Cock.li will shut down before becoming complicit in crimes against its own userbase by duress of any government or organization.

For nearly 11 years, cock.li has remained one of the only public e-mail providers to allow registration as anonymously as a library card. The fact that it’s still possible to get an e-mail address as easy as 20 years ago is a fact widely hated by international governments; at least the parts of those governments which have dedicated countless resources to target our service, our team, our family, and our friends with illegal surveillance, bad-jacketing, organized disinformation, and much worse.

A combination of these illegal tactics have become so serious that the site is now in grave danger.

The only way it’s been possible for cock.li to weather this and stay online is thanks to the dedication of our entire lives to this bit. Our small team of 3-5 people have had our lives permanently altered and our stability sacrificed so Internet users worldwide can more-or-less enjoy the comfort of being able to access e-mail without requiring a phone number or other surveillance document.

Despite the constant attacks on the service and our personal lives, no one directly involved has ever been paid in 11 years for their work on cock.li. The personal costs of this volunteer work add up over a lifetime, and as we get older we’ve slowly taken steps back to compensate, when we should have been stepping up.

Stepping up is exactly what’s needed right now, and we’re here to do it. These recent issues have forced us to take leave from our jobs to make time just to keep the wheels spinning. I hope you can understand that is why, for the first time ever, I’m asking you to donate directly to the people who make cock.li possible.

Your donation will make a real difference by telling us to use the money where it will help the most right now. We have a sizable war chest for legal expenses that has never once been used to pay us for our work. Problem is, if we can’t make time to put that war chest to work, what good is it? We believe cannibalizing this fund to offset our lost time would put cock.li in a worse position, so by creating a new fund we can make it clear what we’re doing while keeping our legal funds secure.

It shouldn’t surprise you that the people who are so passionate about this service are not profiteers or business people. We are private, unpaid individuals who don’t want to see one of the last great liberties of this Internet fall victim to the criminal and violent attempts to shut it down. If these critical threats force us to change the world to ensure e-mail remains recognized as a human right, we won’t hesitate to do it.

We never once asked for personal donations specifically in the hopes that if this moment ever came, our userbase would appreciate that we were able to make it this long on passion alone, and trust that your donation will make the best possible impact.

There is much work to be done. I will keep you updated as much as I can. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Monero: 41fqXKYNEWuBDuqYczhoSiE1aUN9tCGdWYrfjynebuTM3tdE5UUHEfeZjZ3iZpgqY8LdYLk9h4As66UBC5mARL4z98PfUwB Bitcoin: bc1qg9ehmfzusgfd6dvudll0qxkcl8c5q3sh8qnetr

In the 2022 film COCKCON 2020 (2019)0, a 250MB encrypted file was hidden in a second video track of the 1080p release. You can download this film here1. I don’t know if the encryption key will ever be released, but if it does, you’ll want quick access to that file.

Furthermore, two more files are released today, 2024-11-12: ins10.luks2 (555MB) and ins11.luks3 (64MB). Please download these torrents and seed them as long as you can. Please consider your privacy when seeding.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      40·
      2 days ago

      I love their shitposting domains.

      At least they aparently got rid of their, err,… “”“questionable”“” domains

      • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        510·
        1 day ago

        I get that. Sounds stupid. I mean hitler.rocks? Or nuke.africa?

        It is probably good that they are shutting down.

        • renzev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          121·
          1 day ago

          It’s probably good that a free and private email service might shut down because… they registered a few edgy domains that they no longer use? Wow

          • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            43·
            17 hours ago

            Here is a really deep and complex ethical discussion for you.

            You create a free and private email service and you don’t register nigge.rs and nuke.africa as your domains.

            Imagine that!

            Very difficult and super complex ethical choice!

            • renzev@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              11 hours ago

              Sorry, but in my book, actions speak louder than words. And the actions here are very clear: they made a useful service that benefited people. They paid for it out of their pocket and suffered major inconveniences in their personal lives to keep the service operational and to uphold their ideals of transparency. It’s a net positive contribution to the world, even if you account for the offensive/hurtful jokes they made along the way.

              You can spend hours talking about what people should or should not have done. Critiquing others from your high horse is easy, but it gets you nowhere. As another example, take Lemmy’s developers. You could go on for hours denouncing their tankie/authoritarian views, but it won’t change the fact that they created an anti-authoritarian and censorship-resistant platform that benefits many people.

              What I value personally is a consistent moral framework. What someone thinks on isolated issues or what kind of offensive humor they like is a lot less relevant to me. Do I disapprove of it? Yes. But do I condemn them for it? No. Because actions speak louder than words.