Very smart to pause and weigh things. There was a lot more to it than I thought when I started mine.

• Renting a server is not cheap, but it's not expensive either. Most VPS' will be able to host it fine. You will need to invest effort into swapping data over to S3, volume storage is what really costs money if you use it incorrectly.
• I'll say do you want to have an individual/known user instance (like family and friends you deeply trust), or do you want to allow randos? The thing you don't mention at all is liability. I don't know where you're hosted but in most countries you are responsible for reporting material on your server. CSAM? Guess what, you are responsible. You can look at my server, it's based out of the USA and any server is automatically a "mandatory reporter". I am legally obligated to report CSAM that makes it to my instance, if I don't I am legally complicit.
  
  • Note that this has been drastically reduced with the image proxying, where if someone on say, .world posts CSAM it's proxied through my server but not hosted by my server. So, liability is still a thing, but as long as the admins of .world take action then i'm protected with them. If proxying is disabled then the CSAM would live on my server too - and that means I'm legally required to report it.
  • NEVER allow open signups. Spam is real here on the fediverse, and bots are actively trying to sign up for accounts. If you allow signups you need to require a captcha, and I recommend either email verification or asking for a signup message "Why do you want to sign up?". This gets rid of 99.9% of spammers.
  • This is also a huge reason for not selfhosting an instance. I started hosting mine in my home until I learned that since it's in a home, the feds seizing an instance literally means they bust down your door and take your servers. I decided that I didn't vibe with that, and opted for a hosting provider. If for some reason someone hijacks my server and starts hosting horrible stuff, the seizure will be with my cloud provider, not my front door.

  
  

My suggestion is to start a personal instance first. Get the feel for it, see how you like it. Maybe create one community on there that you're passionate about and advertise that it's there to the fediverse (since they won't know about it until you tell them about it). Then judge your risk level and see how much you're willing to do. For me, I host a bunch of swifties, it's well within my risk tolerance. I approve everyone that comes in, and most have to ask to join. (Fight the urge to just create a ton of communities. You'll just end up with dozens of empty communities, there's no way you have the effort to kickstart a lot of communities. Pick one, maybe two, and really advocate for them. Shameless plug them, there's no harm in that here).

None of this is meant to scare you off, obviously I still host and I'm glad for it. My Swiftie Community has over 1,000 subscribers now! I'm very happy to host our little niche community, but I also have learned a lot on the way.

Because the privileged, who profit from the status-quo aren't suffering, so why would they tolerate any violation-of the status-quo?

( prosecuting white-collar-crime, XOR abuse-of-autority, simply won't ever happen under any establishment-regime, in proportion to the effect of the actual crime or abuse-of-authority:

Authority is a downward-chopping-axe, not the upright-double-edged-sword that the various statues of Justice pretend our world wields.

Gaslighting is the most-established "communication" establishment has formed the world with.

From the oligarchy/monarchy-is-best-for-the-masses of Adam Smith & Ronald Reagan, to the rule-of-legalism gaslighting about being rule-of-Just-law.

"There is no group so conservative as a group of radicals who just won rule of their own region." has too much truth in it.

Humankind doesn't have the SPINE to be loyal to objective-integrity, instead of being loyal to political/ideological motivation, according to the entire-ocean-of-evidence, does it? )

_ /\ _

So why is it so rarely prosecuted?

$

Starvation is a tool of Capital.

Our economies depend on the threat of starvation and homelessness, but too much makes people unruly, so we set limits.

Just responding to the headline prompt (which might be rhetorical) I almost feel like it might also be hard to "prove."

It's undeniably horrible and obviously deliberate, but when international conflict between powers is on the line, maybe it's more of a "soft weapon" to which the offender can point and go "Who's to say we directly caused their lack of food? Maybe we're just blocking trade that happens to be food because we don't get along lately? Sounds like their problem!"

Kinda like how how authoritarian capitalists love to exploit masses of people, then shove burdens like poverty, hunger, and a destroyed environment onto the back of the individual.

But this is after a ridiculously heinous chain of deliberate war crimes in a row observed the world over, and no prosecution is happening.

Iran is a country with remarkably smart people.

But it's not the smart people who are in charge. It's the dumb ones.

About 40% of the Iranian population is dumb as a fucking rock. They are absolutely TERRIFIED of women who don't wear a veil. They have spent billions on militias slaughtering Syrians. They think old Mullahs are the most pure humans on earth. They hate homosexuals. They hate atheists. They banned dog walking (yeah really).

And it's these 40% idiots who are ruling the country.

Never let religious people in charge of a major country. It can only end badly.

(This is exactly what americans are doing right now by the way. The super religious crazies from the Southern States won power with Donald Trump. Now he is slashing science budgets to make them happy)