A few days ago, the U.S. government sanctioned A/I for supporting “extreme far-left antifa terrorists”. If you didn’t know, A/I is an antifascist and anticapitalist group based in Italy, and they host a lot of services (like email, website hosting, etc.) run through donations. Their policy states that they are against racism, sexism, militarism, homophobia, and transphobia, and you have to agree to those principles to use their services. Their website and mailing server has been taken down, and unfortunately, that also means my email no longer works. It’s kind of insane how quickly the American government can take down internet services they don’t like. A/I has denied all of the allegations by the Trump admin, and rightfully so, they’re just a digital services provider who respect your privacy and are against fascism and bigotry.

relevant link if you want to read more about this: https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076

I still need to use email, so what’s a good alternative email provider that doesn’t profit off of my data? I have used Disroot in the past and had good experiences with their services, so they are currently my fallback. I have ruled out Proton and Tuta, as neither support IMAP properly.

edit: It appears that it’s only the autistici.org domain that has been blocked (the registrar for the .org TLD is American), the services are still running (though my email is unable to receive mail, I can only read existing mail). A/I is working towards providing users with a new mail address. If that doesn’t pan out, I’ll probably go with Disroot.

  • Scrollone@feddit.it
    91·
    9 days ago

    This doesn’t have anything to do with Italy. A/I has been banned because they used a .org domain, which is under US control.

    If any, we should move to a decentralised DNS system.

    • TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca
      1·
      8 days ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistici/Inventati#Censorship_and_surveillance

      The Italian Postal Police secretly searched A/I’s main server in 2004 and decrypted user content, which was discovered a year later through a document inquiry. In response, the collective adopted a redundant distributed server architecture.

      Then it should be easy to run it in some other domain. They’ve also been blocked off from donations, which is the motor that keeps them running. It’s easy to do that when your own government is part of the problem and won’t stand up for you or even engage in diplomatic actions. Just because the hegemony has the US at the top does not make it just about the US.

      Without addressing or even acknowledging the core political problems, just moving to a decentralized DNS system is just asking for more the next step in asset and personnel seizure and incarceration. Not that politically this is stopping the reactionary populists from increasingly classifying the “left” as a terrorist group: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/how-a-leftist-network-used-by-terrorists-operated-in-plain-sight-for-years/ar-AA2bct9u

      If you can’t or are unwilling to see this as part of a global movement, I don’t know what to tell you, the billionaire oligarchy representatives over at the Heritage Foundation couldn’t have been more clear, just like their influence.