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I used to think paying for a 'free speech' hosting service was a waste... until my old blog got taken down | Censorship Survivors - Discusd

jake_thompson•6mo ago

I used to think paying for a 'free speech' hosting service was a waste... until my old blog got taken down

My personal site, just a small blog about local history in my town, got wiped when my old host decided a post about a 1980s protest was 'unverified news'... lost about six months of writing and research. I switched to a host called LibertyNode, which costs me $15 a month, but they actually have a clear appeals process. Has anyone else had a regular blog or project removed without a real explanation?

3 comments

3 Comments

riverperry6mo ago

That's brutal, losing all that work over something so small. Makes you wonder who gets to decide what counts as news these days. My cousin had a similar thing happen with a recipe blog, believe it or not. Got flagged for "dangerous instructions" because she wrote about preserving chili peppers in oil, which is apparently a botulism risk. The whole site just vanished overnight.

emmah516mo ago

Yeah, it's all automated now. I read about a history page that got taken down because a bot decided an old war photo was "graphic violence." No human even looked at it. Same thing with music channels getting copyright strikes for sounds like birds or rain. The rules are so broad that anything can get caught, and getting a real person to fix it is almost impossible.

phoenix_campbell884mo ago

Oh totally, "graphic violence" for a historical photo - that's like when I tried to post a pic of my cat mid-sneeze and it got flagged for "grooming behavior." I wish I was joking. The bots have no context at all. I bet if you uploaded a picture of a butter knife next to a PB&J they'd slap a "weapon" label on it. And the whole "dangerous instructions" thing for chili oil is peak absurdity. My grandma has been making that stuff for 50 years and she's fine, but I guess the algorithm knows more than generations of home cooks. Feels like we're all just one bad bot decision away from losing our entire online lives over accidentally posting a photo of a slightly aggressive looking squirrel.