Nice write-up. I'd take this as a blueprint. Anyone can swap 3rd-party services to their like (e.g. headscale, xmpp bot on that vps, backblaze s3, etc.) and extend upon (e.g. oidc providers, mailboxes, arr suite, etc.)
A cheap VPS with headscale. Or just ZeroTier.com free plan.
Oh. And an invite-only could also work for new accounts.
On an instance level, you can close registration after a threshold level of users that you are comfortable with. Then, you can defederate the instances that are driven by capitalistic ideals like eternal growth (e.g. Threads from meta)
But terrible handling of metadata. Which is the case for all chat apps AFAIK. Like, even with OMEMO, who talks with whom, and when, can be exposed. Which sometimes is enough to get legal issues (e.g. Ola Bini's case)
The "other criminal activity" probably includes many horrible things. Not just a teen selling shrooms. So, I am not so sure that's really what we want.
AI (e.g. face recognition) is riddled with false positives. Such a tech already does wrong on civilians without being a weapon (e.g. cameras on subways). What you said is somewhat naïve.
Oh, fair point. Perhaps rclone.org then! :O
Syncthing. Look no further, just check the "untrusted device" so that you don't give unencrypted data to your friend's disk.
Oh, I didn't remember. Time to report my own post... Lol. Let's see if mods want to lock this thread then they can do it.
This! And, baby-steps: don't go about installing every app you see. Try backup strategies, put them to test (bring service down and up again with data from backup). Play, have fun.
They were cutting files in smaller parts and spreading over multiple locations and countries. At least that was the claim in the early days, so anything illegal would require lawyers on many jurisdictions sending the same letter (e.g. DMCA takedown)
Ironically, it did work but now that Durov is in jail channel admins would do good to take precautions.