Choosing Privacy-Respecting Web Hosting Services

Before I delve into specifics and come to the conclusion, let me clarify some things: first and foremost, web hosting services must allow the use of the Tor network for interaction with its servers all the time; second of all, said services ought to be free software; finally, it would be a huge bonus if no JavaScript is required to utilise the service or, at the very least, free or trivial JavaScript is used instead.

The list of services to be reviewed is as follows:

There may be more services that would meet the criteria outlined above, but I decided to stick with these four for now. Without further ado, off we go.

GitHub

An impeccable overview of what GitHub is all about along with the downsides it entails can be found here. As an additional note, GitHub is not free software, which is already enough for me not to consider it as a service of choice.

However, for the sake of this article, I went ahead and signed up on GitHub using a burner email address while routing all of my traffic through the Tor network. It obviously did not yield any positive results, since every vital interaction with the site puts the burden of running JavaScript on the user. At this point I have taken the time to install LibreJS, which basically allows any free or trivial JavaScript to run with no issues while blocking proprietary JavaScript. As you may have guessed it already, it also did not work, because the biggest portion of the functionality of GitHub pushes the user into running proprietary JavaScript.

In spite of prior privacy violations, I was determined to go to the limit and see what can and cannot be done, so I had whitelisted GitHub's domain in LibreJS — whitelisted just to find out that my profile is now considered dodgy by the organisation and that it will be marked as private permanently along with any further repositories of mine, — and things have appeared to be working at the cost of my dramatically reduced privacy. The funniest thing is, GitHub Pages will work solely on public repositories, and my account did not meet this requirement.

GitLab

First of all, GitLab is free software. Even though its web user interface cannot be accessed without JavaScript, the code seems to be free as well. Nonetheless, it refuses to work with LibreJS enabled.

During the registration process, the service has been bombarding me with error messages under the pretext that email addresses I've been vainly feeding the system were allegedly dubious. The moment I signed up after dozens of retries, I got redirected to GitLab's home page with a notice stating that my account has been banned for absolutely no reason. No elaboration was given — nothing.

Codeberg

Free software, requires no JavaScript in order to sign up. The only issue is that it thrusts email validation upon users, and of several accounts I have created so far, I have yet to receive a single confirmation email.

The biggest downside here is the inability to use the service if email was not confirmed.

Neocities

Notorious mass shooter browsing Neocities after getting away with yet another murder.
Notorious mass shooter browsing Neocities after getting away with yet another murder.

Free software. Requires JavaScript and, unfortunately, uses Google's reCAPTCHA for verification purposes. Complains about shifty email addresses while signing up, but of seven or eight fake accounts I have created on Neocities, it only complained once. Although email confirmation is mandatory, messages get sent on time.

The bandwidth is pretty much unlimited capped at 200 GB per month, and the amount of space is limited to 1 GB.

Conclusion

Fuck GitHub. GitLab goes straight into the trash. Codeberg, although seems like a better alternative to the previously mentioned services, fails at delivering confirmation email.

As for Neocities, it's far from respecting privacy of its users, but nevertheless it is the only service among those three that allowed me to sign up and start using it straight away. Besides, I no longer sign in to my account, as basic interaction with the site can be done via Neocities' slick API. If GNU were to rate the service, it would inevitably get the same grade as GitHub, if not worse, for the sole usage of the term "open source" in lieu of "free software" among many other criteria. On a positive note, Neocities will free you of git shackles; you also won't have to wait for a couple of minutes for continuous integration pipeline to be finished before changes you have made to the site get applied — it's nearly instantaneous on Neocities. Also, you can't deny how cute their mascot is.

To sum up, if you are, just like myself, a poorfag and are looking for ways to set up your blog or whatever on services that are not Tor-hostile, then I would recommend you give Neocities a try as it is a proper GeoCities continuation, a social network of some kind with an overwhelming amount of aspiring — as well as professional — artists. Moreover, none of the reviewed services is going to give you as much exposure as Neocities would, since you can sharpen your HTML and CSS skills and compete with others to find out whose dick is bigger in terms of the most sophisticated site design.