policies & laws (i.e. John McAfee was arrested in Spain, a country that had laws against him being arrested on behalf of the US)
Most #HIVE Witnesses are likely using #Privex, and it's better to decentralize among 20+ unique entities, vs. having 10 - 20 Witnesses securing the blockchain with just 1 to 3 hosting companies.
Witnesses should compete for votes, and IMO they need to compete by buying their own Hardware.. it's better for everyone @someguy123, and @apshamilton made it sound like it can even save You money.
I warned Witnesses, especially #TheCryptoDrive that exchanges could be used to take over the #Steem blockchain and it happened.
I was against the #HBDPotato proposal, and those funds were later Powered Up for personal use.
If we are going to stand against Governments, Billionaires, Conglomerates and #BigTech, I think it's common sense we should secure the network with OUR OWN hardware, not via 3rd parties like #AWS or #Privex, regardless of their standing.
#NotYourHardwareNotYourWitness
P.S. Do you work for #Privex, or was that just a quote from them, not you?
@Someguy123 is the CEO and founder of Privex Inc. - as shown on our site https://www.privex.io/about
Unfortunately, Privex isn't actually popular among the top 20, believe it or not - there's maybe 3 or 4 of the top 20 (including @someguy123 - who owns his own physical server in SE) spread across Privex's 7 regions (SE, US, DE, FI, JP, NL, CA), and our regions are spread across different company's datacenters, rather than just one company who owns all of the DCs in every region.
A lot of our Hive customers are either rank <30, or simply use us for seeds, RPC nodes, or hosting their Hive-related applications.
Ah okay, awesome thank you @privex and @someguy123 that makes sense and is GREAT news!! 😀
I hope more people will get listed and people will vote 😀🎉🏆
What if a Hive user rents #Privex's "Hive-in-a-box™" VPS service? 🤔 Do you think they deserve to get Hive witness votes? 🤨
I would like to take this a step further and port the nodes to meshnets for ultimate decentralization (as far as I know).
WOW teach me how to do that @diggndeeper.com
Please do one and tag me so I can see it! 😀
Posted via D.Buzz
I don't know if I can teach you, but I would be super stoked to learn with you and others. I do have some knowledge of meshnets, but I don't currently have the ability to glue it all together. It takes a community and I will do everything I can to dig as deep as I can. (Sorry to keep using the DiggnDeeper pun,)
Check out this article I wrote a day or so ago as a start to refreshing my research into meshnets
https://peakd.com/blockchain/@diggndeeper.com/reignitingthemeshnetswhenweneedthemmost-yp59b2maalcw9fos5qkx
I bookmarked it for now, but please, keep in touch and tag me if there's news.
It might be good for us to have a Voice or Video call after I read your post 🙂👍
Posted via D.Buzz
I can certainly appreciate that. I'll be working on more useful information. I still haven't stood up a witness node yet either, so can't start trying to glue things together until I do that.