Unmute.tv and a plea for donations

[pushamaku]

Hi Everyone,

As we approach the new year, we’re reaching out with a request for your support.

Our funds are nearly depleted, and without immediate donations, we may be forced to shut down the site. We desperately need your help to keep the forum running. Every contribution, no matter the size, will go directly toward keeping the website live and accessible. The running costs of the SH forum are explained on the Donation page.

On a positive note, we’re excited to announce the launch of a brand-new service exclusive to all registered forum users! Think of unmute.tv as a platform similar to Reddit—a space where you can share and discuss alternative content, including news, stories, blogs, images, videos, and links. More instructions to follow below. The unmute.tv site shares the same host as the SH forum so there is no additional costs associated with hosting it.

Please consider donating today to ensure this community continues to thrive in 2025. We have updated the donation page with options for Ko-fi and Patreon.

Use the Support Us tab link in the top navbar or click the button below to see the donation options.

​

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and thank you for your generosity and support!

---

Background​

Given the widespread censorship on Reddit and other major platforms, it would be refreshing to have an alternative where open-minded members of the SH community can freely share what matters to them in their search for truth during these challenging times.

Setting up Your Profile​

Your username and avatar and banner (if any) will automatically be migrated to the unmute.tv website.

1. Click on the "Members" tab in the forum navigation, and then click on "unmute.tv":

left: navigation on desktop; right: navigation on mobile​

2. Enter your login credentials to confirm setting up of your new unmute.tv account.

Your new unmute.tv username will be shown to you on that page - in most cases, it's identical with your forum name, sometimes a few special characters have to be eliminated, so there could be some minor changes (like spaces or other special characters missing).

​

3. Click the "Login" button to launch unmute.tv.

Your unmute.tv profile has now been createad and you can easily login next time just by going to unmute.tv using any browser.

Start Posting​

To create new posts, click the "+ Post" button post in the top navbar. There are four different types of content possible.

1. Supply an external link. Use the "Generate Title" to attempt generating the title and body automatically. If you feel the title or body could be improved then please modify it.

Externally linked content example 1 - Article
Externally linked content example 2 - YT Video
Externally linked content example 3 - Reddit Post
Externally linked content example 4 - X Post​

2. Upload an image.

Image example​

3. Upload a video. Only short-form video content is supported in mp4 format. If you'd like to upload a longer video, go to tube.unmute.tv and upload the video there, then provide a link to it as in (1) above. Note: Get your tube.unmute.tv account here.

Short-form video example
tube.unmute.tv video example​

4. Post an original post. Use the body field - markdown is supported.

Original post example (showcasing markdown)​

The title field is mandatory and should describe what you are posting.

The Community dropdown allows for choosing the community to post in. To keep things simple we only have two communities for now, please use the StolenHistory community for any links to external History/SH.net content.

Please note: Original History/SH.net posts should always be posted as a thread on this forum and not on unmute.tv. The Unmute community should be used for all other content. We may create more communities later.

With NSFW, posts can be marked as "not safe for work".

Settings​

Feel free to customize your UI and layout preferences such as dark/light mode (click on your profile icon) or opt for a more compact post listing (click on the View dropdown). Other settings are available on the Settings page.

Invite others to join​

unmute.tv is exclusively for SH forum members, however you are free to invite any friends or family to join. Click on your profile icon, and then click on "Invites".

(If you have any technical problems, please post below or DM me directly)

Edit: unmute.tv taken offline due to cost saving efforts.

 

[Akanah]

How much does the forum cost per month? I have my own website which I also pay for monthly.

 

[d33ds]

How much does the forum cost per month? I have my own website which I also pay for monthly.

Screenshot the server stats. That's how I do my donation based servers.

 

[alltheleaves]

Backup/Compress the entire site via tar and zip and upload it to archive.org and similar.

Sitesucker might be a tool to do this for surfers.

How to Copy an Entire Website: 3 Easy Methods Anyone Can Do

 

[Catalyst]

I have an idea that I also suggested to Pushamaku - what about creating a Telegram channel and using it as the main platform for sharing content/information? Nowadays Telegram is big and important, you can't deny that. It's totally free, we can upload loads of information there (I think it's around 2 GB per file, but you can upload as many files as you want), and information there is spreading quite rapidly (posts are easy to forward, and people willingly share them, especially if the content is good). This decision may help us overcome the financial question and potentially give us an even more efficient platform to spread our research.

 

[Gladius]

I have an idea that I also suggested to Pushamaku - what about creating a Telegram channel and using it as the main platform for sharing content/information? Nowadays Telegram is big and important, you can't deny that. It's totally free, we can upload loads of information there (I think it's around 2 GB per file, but you can upload as many files as you want), and information there is spreading quite rapidly (posts are easy to forward, and people willingly share them, especially if the content is good). This decision may help us overcome the financial question and potentially give us an even more efficient platform to spread our research.

The Telegram format isn't convenient for uploading long threads with heavy information. Also the channel can be taken down by bots or reported for closure for arbitary reasons like racism or hate speech.

 

[Referent]

Sustainability
What's needed is a sustainable model.

Suppose several people chip in a few hundred dollars each. That is very generous, but only several months of runway! And one huge donation could last a year, I guess. (I wish I could be that person, but my finances have tightened for how, having walked away from Babylon to save my soul and not being fully sorted yet, myself.)

So this raises the question--how can a site like this, that serves a useful public and intellectual function, plus entertainment for many people maybe, and conceivably has enough people interested in having it exist, reasonably set up recurring cost-coverage (since that's what's needed).

Donations should work. Feedback is important. GoFundMe is good at showing progress-to-goal. There's the live meter or at least a log of sorts on the donations page, I think. But knowing "how we're doing" and "where we need to be" seems important. I guess this post points out the dire current situation, which would be the current status.

Logistics
What's the best way to send anonymous donations currently? I imagine a lot of maybe-donors might not want Stolen History on their credit card records. They should just go beyond the fear holding them back--the fear is the chains of control here. But, lacking that, what options are there? Or, I see: KoFi, Pateron, Paypal, and forum membership upgrade (also via PayPal). Yeah, if those processors are the middleman options, that seems ok, nevermind.

About whole-site backup
Live is way better
I think a readable, live forum (not just an archived backup ZIP of the site) is what's needed, for current and future users to be able to search, and read the great mass of existing content, much less make further contributions as may trickle in or ramp up at any point.

Still, good idea
That said, if there isn't a recent one (they used to be regularly made and linked for paying donors I think) -- yeah, now might be a great time to make a current snapshot, ideally in a way that could be readable if people downloaded the ZIP, unpacked it, and put the HTML pages in a web browser, if absolutely necessary.

Adjacent importance of SH
Also, this forum a critical, low-censorship zone for critical discussion of potential future topics. Look at how helpful the main 2020 thread was surely for some people to have maintained sanity and cross-referenced the actual situation. Off topic maybe, but history in the making, for sure; who knows if similar things occur again, it's a good community to share.

Cost checks out
For cost, $100/mo seems a reasonable cost for the kinds of services SH has. If it were migrated to one of the ~$20-25/mo shared hosts with "unlimited" storage, inevitably the forum would be come slow as molasses and costs would gradually creep higher. The host used seems like the absolute best bang for buck for a low cost but reliable and performant dedicated server or equivalent.

Good luck
I hope it's still just the beginning, and that SH stays around for decades.

 

[Referent]

Idea: pledge drive?

More food for thought. Keeping things simple with even numbers:

Scenario A: Donating Blind
If a few people want to donate $100, they might do so but hesitate or not do it, if they know it's just a one-month extension.

Scenario B: Pledging to Donate, with a conditional goal in mind

In contrast, imagine a goal of a "3 year extension" is stated, with the goal of $3,600 in donations. Then, if 36 people each manage to "pledge" to donate $100 each, conditional on a total sum being pledged of at least $3,600 (3-year extension), then they can be more confident that there generosity is more likely to be part of more meaningful sustainability.

In this second scenario, nobody in this group would plan to actually donate, unless some medium-term website-life-extension is planned for. But once collectively that could is somehow accounted for, in terms of feasibility, then the group could collectively have enough information to know that actually coughing up the dough would be worthwhile (e.g., a meaningful site extension in terms of years).

A consideration would be timing, e.g.: once X dollars get pledged, please plan to donate by Y date, so that it can be sitting in the hosting account or admin's coffers, ready to go, and there could be progress updates on how it is going, etc.

Non-exclusivity
Obviously, running a pledge drive would not prevent the possibility and benefit of ongoing immediate donations, too. Just another idea to help people on the fence know that they would probably get their money's worth.

 

[pushamaku]

I agree that relying on a simple backup isn’t ideal, and while that was the worst-case scenario, positive feedback from some users motivated me to go further in keeping the site operational. I have a few ideas to reduce resource consumption caused by bot traffic, etc, and services like Chat, Tube, and unmute.tv will most likely be phased out to further minimize resource usage, allowing us to migrate to a more cost-effective platform. Despite what some might believe, ultimately, it's about preserving the core Sh.net/org content.

Due to several blatant attempts at coordinated sabotage by individuals who neither valued our efforts nor showed any sympathy for @dreamtime , I decided to take action, as my patience for such behavior has run out. To prevent further infiltration by bad actors, registrations have been closed, and this will likely remain the case since @trismegistus deals with a significant volume of bot, spam, and other problematic accounts daily. In the future, we’ll probably shift to an invite-only system, ensuring users can still share and participate securely.

 

[Oracle]

So this raises the question--how can a site like this, that serves a useful public and intellectual function, plus entertainment for many people maybe, and conceivably has enough people interested in having it exist, reasonably set up recurring cost-coverage (since that's what's needed).

I'm not sure if things have changed since I became a patron, but when I went to the original donate link, if I remember correctly, there was an option for how much to donate annually which I took and chose an amount, and I get a reminder every year by email that it's due and a link to pay it.

 

[Oracle]

I agree that relying on a simple backup isn’t ideal, and while that was the worst-case scenario, positive feedback from some users motivated me to go further in keeping the site operational. I have a few ideas to reduce resource consumption caused by bot traffic, etc, and services like Chat, Tube, and unmute.tv will most likely be phased out to further minimize resource usage, allowing us to migrate to a more cost-effective platform. Despite what some might believe, ultimately, it's about preserving the core Sh.net/org content.

Due to several blatant attempts at coordinated sabotage by individuals who neither valued our efforts nor showed any sympathy for @dreamtime , I decided to take action, as my patience for such behavior has run out. To prevent further infiltration by bad actors, registrations have been closed, and this will likely remain the case since @trismegistus deals with a significant volume of bot, spam, and other problematic accounts daily. In the future, we’ll probably shift to an invite-only system, ensuring users can still share and participate securely.

Good move, something had to be done, quite an extraordinary,and disappointing to see, attack.

I am truly hopeful more true members/truth seekers will choose to donate now they can see a stronger approach is being taken to deter the negative elements that infiltrated a community which many of us, both active , silent members,and lurkers hold dear to our hearts.

It was an oasis of calm,intelligent,and respectful discussion in the beginning, on a web full of ignorance, shills and vehemence.
I am pretty certain I am not the only one desirous of having that state back here at sh, and I applaude the dedication and altruism admin and mods have shown through very trying times for all, in real life,let alone on site.

A position of less tolerance is definitely called for. Sad that we are all grown ups here , yet you have to act like strict parents to enforce the rules and civility.

I do believe the world is under a spell, as in Spread Pain Eliminate Love and Laughter.
Humanity has a choice since this began in 2020, grow or wilt. Growing within oneself and being compassionate and loving is obviously the better choice for one's spirit than sinking into the quagmire of negativity and lacking empathy or care

Thank you all for what you do to keep this site and community alive.

 

[Oracle]

And if you will all humour me, I would like to share this amazing video with everyone. Not off topic since it's a link to unmute and I also think very relevant to the idea of donations.

Ideals