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Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

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Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#11

Maybe Substack? https://substack.com/

Maybe - but Substack is pretty big, do they algorithmically ban? I didn't find anything saying specifically that they didn't. I guess it's not too big of a problem if I get banned and it's the only content I have there, but I would have wasted time.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#12

This is not meant to be a 'cute' humorous response, but a serious one: trying to think of places that likely have next to no algorithmic banning, I wonder if Pastebin is a solution. Perhaps I think of this because my earliest Internet experiences were with days of BBSs, with directories of text files and newsgroup postings.

i think this is the difference between hosting and publishing.

pastebin, BBSs, or even just uploading a file to a filehost like S3 would all work. but that doesn't put the content in front of anybody's eyes like the publishing platforms do. if you just upload a file somewhere, nobody is going to see it. and i assume that having other people read it is the point.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#13
I know you said you'd rather not self host, but it can be very easy if you stick to the mainstream stuff and don't modify it much, and you don't mind the cost.

DigitalOcean has a "1 click" setup for WordPress (and probably other blogging software). It's not actually 1 click, but it is super easy. The most tedious part was buying and configuring a domain, which has to be done away from DigitalOcean.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#14

This is not meant to be a 'cute' humorous response, but a serious one: trying to think of places that likely have next to no algorithmic banning, I wonder if Pastebin is a solution. Perhaps I think of this because my earliest Internet experiences were with days of BBSs, with directories of text files and newsgroup postings.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/nag_hammadi_library

I don't get what you mean here, but thanks since I had totally forgotten this existed and it is actually useful to me for some other projects.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#17

Maybe Substack? https://substack.com/

Maybe - but Substack is pretty big, do they algorithmically ban? I didn't find anything saying specifically that they didn't. I guess it's not too big of a problem if I get banned and it's the only content I have there, but I would have wasted time.

I think substack is a safe bet for your case, the only prohibition is on porn and credible threats, and promoting illegal activities. See their content guidelines [0] and a blog on their philosophy of hands-off moderation, letting readers choose who they follow [1]. They don't algorithmically recommend articles, so they don't have to place the same filters and automated "shadow banning" that other platforms perform.

[0] https://substack.com/content

[1] https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati...

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#19
There was a site linked here yesterday, https://www.thc.org/segfault, that lets you set up disposable root servers - and they also have persistent Tor hidden service (.onion) hosting built in. You could host your essay on there and use one of the clearnet onion proxies, such as .onion.ws, to host it publicly.

(Or you could self-host an .onion, but this approach has someone else do all the fiddly technical bits for you.)

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