Access server

›››››››››››››› SSH

SSH keys provide a more secure way of logging into a virtual private server with SSH than using a password alone. While a password can eventually be cracked with a brute force attack, SSH keys are nearly impossible to decipher by brute force alone. Generating a key pair provides you with two long string of characters: a public and a private key. You can place the public key on any server, and then unlock it by connecting to it with a client that already has the private key. When the two match up, the system unlocks without the need for a password. You can increase security even more by protecting the private key with a passphrase.

›››››››››››››› Making changes in ssh

Remember to:

 sudo service ssh restart

Tip: I can check all available services in /etc/init.d

Attention: if there are problems, grep to see if it actually stops the service Like this:

 sudo service ssh stop

 ps aux | grep ssh

 sudo service ssh start

 ps aux | grep ssh

›››››››››››››› Debug

Debug with a -v flag. max 3 "v"s

 ssh <user>@<server> -vvv 

›››››››››››››› Create RSA Key Pair

You create your RSA key pair in the computer from which you want to log to the server.

I can use this key pair for several servers, but if I want to enter a same server from different computers, I create different rsa key pairs.

Lo voy a crear a nivel local [en mi compu] y esa va a ser la llave rsa ssh que voy a usar para entrar en mis vps. NO genero una para cada vps sino que esa misma me sirve para todas. Si voy a usar varios ordenadores para entrar en un vps, sí necesitaré crear una llave ssh por máquina desde la cual estoy accediendo.

So each admin in a server is going to have at least one rsa key pair.

Be careful to pay attention from which user you create this in your local machine [computer]. Since the rsa key pairs are saved in a hidden directory in my user home directory [~/.ssh], if Im trying to login from a different user, it will confuse home directories since each user has a different home directory.

So, from the user in my localmachine that I wish to use to access the server, I will create my rsa key pair:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

By default it will generate two keys in ~/.ssh, a public key and a private key. We are going to copy our public key to the server. If we don't have access to this server, we will send it to an admin of Anarcha server so that she can do it.

When generating the key, you will need to introduce a passphrase.

›››››››››››››› Copy public key to the server

After generating an SSH key pair, you will want to copy your public key to your new server.

To securely copy the public key, we shall enable password authentication on the remote server, by editing the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, and disable it after having copied the public key

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

uncomment and set PasswordAuthentication to yes and then to no after copying is done.

PasswordAuthentication yes

To copy your public key, run the following command

ssh-copy-id <user>@<server>

To enable the use of SSH key to authenticate as the new remote user, you must add the public key to a special file in the .ssh directory in the user's home directory. Assuming that we are going to create superuser accounts for each new admin we will do the following:

›››››››››››››› Creating new sysadmin accounts

Changing to root user

sudo su

Check the sudo users

 grep '^sudo:.*$' /etc/group | cut -d: -f4

If you are not yet, we create a superuser [note: it will ask me to introduce a passwd]

adduser <superusername>

Then we will add the superuser to sudoers:

usermod -aG sudo <superuser>

We now change to superuser:

su <superuser>

When we change user, we will be by default in the user's home directory [~]. You can do cd ~ just in case.

It is also possible to create a user [waters for example] and give it a limited privilege [to execute a certain command[s] as root]. To do this, create a new file [waters for instance] in the /etc/sudoers.d/ directory

touch /etc/sudoers.d/waters

and edit it with visudo [this is very important as it alerts you regarding any syntax errors]

sudo visudo /etc/sudoers.d/waters

and add the following line to allow the user waters to use a chmod command for example

waters ALL=(ALL) /usr/bin/chmod

To allow user waters to run a chmod command without entering a password edit the file this way

waters ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/chmod

›››››››››››››› .ssh directory and authorized_keys

Creating .ssh directory and authorized_keys document in the superuser home directory.

As the superuser to whom we want to give ssh access to the server, create a new directory called .ssh and restrict its permissions with the following commands:

mkdir .ssh

chmod 700 .ssh

chown superuser:group

Now open a file in .ssh called authorized_keys with a text editor. We will use nano to edit the file:

nano .ssh/authorized_keys

Now copy-paste the public key [which should be in your clipboard] by pasting it into the editor. Save and close.

ctrl + s

ctrl + x

Now restrict the permissions of the authorized_keys file with this command:

chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

chown superuser:group

Type this command once to return to the root user:

exit

As we are creating a new user + authentication as root, we have to change the owner of the .ssh directory to the new user [recursively - R]

chown <user>:<user> .ssh -R

Now you [the new sysadmin] may SSH login as your new user, using the private key as authentication.

. . . . . . › After reboot

Access physical mainframe to reboot the encrypted virtual machine. Ask permissions to the syteradmins, by posting on the mailingslist anarchaserver@lists.systerserver.net

. . . . . . › SSH Reverse DNS Lookup Disable

The invalid logins are normal, since there are bots that try to bruteforce servers.

As for the "possible break-in attempt" message, The system is trying to do a reverse DNS lookup to match the connecting IP with the hostname that is trying to connect and fails to do so.

The setting that controls that is UseDNS in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

y agrega la línea:

UseDNS no

sudo service ssh restart

Force ssh login to server

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and change & uncomment:

ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

PasswordAuthentication no

UsePAM yes

sudo service ssh restart

. . . . . . › Change ssh port access

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

The first option that you may want to change is the port that SSH runs on. Find the line that looks like this: Port 22

If we change this number to something in between 1025 and 65536, the SSH service on our server will look for connections on a different port. This is sometimes helpful because unauthorized users sometimes try to break into servers by attacking SSH. If you change the location, they will need to complete the extra step of sniffing it out.

If you change this value, you will need to keep in mind that your server is running on the new port.

service ssh restart

So now you would have to access to the server like this:

ssh <superuser>@<server> -p <portnumber>

›››››››››››››› References

_ Thread: log full of "POSSIBLE BREAK-IN ATTEMPT!"

_ How to start, restart and stop SSH service

_ How to add SSH key to server

_ How to add user to sudoers with best practices & examples

_ How to run sudo command without a password on a Linux or Unix

›››››››››››››› Interview Meltionary Access Server

This conversation took place between Anarchaserver, Lever Burns, Systerserver and the arts-design duo MELT on the 4th of February 2022. It has been shortened and edited for clarity by MELT.

Anarchaserver, Lever Burns, Systerserver are a distributed group of people based in Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Spain and Italy, working on feminist infrastructures and servers. Their work on setting up a peertube instance to provide an online video based residency to artists, is currently supported by the program A Fair New Idea?! (AFNI).

MELT is an arts-design duo currently working on an email server called ACCESS SERVER that anonymizes, collects and financially compensates access requests that disabled people send to institutions. ACCESS SERVER is currently supported by a fellowship with the Het Nieuwe Instituut.

The feminist servers invited MELT for a one month residency in order to try out feminist infrastructures for their project. We decided to begin the residency with an interview, focusing on how we have shared language in our projects but the ways they make meaning, are different.MELT found the subpage ACCESS SERVER on the website of Anarchaserver – a subpage set up to help people to access this feminist server. MELT wanted to ask about and consider the resonances between ACCESS SERVER as a way of logging into the feminist servers' infrastructure, and ACCESS SERVER as a way of making access for disabled people into cultural institutions. What followed was a conversation around technology, trans*feminism, sysadmin work, access, and disability.

We met in a hybrid way: some of us were present at Varia in Rotterdam and enjoyed coffee and fruits together, some joined via the self-hosted Jitsi instance of futuretic, an allied autonomous server.

Present were: Estragon, Mika, ooooo, spideralex, nate, Mara (Feminist Server Sysadmins) (FSS) Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr (MELT).

Could you walk us through the ways Access Server is used?

MELT: The first thing that piqued our interest was the sub page Access Server, because it has the same title as our project. Could you walk us through the ways in which that page is used? Who uses it? What are the steps to follow and what happens if something doesn't work? We are also interested in the kinds of conversations you perhaps already had among your group to set up the page.

FSS: The page is part of a Mediawiki that we installed. We have this "history" function under each created page, as it's a collaborative writing tool, it keeps track of the previous edits. So what we actually did yesterday is hit the history button to try to find the history of that specific page because it has a timestamp, and it also sees the user who created the page. So we found that the user was THF and that there was three other users: ooooo, b04 and ezn. All four of them were technically contributing to the appearance of this page. The THF user refers to ‘TransHackFeminism’, which was a convergence organized in Calafou. So it's not very clear who was that user, but it is made in that convergence: there were people sitting around the table and editing it. Do you want to contextualize the THF user spideralex? Or the TransHackFeminist convergence?

FSS: So the THF user was created around the first TransHackFeminist convergence in 2014. It was a shared user of different people that have been documenting various sessions that were held during one week in Calafou, Spain. We have been sharing <the user>to document basically the different conversations. And then the wiki has remained as a space where different TransHackFeminist events could document their editions. In the wiki, we write also about feminist servers in general and when we document the Anarchaserver's technical and other work.

FSS: More on the technical side – this was the first thing I did when I joined Anarchaserver. As spideralex said, the documentations of different projects kept going on. So there were two similar pages with server set up documentation. The first thing I did was to merge and update them. But also, we had this conversation with ooooo that it would be nice if someone actually tries the different steps and follow the instructions because you, yourself, know what you're doing. later, I also did the styling of the page and also the overall styling of MediaWiki. I wanted it to be a bit more welcoming than a default MediaWiki page.

FSS: And I think also as it is a wiki, it would be nice now that you <MELT> are in residence for the Fair New Idea project, we would welcome your visions on accessibility. It would be an invitation, of course, that you could also become an active intervener or would change and modify and add to the content of that page to maybe broaden up this idea of what access to the server is. Besides from its technical perspective of how to exchange SSH keys (secure shell) and make user modifications.

How do you think about accessibility?

MELT: It is very interesting to hear from everyone about what kind of accessibility you think with! I hear a lot about collaborations that produce the wiki with you as a way to literally access the server. And I also understand that it is also a kind of accessibility to make the server accessible by documenting how to use it. But I'm curious what it would mean for you to make the server disability accessible? How do you think about accessibility? What does that mean in your project? Do you have some thoughts on that?

FSS: Accessibility, it's a concern. At the moment it‘s mostly people who are part of the wider constellation around the feminist servers. The project of A Fair New Idea was for us a way to try to reach out and to see how we could host people besides our internal network. So that's why we did an open call and invited you to do a residency. It was an opportunity to reach out to artists and of course, we'll see how it will go. Since some of us of are also artists and at the same time we have technical knowledge and we would like to share basic cohabitation with artists who can learn to work outside very commercial, centralized online tools. So that's one path of accessibility. So then there's the accessibility of who can join in our networks because sometimes the activism is something that not everybody can afford, because most of the times we volunteer. So having available resources, even if it's minimal, within our servers is a very important accessibility factor. And than of course, accessibility of our user interfaces, who can actually read and learn from the content we host on our servers.

FSS: Maybe I can add something: For me, the first part of accessibility was also for myself even, to start being familiar with, how to use a server, how to get there and how to do stuff there and not look at it as a black box that I cannot touch because I'm afraid. So by trying to bring people that are not experts or not technologists into collectives in which people can help each other in educating themselves so they feel more emancipated to use not only commercial tools, but also their own or open source ones. For the future what I'm currently thinking of is that I would like things that we do on the server, like maybe a website or a wiki or whatever to be more inclusive to people with disabilities, for example. What I realise now, is that colours can be too intense for some people to read, or <we could develop tools like> some functions for people who cannot hear and who would really like it to learn more about technology can use.

FSS: I am also interested in understanding accessibility as something that too is about how we make our tools and services and contents more accessible to deaf and disabled people. And also to people who don't speak Spanish and English. Then again, in general how contents and services can be made more known and accessible to short term collectivities and individuals. I’m also interested in how you can enable a lower threshold for feminist collectives to engage in and maintain their own technical infrastructures.

MELT: Thank you so much for these answers and also these very varied and different considerations of access. In relation to infrastructure, tech and language, and of course, disability. Yeah, I think we are both excited to continue working on that together. The next question is about speculative dreaming: What future perspectives for the feminist server do you wish or dream of?

FSS: I dream that our feminist server continues to be a meeting point and space for feminist peers that will help us to evolve and collaborate and work together. And I'm also thinking about local feminist groups here in Rotterdam where I now live, but also back in Athens, where I come from. And I know that there is a need [for feminist servers] there. I hope that they can benefit from the existence of our feminist servers, especially towards supporting to a future of more technological autonomy. Probably that cannot be completed, but at least to try to be less dependent on giant tech corporations for their communication or for publishing our works or our struggles or things that we need to communicate with the world, um, and interconnect with other feminist groups out there. So I hope that our feminist servers can support that perspective.

FSS: I totally agree, and I find it so beautiful how we use tools as always a means to an end. I don't think anyone of us glorifies them and it's like: [making a] server is the end game. No, it's about using [a server] to learn together and to hang out and communicate. So I think that's very beautiful. I'm from Georgia and I didn't have anyone to talk about any of those things around me. That's how I actually got here. And this is already my dream scenario come to life. So now I'm trying to reconnect with people who are not so technical, but we are already starting to have something local in Georgia as well. So yeah, it's kind of that's what feminist servers are to me.

FSS: Yes, I agree and I would like to give a more pragmatic and nuanced [view] on this thing. I would say that the cooperative model here would be one of my dreams for the feminist servers we have. And that it can include a membership fee so we can make our services more sustainable because from the past experience, and we've seen that the only way of giving time, it works well for learning, but then it's very difficult to host services for other artists and feminists that we would like to have. So a more concrete approach to the dream of the future for the life of our servers.

FSS: What I observe right now is that the critique of big tech companies is high but the awareness that there is an alternative way to use technology is very invisible so far. And that's a lot of work to speak up for that and to make it shown. So that would be some vision of mine to not look at faces of complete disbelief when talking about having our own server.

FSS: I would like more people and collectives engaged in setting up feminist servers and in general feminist infrastructure initiatives. I would be interested in more local gynaecological considerations embedded inside the set up of future feminist servers. Dreaming, creating data centers made for and by feminists. And coordination between different feminist servers to avoid reinventing the wheel or to enable supporting each other in knowledge and solidarity processes. To share resources and funding, to share common technical infrastructure or by having people that have specific skills and knowledge that can contribute to different initiatives. And finally, my big dream is one day to have feminist servers that then orientate towards providing services to communities that are facing strong gender based violence online and censorship in digital spaces [such as] pro-choice activists, post porno and sex workers. So that's a long term projection, but I would like that we can manage that together, one day.

FSS: The idea of more sysadmins people who join us in the backend! [People] not just there for the services, who learn with us and try to engage with the technology and the machines which are surrounding us. Sysadmins unite (!) to break the [local] isolation of having a technofeminist praxis and awareness.

MELT: Maybe it's nice to continue because our project also works with trans* feminism and Disability Justice, and I love the ways in which the trans* feminist, THF, TransHackFeminism becomes a shared user in the access server page. But also, I think that there's a specific understanding of trans* feminism that you seem to be working with because it comes up again many times on the Anarchaserver page. What does it mean to you to serve trans* feminism in this project? I think it's also related to a lot of the dreams that you just shared. Would you want to say something more about trans* feminism specifically?

FSS: I'm still a little bit scared about this fact of serving and hosting. I feel like by inhabiting these servers and then also maintaining and configuring the affective infrastructures in which we are moving, that we are trans* hackfeminists. It's not serving. It's, you know, like fluid. It's like good. It's like you are feeling the practices of technology. It's like configuring together. It'smore like an actualization of TransHackFeminism. I like it has a history, also. The TransHackFeminism, was a reaction on the electictechcarnival to open specific identity politics and women-only-spaces up, to trans* people.

MELT: I would also be super curious to hear what it means to have come from a cis-woman only space and going through the process of opening that up to trans* people.

FSS: I have been in a collective in Spain that is called Donestech in Catalan that was created in 2007. At that moment, there was no other local collective that was working on the relation between gender and technologies and free software. But I think that the paradigm of inclusion of women in digital tech related spaces was needed, no? But it's very 90s, no? [We became more] trans* feminist in our politics, in our feminist politics. We made an event where we would meet together, [and you had to be] open to trans* feminism. So that's why it was called TransHackFeminism and it was organized not only by me and Sophie Toupin, but also by the people of Pechblenda which was a space in Calafou and Julito who were trans feminist. It appeared in 2008 in Spain, in the feminist conference in Granada.

FSS: Yes, I would like to elaborate a bit more on what ooooo mentioned. So the eclectictechcarnival takes place not even yearly; sometimes it is 2, 3 years inbetween. Well, I admit I haven't been at that many. I've been in the last one, it was an organized in Greece where I am based. The one before was in Italy, and the one before Italy was called TransHackFeminism in Calafou. And because I organized it, the question of who can join this event came up because every time as time passes as spideralex mentioned feminism itself changes, and it's always this question of who can join our event? And again, for example, the last, let's say, firewall, is cis men. Can cis men join our events? So this is the base of the conversation as we try to provide safe spaces and for those who are marginalized, within technology and its environments. But I would say it's an open question, and it always depends on the locality of the event. And on those organizing it. Of course, we all have our own idea and praxis of feminisms.

FSS: To me it was also new, I was not sure what that trans* referred to, because in the German speaking context [people] were talking maybe of queer feminism. So I was curious to also learn [about trans* feminism as] a part of the struggle against a current of feminism that in some places is stronger than others, and that is about the exclusion of trans* people and non-binary. And so that was one aspect that I find interesting to learn, and I find its good to call it trans* feminism to make it explicit.

FSS: Yeah, and important because at a certain moment, there was really a confusion for me because I was at the Chaos Computer Congres and there was a transhack meeting. So I joined into the meeting because it was about the organization of the next gathering. But actually, it was about trans nationality. So it was more like focusing on Spain and Italy. They have like trans hack meetings, but it's actually transnational meetings.

FSS: So we have hack meetings. Yeah, when we make it across different countries it becomes a transhack meeting.

FSS: Yeah, sure. But it's interesting that the one refers to like identity politics in relation to gender, it seems. And the other, of course not. It's much wider also about your national identity. But it is confusing, or it is also how the term can be hacked so that that gets certain meanings by actually also using it.

FSS: Yeah, it was confusing. And then the confusion was pretty interesting. We only had two trans hack meetings in the history of trans hack meetings in Europe. One in Poland and the other one was three years ago, four years ago in Tarnack and there some people thought it was a trans* hack meeting, but it was pretty cool because this way we had more queer people around. Yeah, it wasn't that easy. It was like: No, no, this is not the trans* hack meeting.

FSS: And actually, there was recently a transhack meeting in Bologna that also had a sysadmin of systerserver involved. It was also called like that. That's nice. So yeah, it's a somehow yeah, it's hacked then. But yeah, it's not so nice if you're then there and it's a quite cis-normative environment because that's not that the safer space that you went there for. This is not a trans* hack meeting this is a transhack meeting.

FSS: During THF, the question was also: what is now the most important term in it? Is trans*? is it hack? is it feminism? Can feminism be hacked, can feminism be trans*? Can hack be transed? Can you trans* hack? It's like, you know, it is circulating inside of the dependencies within these three denominators.

FSS: Here is a link with documentation of 2 sessions we had during the first convergence : [TransHackFeminist/Que_significa%3F/What_it_means%3F]. So maybe then you can dig more in. It wasn't so many people that say they're interested, in trans*feminism. But the trans terminology, about transitioning, about transition, about all the links that it could have with immigration with transformation, with even of politics, you know, and so on, so on, so on. So yeah, I think we can put it in different layers and for sure, at least when it was set up in Calafou in 2017 the first layer was about trans*feminist politics.

FSS: Yeah, just to add, sometimes when you encounter a term for first time, you make a conclusion depending on your background and your identity, etc. So of course, when our services uses terms it feels important and to give a description of them: what does this term contain? It's also very important that when we do things that we are open about it, the terminology we're using what does it refer to and why it is constructed like that? And it is important because it changes very quickly, in all this researches of all that is happening in migration realities to multi species studies and keeping in mind always intersectionality they all add up in the end in the concept of creating safe spaces. So I think this is something to consider when we use terms, how we came up with and why we came up with the terms we use.

FSS: And it was really important that people do a bit of research and find their own history in this terminology, you know. It's also by the people inhabiting or by the people embodying that it becomes and not only by a definition. I mean, it's ever changing also.

FSS: I agree in the sense I think that Anarchaserver is one of the first pages including the THF and all the documentation, and it feels very complicated to give a straightforward definition. And now we are trying to give access to the documentation that has been created around that concept. We are trying to clarify, to know, a definition of our internet politics and gender and diversity and so on. But for TransHackFeminism convergences, I would find it very difficult to give a straightforward explicit definition.

FSS: Maybe we have to create expiration dates on our Wiki pages. If we don't visit them in certain time becomes too old and it becomes a reference without being actual.

FSS: But I've seen these issues coming up when we organize events and you know, we have to do open calls and these things are always reconfiguring. Hacking within TransHackFeminism is to hack patriarchy, capitalism and other systems of oppression. Hacking refers to the act of doing and taking things apart, understanding them in a deeper way. Hacking is action performance.

MELT: So one last question is how do you define in your group the terms server and the relations between service and clients because we also read in your manifesto and that your project is about reconfiguring these relations? So it's a question that maybe speaks to like literally the server, but maybe also metaphorically the serving of values or the working together for the making of space.

FSS: For me, the server is like a space, like a room. It's not only a machine, but we can go into it because usually we meet, especially because we live in other places, we meet on the server. It's our meeting point like instead of going to a cafe, we meet in the terminal. So while we’re in the terminal we try to support each other, educate ourselves and spend time together. So it's a connecting room that we can go in and work together in. And about the ‘server’ ‘client’, I really don't like the word client in general, but I know the technical term. I just don't see it translating in a social way inside the feminist server constellations because it is more of a corporate thing. Other people have said its more like inhabiting the servers instead of serving. So its not only that the server serves, and the other is a transmitter it becomes an interchangeable role that you also receive at the same time instead of only offering the other side. I would like more that we do both.

FSS: We have a lot intense reflections and critical thinking about the terminology, which is used inside of these machines. Common are terms like master/slave. Server/client, fail/success. We try to approach it differently also with humor and read it as poetics. We often deconstruct this language and appropriate it in a way that is closer to our identity and our politics.

FSS: I'm looking at some of the histories of feminist servers. I saw two approaches that I really like one that was from 2013 was when they twisted the language at the feminist server summit that was held on the question of a feminist server into: Are you being served? And I really like that because it fits my my understanding of feminism as talking about the embodied experience of not being served in certain contexts. And the other one is from the fall, the ‘From Skin to Steel Manifesto’(? link ?) that must have come from to Brazil. They start their manifesto by claiming that we are all already and thinking about, body experience as serving. And that's very close to what I would call care practices. So where where are the lines between serving and caring? It's really a very radical political claim to look for things about who is being served and it is close to this question of who has access and who can participate.

FSS: We never say server/client. We use the word allies when we want to talk about the people who would like to collaborate and do things with our servers. This applies both to the look of the websites, but also how we communicate to the people outside our internal group. So we don't refer to the client at all.

MELT: But then as a tiny, technical follow up question, how do you technically reconfigure these relations?

FSS: It's like another network topology, peer to peer. So technically there are protocols which are allowing that. But for example, with the feminist servers we try to have distributed services that not each server has the same services. A server has etherpads, another has cloud services, video conference instances, gitlab repositories,....

FSS: So its not really changing the server client, but like it's more like making a redistributed model of dependency.

FSS: One of the points that TransHackfeminism articulated is that of autonomy in having a Feminist server: you choose your dependencies.

FSS: I would like to ask MELT something, so you are also working on server access? Access Server? Is it still server access the project you are working on?

MELT: It's called Access Server, the project.

FSS: I wondered, maybe its too quick to digest what we said so far. But still, I wondered what you thought about the convergences between the thoughts between your Access Server project and what we have been discussing so far?

MELT: Hm, yeah so part of the ACCESS SERVER project is that we're technically trying to understand how it can work so that when people email institutions asking for accessibility, the email will cc the previous email with access requests to the same institution. So we're trying to technically create a collectivity so that disabled people emailing understand see that they're not the only ones that are emailing to any institution. So emailers have the sense that, oh, many other people have emailed as well. So I think that this relates to how you’re talking about technical collectivity and trying to share resources and offer other options for points of connection. This is still a technical question. We're not exactly sure how to do it yet and also to maintain people's privacy at the same time. So there's a few questions there behind that. But I think that this is the desire to understand the technically active collective body that is emailing with access requests.

MELT: When listening to you. I think notions of care and trust is where I feel a lot of shared questions and maybe sometimes struggles or figurings out. And also in these relations between how to reach out and work with other people with an infrastructure that we provide. Because the idea is really that other disabled people can use the email server and the website that comes with it. So there are also questions of how to even make the website accessible. There are guidelines around that, we have some knowledge around that. But then also how to reach out, also across other axes of discrimination and oppression. How to build that trust also. And also technically then if someone sends an email through our email server how can we make sure that their name is anonymous, for example, the IP address, etc. So that's a lot of questions that still seem also hard to ensure safety. Then also, we skipped the question on trolling and how to carry the risk of providing, feminist and accessible services. That's also a big one for us still to figure out. How can we, I think we can’t prevent people from abusing our service, but how can we even make sure that it doesn't affect more people? And maybe also it doesn't affect us too much. So all of these questions, I think, are quite related.

MELT: Also, when you were speaking, something that also came to mind is that I think that the idea of the access server, constantly reminds us of the world that we live in where ableism is so structural. And this is the kind of reality that we're posited against. I'm also curious to see how how we can get people interested in using it, because also even when people are paid for their labour and even when they write emails to institutions, institutions themselves have so much work to do to change. And so I think that that is also a similar condition that you're working with with the feminist server projects where you're publicizing. We're trying to make more visible, so to speak, that there are alternatives, other ways of doing things that do not conform to ableism and capitalism as discriminatory and oppressive standards. Our project approach institutions and requires them to change. And that's also what you're doing. I think what the feminist server project is like trying to provide an alternative to show that a change is possible.