[MikeBVaughn]

I'm curious about the thought process of people who use services like this. If the datacenter operators are being truthful, then posting mycrimes dot txt on the internet seems like a bad idea. Fundamentally, they're saying "we operate in a comparatively lawless area, and we're doing <x>, <y>, and <z>." But, all things being equal, I'd expect things like regional militias and organized crime to fill the vacuum of state power, and explicitly saying what you do seems like it opens you up to getting shaken down or worse.

On the other hand, they also have no real obligation to be honest about the service they're providing. If they're already publicly claiming to be doing crimes, then being dishonest about the security and safety of the services provided is a drop in the already-quite-full bucket. My guess is that unless they're extremely principled about their specific view of free speech, the risks inherent in the venture mean they don't believe this necessarily has, say, decades-long sustainability as a business model. If so, then maximizing near-term profit by cutting corners or abusing access to customer data is probably a very tempting option.

Looking at the angles, I have a hard time seeing who'd want to use a service like this.

[limteary]

I've used a similar site for DNS and some hosting.

The main reason was having to deal with CSAM and copyright reports, the more common registrars/providers would threaten to pull me if I didn't reply in 24 or 48 hours and eventually I would get kicked off.

I was hosting copyrighted content, I wasn't hosting CSAM but there was legal content involving minors but average provider doesn't care and will argue with you or say it violates their TOS. These shady hosts/registrars just don't care, sure they might vanish one day but if you have backup it's fine.

[mtmail]

I used a shady domain registrar (.com) for fun. They had their legal contact in Ethiopia, didn't ask for anything other than an email address and would even accept cash money sent to them. All kinds of crypto currencies, too. I used Paypal and their annual invoices were shady looking too, always ending up in spam.

Yes, they just didn't care. Then one day they said I had to send them a copy of my passport to continue. Also if I wanted to cancel or transfer the main. I let the domain expire instead (got domain squatted but I managed to get it back a couple of years later).

[sillysaurusx]

I’d like to distribute training data. (I’m one of the authors of The Pile, which was recently knocked offline when The Eye stopped hosting it due to threats.)

I also have the entire books3 dataset — the original epub files, not text extractions — sitting around on a hard drive. Many people have wanted metadata or to reprocess the set for their own purposes. I’d like to release those, but distributing 190,000 epubs is a little… hard.

Sadly 50TB of traffic per month is almost nothing when it comes to disturbing 800GB datasets. I’d spend 150 euros a month for a solution, but it’d need to be heftier.

[ddorian43]

Just rent a seedbox. Example: https://pulsedmedia.com/

[WildGreenLeave]

What about P2P like a torrent? I think plenty of people would be open to seeding this. (I, personally, would love to see things like this)

[throwawaysleep]

Probably people who are committing little crimes that can get you in trouble but not worth international level resources? Scamming seniors perhaps?

[wkat4242]

That is kinda India's domain though. Aided by their even lower wages and seniors being susceptible to phone calls, not digital comms. "Hello this is Microsoft calling, we need to fix a problem with your computer". There seems to be an upsurge in this crime lately.

Similar to Serbia India's government seems highly acceptant of these scammer callcenters. They seem to operate without any legal intervention. IMO the country should be hit with sanctions for it, that'll end it in no time.

[renewiltord]

You could host BitTorrent seeds or something. Nobody is coming for you internationally over that.

[simultsop]

If you are good with that you can help the guys upgrade their tools: https://kosix.net/ the ISP's there are new to the business.