It is the nature of commerce that you must enter into contracts with other entities. The internet itself is federated but most people don't ever have a chance t

It is the nature of commerce that you must enter into contracts with other entities. The internet itself is federated but most people don't ever have a chance to see it that way because it mostly just works. Even if you bought your own physical servers, you still need an agreement with an internet carrier and a colocation facility. Renting a Linode is a convenient shortcut but you need that one contract with Linode. Linode can, does, and should enforce terms of service. You can run a website off your home internet connection with a $20 raspberry pi, but your ISP can, does, and should enforce terms of service. In theory you could become an ISP by entering into a peering agreement with other ISPs. Internet providers do this. Those ISPs will have their own terms, some of them may not regard content but I expect all of them would specifically defer to local law regarding the transported content. "Bulletproof hosting" is the concept being discussed here. It is literally named that way because armed government agents coming to shut the site down or confiscate servers will be resisted. Now call me a fanatical sheep, but if one think it's necessary to have that kind of hosting to get their political stories, they might just be seeking out extremely radical sources.