Hosting your own forum is also better as you (the owner of the site) can still retrieve the msgs as long as you still have the access to the host server (so you can back them up in case shutting down, then going to resurfacing later).

Not to mention using discord is already risking yourself because of their shitty policy.

[–] madcaesar 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What's a safe way to host a site without anyone being able to track it to you?

[–] Crafter72 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I'll explain it in layman's terms...

There is always a price (inconvenience) for secure-ness in online world.
There's 2 option to host a forum,
1. You can use service like forum hoster or rent a VPS (so you can setup your own server although not self-hosting).
2. Self-host yourself (this one a bit tricky if you aren't prepared).
Learn some good basic OpSec habit (eg. Never use same password, Never put your personal detail in your active directory especially on your site source document, use 2FA and so on).
Learn to spot a phising or malicious link and never to randomly click random link in an email (in times when someone tried to social engineering you).
Use reputable service provider if you are not going to self-host yourself.
If you happen to self-host, make sure to check your open ports and secure them. Bots always probing any site in the world!
For some reason if you're going to run sketchy stuff, never use your real credential. This point may not apply on your region as it depends on your local law.

[–] madcaesar 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hm not really sure this answers what I mean. If you are hosting a site, how do you stop corps demanding your name from the hosting provider and going after you?

[–] Crafter72 2 points 8 months ago

Sadly for that matter it is more to the legal area.

For identity they can catch you either from email or the payment info. For email you can make one easily, but for payment search a provider that accept virtual (credit) card, or get something that accept crypto wallet.

Yeah, online exposure can point you sooner or later depending how motivated the party that seek you.

[–] merthyr1831 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

try [email protected] as I'm not 100% on this stuff

but basically:

some third party hosts let you sign up anonymously with an anonymous email etc.

Only ever connect to the server host via VPN

Get a domain with anonymous WHOIS protection

Stick it all behind a reverse proxy

Technically Nintendo or whoever could demand your proxy/host to stop doing business with your account, but they won't have enough personal info to go beyond that and you can just rehost it under new info.

[–] madcaesar 1 points 8 months ago

How would you pay for the hosting without being exposed?

[–] someacnt_ 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I make lots of use of discord. That does not mean I prefer it to forum style for communication - discord just suits well for one-off joke-y talk

[–] Crafter72 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Maybe in my message seems to focus solely on discord for putting the blame... The problem nowadays is that mostly these "devs" share/upload/host their releases in Discord which means you do use Discord's CDN to host their files. Another common complaint of these practices is that you need to join their server in order to just download relevant files which makes it infuriating if you stumbles across these practices often. For example I joined 8 different discord servers just to download a software/binary/release, why can't just put the release on something like Mediafire, Google Drive, Megaupload or perhaps sourceforge.

I do understand Discord is communication platform but most of time some people are too lazy to manage stuff so what happen is that everything is hosted in single place as such Discord.

[–] someacnt_ 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wait, wtf. People literally post helpful resources and artifacts on discord, and nowhere else? Huh. Just as I thought it is impossible to go lower

[–] Crafter72 1 points 8 months ago

Internet is really wide and open if you know direction :)

Even libgen (Library Genesis) still provide IRC as one of option to download ebook from their catalog.

FMHY and Internet Archive is a good entry point if you want to search anything.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And it’s a million times better for people trying to troubleshoot.

1 forum post can solve many problems, rather than having to have each person ask in a support chat that’s not searchable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Technically Discord is trying to solve this with their threads feature, but I've found either the server owners don't force it or the users don't use it. Either way, it sucks.

[–] merthyr1831 5 points 8 months ago

The threads/forum feature on discord is just awful. Topics get buried and I think the general ethos of discord encourages people to just spam in the chat channels rather than wait in a forum for help.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Can’t find the answer via a search engine though. You first have to find out where to look for the answer, before you can ask it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They need to be using an encrypted platform hosted in a country out of reach of Nintendo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not platform. Protocol.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Semantics, given the scope and intention of my comment

[–] bfg9k 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's so goddamn easy to set up a basic forum site for a few bucks a month, and it's not like there aren't hundreds of options for file sharing as well.

The Xbox and PSP modding forums were where I used to hang out before Reddit, a well-designed and run forum is so much better than trying to basically make a website out of a chat room.

[–] Cybersteel 1 points 8 months ago

I think most of those old forums are gone now.

[–] daltotron 5 points 8 months ago

Still not the point of a live-chat application. The use case is not the same as a forum. You want an archive where everything is well-organized and most questions have already been answered. Discord and other live chat services are more like live tech support, to fill the gap between the raw technical documentation found in GitHub, and the just getting started guide or FAQ, which are usually lightweight enough that they could be posted anywhere. Discord doesn't exist to be an archive that holds all the knowledge, discord exists so that when you open an app, you can go in, ask a couple questions, and hopefully someone will get to you in a couple minutes, at most, rather than in a couple days.