The political philosophies behind services like Disroot, Riseup, dismail.de... And what are a few other friendly email providers?

Open Talks
#1

In other words, what do you represent if you choose @disroot.org, @riseup.net, or @dismail.de as your personal address? Disroot and Riseup stand for activism but it’s not clearly explained on the websites what do they stand for. Activism is an umbrella term. How wide is your Overton window for activism and that of your fellow activists at Riseup?

From the three services I think I can explain dismail.de the best. It runs on OpenBSD and the BSD community is fairly permissive. Nearly anything goes, their Overton window is wide. :slight_smile: It’s essentially a one man show so anything happens to the person running the service you have to look for another provider. They run a free service but you are supposed to donate. Protected by strong German privacy laws… And basically that’s it. I haven’t found info on whether your inbox is encrypted on their servers. What do you think?

I’m not affiliated with any of the services I mentioned. What are other friendly email providers?

#2

I dont know where did you get the information that we are somehow for activist exlcusive. Nowhere on our website, neither in our Mission statement we say anything about it. The images on the website (which is I believe the clue here) is somewhat resembling our political ideas (of those behind disroot) and are commentary to what we believe are similar “disrooting” struggles in real life, where poeple take matters in their own hands, creating active opposition to the powers to be and alternative ways of thinking. As long as poeple are civil, and respectful towards eachother, even if on different political spectrums, they are all welcome. I think our TOS defines the terms well.

Of course what we do here, no matter if disroot, riseup, dismail or any other librehosters is in fact political and social activism and a very radical one considering the current status quo and monopolization of internet services.

As for your question asking for other platforms, have a look at https://libreho.st its a network of fair-service providers which we are also part of.

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#3

I dont know where did you get the information that we are somehow for activist exlcusive.

I didn’t use the words activist exclusive. :slight_smile:

My personal philosophy is something like this: Best of all possible worlds. Or what the Eastern philosophies say: Change is from within.

Otherwise, thanks for the info!

#4

Thanks for the link.Looks like a nice good night read to a pillow.

#5

Deep! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/#Var
Yes, Google is Evil!

#6

Evil is also within, not without. Trying to externalize it doesn’t help.

#7

Specifically from disroot TOS:
“The aim of disroot is to promote open source, free software and all kind of copyleft content. Embrace it and support artists and projects that release their work under those licences.”
This is Hacktivism, no?

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#8

My disroot email represents the IP address of a server in Amsterdam. :smile: And my desire for some privacy.

Freedom, have you heard about the optimist and the pessimist who both believed we live in the best of all possible worlds?

#9

Same story for cock.li email, also a one man show. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cock-li-e-mail-server-seized-by-german-authorities-admin-announces/
What is your personal definition of friendly email providers ?
Not sure that German law is that strong as you suggest.
This was worrying news to read :
https://www.zdnet.com/article/log-free-email-provider-posteo-you-must-log-user-ip-addresses-court-rules/
You probably know about Posteo, mailbox.org and more.
I’ll add one which is new and maybe not that well known yet in Europe.
https://freedom.nl/

#10

Pretending that evil is somehow fine doesn’t help either. Funnily enough, Google’s motto used to be “do no evil”. Seems like a mockery today.

Autistici is another provider that hasn’t been mentioned. I don’t like them that much now since they’ve went down for a few months recently. They also have a policy of deleting your account if you say something that could be interpteted as being against their ideology (immediately without notice). Though, I’m not sure that has ever actually happened. When I mentioned to them that their onion domain is down, they ignored me but the domain kept being down still. Kind of sad, it used to be my staple.

#11

Disroot is a “radical server” according to RiseUp:
https://riseup.net/en/security/resources/radical-servers#disroot

#12

I use disroot and riseup because of their non logging principals. although I do sympathise with most submersive political activists, I tend tot describe myself more of a privacy and data safety minded guy. Sure, I help out activists with setting up their Debian system more secure. But that’s because I have been following the technical ‘progress’ for over 15 years now. Not only are people willingly giving up their privacy through Facebook and the likes. An awfull lot of them rely on cloud services instead of local storage (preferbally encrypted).

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#13

This was an interesting conversation from a year ago. I hope you don’t mind revisiting it.

And what are they up to?

#14

Interesting developments from Germany. For non-German people the country always looked more privacy friendly than the rest of Europe because of their troubled history. They had to enact strong privacy laws so that the horrors of the 20th century cannot ever happen again. Something like that. If not Germany, what other countries are recommended for more privacy-friendly regulations when it comes to online services? Disroot’s servers are located in the Netherlands. That’s one for sure.

Now as I think about it, I used this term very broadly. Let’s say my definition of a friendly email provider is that they have no stupid policies. That’s still quite a broad term, open to your interpretation.

Thanks for the recommendation. Sure, I didn’t know about it. How does someone who don’t speak Dutch buy only an email account only from them? What I’ve found is their Freedom E-mail Only service, still listed as coming soon one year later:

#15

They have a funny name, too. (Reminds me of my opening question: what does it say about you if the domain part of your email address says Autistici?)

RiseUp is a “server with a confusing ideology” according to me. What they have written on that short page sound nice and simple, but in practice it’s very far from being that simple. They could have cited thick books as their sources for coming up this simple and short manifesto but that thick books probably have lots of contradictions when putting them all together.

Reminds me of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” but whoever devised the term (whoever devised it was a very controversial person himself) forgot to add: choose two.

Hey, this is the Open Talks section of the forum. :sunglasses: