Sabot Media interview request — Become the Thousand Servers

Collectif Représentation externe
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Ci-dessous un mail de Sabot Media reçu le 06/09/2026 que j’ai oublié de diffuser.

En espérant que certain·es d’entre nous trouveront l’énergie de faire une réponse.

Hi,

I’m Ash with Sabot Media, a small independent media project based in rural Washington State. We’ve been reporting extensively on the shutdown of Autistici/Inventati and the wider consequences for autonomous movement infrastructure.

I’m now developing that reporting into a living guide tentatively titled “Become the Thousand Servers.” Rather than compiling another list of “trusted hosts,” I want to document the different ways communities can publish, host, archive, distribute and recover their work without simply replacing one central point of dependency with another.

I’m speaking with publishers, autonomous server collectives, cooperative infrastructure projects and community-network projects about what has actually worked, what has failed, and what small groups can realistically do themselves.

I’d love to include your perspective. Written answers by email are completely fine, and there is no need to disclose sensitive operational or security information.

CHATONS is particularly relevant because the project explicitly tries to decentralize hosting across many smaller local providers rather than creating another giant ethical provider.

  1. What have you learned about decentralization from actually trying to federate many independent hosting organizations?
  2. How do you prevent a federation itself from slowly recentralizing around its largest or most technically capable members?
  3. Could members realistically support or absorb one another’s users if one host suddenly disappeared?
  4. What makes “local hosting” meaningfully different from simply having lots of small commercial providers?
  5. If you wanted a thousand more small community hosts to exist, what is currently stopping them?

Thanks,

Ash
Sabot Media
https://sabot.media

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J’ai déplacé le sujet dans chatons privé, en considérant le contexte et ne sachant pas si l’émetteur est d’accord que son mail soit publié.

Je laisse @Moderation @moderators décider si il faut remettre dans la catégorie publique ou non.

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We actually address some of those questions in our talk at Wikimania 2026 : Wikimania 2026 - Becoming a CHATONS - PicaTube

First, I’d like to say that most of the CHATONS structures don’t share the same threat model as A/I. The following answers are not necessarily adequate for structures that will face big targeted attacks.

  1. Decentralization is feasible. Having a small non-profit hosting activity is accessible to IT people. Yunohost helps for that, and a meaningful share of CHATONS hosts based on Yunohost.

  2. CHATONS was created in an attempt from not recentralizing around Framasoft, one of the founding members of the collective. I think it works for us because the most known hosts actively advertise for the rest of the collective.

  3. It already happened :slight_smile:
    Le Cloud Girofle, among others, have absorbed existing chatons that discontinued, due to a lack of resources. They took in the domain names, and it was transparent for users.
    If the domain name disappears, the question is different, as it would require more user support, but it would be doable too.

  4. Some members of our collective are commercial. But most of them are registered or informal non-profits. We have hosters that rely on a « Pay what you want » model, permitting more inclusive services. We take pride in keeping a human contact, being reachable and providing support to our users.
    Additionally, some of us have our own physical architectures, assuring an in-depth control to our servers, while others rely on Cloud providers.
    So we have a lot of technical and economical diversity in the collective. And I think this makes us even stronger. Biodiversity over monoculture.

  5. I think the world needs more collective of hosters. This makes us less vulnerable, and brings collective strength. French-speaking people can join CHATONS. We’re mostly from France, a few from Belgium and Canada. But we’d love to see similar collectives flourish in other countries! That was the point of our talk at Wikimania.

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Tu as bien fait. Je lui ai demandé par mail si c’était ok, on verra ce qu’iel préfère.

Edit: They’re okay with a public post!

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Hihihi trop content qu’on puisse partager cette prez dans ce genre de cas :heart:

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Thank you for this reply!

Ash with Sabot Media here

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Thanks, this is extremely helpful.

The example of one CHATONS member taking over services and domains from another that was shutting down is especially useful for the course, because it turns “decentralization” from an abstract principle into an actual continuity practice.

The practical lesson we had been thinking of for CHATONS was essentially:

Move from one ethical host to another without starting over.

The learner would take a small test service, document what needs to move, export or copy it, prepare another host, test the replacement, switch DNS carefully, and verify that the original provider could disappear without taking the service with it.

Your answer makes me think the lesson should go a little further and explicitly include the human/collective side of migration too: domains, user communication, support, knowledge transfer, and what makes one independent host capable of absorbing another.

I also really like the distinction you make between CHATONS and A/I’s threat model. We’ll keep that qualification visible rather than presenting ordinary decentralized hosting as an answer to every kind of targeted pressure.

And “biodiversity over monoculture” gets directly at what we are trying to teach: resilience is not just having more servers, but having different organizations, economic models, infrastructure, people, and paths for recovery.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer. The Wikimania talk is going into our references as well.

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I’m delighted that you liked the answer!

Ping @LeCloudGirofle if they want to give more insight to their takeover of a discontinued chaton. I believe the details of the story is interesting.

And breaking news on A/I’s continuity: A member of the collective, @lacontrevoie, just announced free WordPress hosting for former noblogs websites: La Contre-Voie : « If you are a former A/I member and had a blog on … » - Aquilepouet

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Response from @keo from @LeCloudGirofle (who is currently AFK):

Thank you for mentioning us. We indeed merged with one other collective, and « absorbed » another. The 1st one was managed by one person, with ~20-30 members with a few services (emails, mailing-list, websites). Merging took around 6 months, communication was smooth. The 2nd one was managed by a small team of volunteers with more services (Nextcloud, Mattermost, Wordpress, Emails) for ~10 hosted collectives and their members. Absorbing took almost a year, and a lot of back-and-forth communication (email and video calls), and we lost active members on the way.

In both cases, the collectives took the time in advance to contact their members, and clean unused services. This was very helpfull, and cannot be made on short notice like what happend with A/I. In both cases, because we have time, we took over the domains, to ease the migration for the members.

Merging or absorbing with other collectives is completely doable, but requires time and communication event at small scale. We don’t have experience for larger organisations/collectives. We believe that if we remain small and decentralized, we are more agile and harder to shut down.

Be water my friend

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