Hi guys, I don’t know if this is the right place to ask for advice about this so if I’m in the wrong place kindly show me where should I go.
With that out of the way here is my back story, I’m Iranian and as many of you guys heard in the news there are mass uprising, protests and geopolitical conflict going on here. So naturally our theocratic dictatorship leaders here decide on a whim when the whole country can have internet access to outside world or not and when they cut it off there is no safe place for people to keep in touch when we need it the most. Mostly they want to keep people in dark unaware of what’s going on out there…
Here is what I thought, Can I deploy and run my own fediverse instance in this situation on VPS hosted inside the country? Me and a few of my trusted friends are the admins of a small local community of around 200 people give or take but this community can grow to 1000 roughly in future. I can be an example for my fellow countrymen here if I can others can too and many other local communities can be shaped like this inside the country… Which fediverse platform we should choose? Lemmy or piefed comes to my mind but I’m a total noob I have no background in programming. I can use LLMs for help Where should I start? Can you guys help me here. I’m a little lost all this is uncharted territory for me
Depending on the legality and safety of doing so, you may also want to look into tech for avoiding censorship and oppresive regimes.
Things like TOR, running your own DNS server, etc.
Edit: I didn’t want to just leave this vague, so I looked up the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense guide hoping for some better specifics, but unfortunately it looks like it’s mainly about making security plans, understanding your risk profile, using secure settings on your personal devices, using signal, using TOR, and selecting “the VPN that’s right for you”.
Like you really have a choice of “the VPN right for you” when they shut down things to only approved in/out IPs.
There might be useful info there, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping to point you at, sorry.
Considering the risks involved with hosting something like this, I would probably start with research on how you could host this safely/anonymously. That would be my first priority. Can’t help people if they take you out.
Next step would be looking at piefed/Lemmy or whatever systems you’re thinking about hosting and identifying what features/logs/etc you would need to disable, modify, or set up to clear themselves automatically so that you wouldn’t have information worth going after in the first place.
There is no way to bypass this. They don’t just filter/censor the Internet. They shut the whole outside of the country access down period. Not even the data centers are exempt. Starlink setup is the only way to bypass this system and it is very illegal and hard to find here
Something to consider about the fediverse is the federation aspect of it; consider re framing your starting position.
Basically, if you make the project “you” hosting “this one” fediverse instance, that instance can be taken down, hacked, its moderation team gets bored, etc…
However if you making the project about “creating access to self-hosting” fediverse instances, well now you have something more robust that at least in a hypothetical scenario, could survive the internet being cut off from the outside, because at least instances within the network can still federate.
Something that is self-hosted which could support with this is codeberg. You could set up some repo’s to sync with the main lemmy/ piefed/ whatever you want, then you get your community to create several federated instances as automatic backups to one another.
Regardless, your personal and operational security should be your highest priority. But if you make the priority getting the tools out, instead of hosting one particular instance, thats much harder to stop.
Thanks some great advice here you’re right it would be much better and more resilient. Gonna talk about this with others see what they can come-up with
Don’t want to go into specifics but I found a way to anonymously rent a VPS server here. This is also very illegal. The logs like you said are a big concern I need to figure that out for sure thanks good place to start
If it was me, I would not run Lemmy/Piefed in your situation. These things are designed to be fully open and visible to anyone who want to look at them. Probably not your use case.
I’d rather look at something like a Matrix instance, where you can have encryption and secrecy built in. Also, you say that you’re a noob in these things. If you want to hide from the government, you really do need someone very experienced to help you with security, or else it won’t end well.
All the best!
Well said I was thinking about matrix too seems to be a lot safer. But it’s not the platform I was looking for. I really need something like Lemmy where people can make communities share their interests not just group chats
There are also mesh systems that are worth looking into, if it’s possible to get access to the hardware for communication that is potentially harder for the government to track.
Thanks I’m not nearly technical enough to even pretend I can figure this one out but others are, gonna forward this to them see what they think
Buddy…
You want to host an anti-Iranian regime website, from inside Iran?
Like, do you honestly not understand how easy it would be to trace back to you?
Do you realize in any country hosting an instance makes you responsible for what’s posted?
That’s not even getting into how you couldn’t post outside links if there’s a filter, or how
ifwhen the regime IDs you and arrests you, they have all the DMs and IMs of everyone who signed up for itYou want a secure messaging service, what you’re talking about is an insanely uninformed and dangerous plan.
Do not do what you’re talking about doing.
Maybe I don’t get what you’re asking.
If you created your own instance, running it on your own, and the Iranian government shut off your internet, YOU could still access the instance, since you’re on the same Lan inside your house…but how would other people access it if you don’t have internet?
My fault I didn’t explain it. They don’t cut the internet inside the country (look at it as somekind of a intranet network inside a country wide network) which they control it. they cut the access to outside world so access to any service not hosted locally inside the country is instantly lost
A good idea would be a p2p system such as briar, which would be extremely hard to block as it syncs over tor, local WiFi, Bluetooth, and removable drives. As it is fully encrypted and has no servers to take over it would be very hard for the government to intercept messages.
Yes I thought about briar and other similar p2p networks not ideal but safer for sure. I should have said it in the beginning I’m not gonna do anything obviously illegal on that server those things when needed gonna take place somewhere else planning for that too
good start! but when internet gets turned off, anything using tcp/ip stops. look for coop cloud, Reticulum, LoRa radios if you can get them. you can build your OWN local area internet to communicate with your friends.
I should have explained this part better that’s totally on me. They don’t cut the whole thing down (atleast not yet) they cut the global part of the world wide web. Making it a local to the country intranet network that they control
definitely a better situation than depending on global servers. But if you think you’re likely to suffer censorship even within your country, or power outages etc, it’s good to look at alternatives that you control the hardware and power sources for yourselves.
I’m not sure of the details about the situation in Iran, but from my understanding, it seems that it would be much safer to set up a server outside the country that’s run by you and others inside the country. It’s fairly easy to set up virtual private servers, although you may need to arrange payment outside the country.
That would be much safer than hosting it with the physical infrastructure inside your borders. If you’re hosting the physical infrastructure, it makes it much easier to locate. If the server is not in Iran, then it may be difficult or impossible for the government to seize it and access the contents.
There are people on this site who are far more expert than I when it comes to network security. Follow their feedback and you may even find someone willing to partner with you to help set it up.
You’re right hosting outside is safer for sure but that misses the whole point of keeping people in touch when they cut off the global part of the world wide web making it a local to the country intranet network. I’m gonna start this on my own there are a lot of documentation for me to read through and figure out when I’m ready I’m gonna ask if anyone is willing to help I would be happy to accept
To be honest: If you don’t have the deeper technical knowledge to implement some secure form of forum / BBS or something like that and if you are dependent on the advice from strangers on the net and LLMs AND you are currently living in a nation where something like that may lead to an “accident”… just don’t. A warzone isn’t the right place to learn to fight.
Honestly I wish it was an accident. They just gonna murder you for being an Israeli spy. I know the risks and gonna be very careful about this
