Nearlyfreespeech is a great service though not a 100% independent as your still relying on them. I think the closest you can get to 100% independent without running your own internet infrastructure is either port forwarding from your home (if allowed) or hosting a website through TOR which isn't too hard. You just have to download the browser and edit a config file (torrc) with the port you want on the network. Not ideal of course though because anyone who wants to visit your website will need the tor browser and explaining to people that your website is on the "dark web" is a little hard to do.

I am a little surprised that doing so isn't more popular on in the indie web scene though as you do it on hardware you own, from your home, and the tor network protects people from knowing your servers ip address if that's something you care about. You could even go to your domain provider and have one of your domains redirect to your .onion address so people don't need to memorize it.

There also used to be the beaker browser which let you create and host your own website directly from the browser but that project got shut down. Hopefully something similar will show up at some point. Maybe a website creating plugin for tor would be enough to make it more popular.

Few people host their websites as hidden services because it's just asking too much from anyone who uses your site.

Imagine you are in a conversation with a stranger. You want to show him your personal website. Consider the following two sentences. Which has the highest probability of actually helping him getting on your website?

"Go to myfirstnamelastname.com. Yeah, it's spelled with a K."

"Go to $FIFTYSIXRANDOMCHRACTERS.onion. Oh you need to use the onion browser. Let me help you install it on your phone. Can't find the service? Oh my bad it's actually $FIFTYSIXRANDOMCHARACTERS.onion. There you go."

Note: you don’t need to “download the browser” to use Tor. Tor is a service, not a browser. The “Tor Browser” bundles a privacy-friendly browser with the Tor service, for your convenience. You can run a Tor site on your headless server without installing any browser at all.

+1. Why even pay the penny? Spinning a onion service is trivial...and...more secure than the clearwebz.

I've made a few easy to spin up services. Heck, you can even run it off your phone.

Nanogram https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/nanogram

Spreadsheet Server https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/spreadsheet

Library Server https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/libraryserver

Torum (HN Clone) https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/torum

> You could even go to your domain provider and have one of your domains redirect to your .onion address so people don't need to memorize it.

Apparently [1] there are also ways that Tor Browser supports, for directing visitors to the onion address via the “normal” internet:

- Onion-Location

> The Onion-Location method was introduced on Tor Browser 9.5 as a way for service operators announce their Onion Services in their regular HTTPS sites. It's specified under tor-browser-spec's Proposal 100 - "Onion redirects using Onion-Location HTTP header".

- Alt-Svc

> Similar to Onion-Location, the Alt-Svc method also uses an HTTP Header (the Alt-Svc Header, specified by RFC 7838), which means that the user first need to access the regular site before their browser discovers the alternate Onion Service address.

> But contrary to Onion-Location, the Alt-Svc method:

> - Does not support an HTML tag, as it relies entirely in the Alt-Svc Header.

> - Is fully transparent: all the discovery and upgrade happens automatically, without user intervention.

- Additionally, they also speak of future possibilities for DNS or DNSSEC-based Onion Association.

[1]: https://onionservices.torproject.org/research/proposals/usab...

Perfect is enemy of the good. Like you said, the only way to be truly independent if people ran their own infrastructure, and if all the hardware was as 100% FOSS.

Of all the compromises we have to do (relying on Telco providers, equipment manufacurers, etc), using Nearlyfreespeech is the less risky one. They have no history of abusing the trust users have placed on them, and service costs virtually nothing.

With port forwarding, somebody else still owns the identifier that points to your website, whether that's a domain name or an IP address.

i host myself with 2 fixed IPs from telekom germany business, its not as expensive as one might expect, under 90€ for a fiber and vdsl line, so next to hosting your own auth ns servers and mail you get failover at home which is nice.

Nah, then you're still dependent on Tor. The most independent way is to publish your blog on your own p2p network ;)

> port forwarding from your home

Not 100% independent then. You still depend on your isp.

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