I have been following the current waves of censorship and it is not pretty. I even opened a special area on this forum to discuss it. We can be glad that we never moved the discussions to Facebook, Pinterest & Co, as we would now be very vulnerable. The vBulletin platform is just software and all the data and software runs on our server, not theirs. Even the data from the CometChat system is stored on our servers. Interestingly the latest versions of that software require the data to be stored on their servers. I declined and said we will not be doing that.

Some people have asked me if the discussions could move to Facebook, as the Rife Forum does have its own Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/rifeforum/

While that is possible for new discussions, the archives could not be moved there. It would also be very dangerous as Facebook is one of the companies that have been deleting hundreds of groups without warning. If we moved there, there is a strong risk that sooner or later we would just lose everything without warning and without the ability to even contact our members. Facebook groups are also not very well sorted and it is difficult to find old posts again.

The big advantage of this forum running on vBulletin is that I control the webserver, the forum, the database and also keep daily backups. In fact I have installed a number of features and services to safeguard the data from being lost, which is definitely a significant factor in the costs of running the forum. Sure, I could reduce costs by cutting out the backup systems and the forum would work fine until the next hack or server crash. In fact that was how the forum was in the early days and I paid dearly when the forum was hacked and I had to manually rebuild 6 months of posts. So to those asking why the costs are this high, a good part of it is for peace of mind that the systems are backed up and security is in place. If someone hacked the forum now, we would at most lose the last 24 hours and a secondary system keeps those as well. Rebuilding the posts from one day is not a difficult task.

As long as we can pay the bills, then we can keep the forum open. No big-tech companies have control of what is posted here and I am a strong advocate of free speech and honesty.

I have gotten in trouble often enough for pointing out when some people have been misleading people with false hopes, etc. When that happens, I demand facts to backup any false claims. It is the only way I know to maintain integrity in what is posted here.