A little background: I am part of a group that operates a secret Matrix network for everyday Chinese users who just want some privacy. (https://秘密.网络, the name translates literally to “secret network” in Chinese) The network functions as two federated residential datacenters, one in China, one in USA, and some cloud proxy servers. It was a mechanism for getting information into and out of the country with reliable gigabit speeds.
Our Chinese datacenter was raided this week, and one person was arrested. It is impossible to contact those in China now through the service, and it is getting worse for users in the USA since it is being attacked. The US side with a Digitalocean proxy is available still if you use a Matrix client but it says connection refused most times. Some other domains are available, although they are having problems too, and they don’t work in China.
What do we do now? Has anyone had a problem like this? The only goal is to restore privacy to people in China and offer a reliable alternative to WeChat with a self hosted Element.