If you haven’t found it yet, this site has a lot of great information you might want: https://indieweb.org/POSSE

I use protonmail + porkbun domain + postmark, and it works great.

ICANN is certainly not perfect, but there is a difference between the automatic control that countries have over their ccTLD and the control they have through ICANN.

The problem is who controls them. The government of each country can decide at any moment that they want to take control of their TLD and remove any sites that they don’t like. It’s just not good practice if you want your site to stick around.

Oh I’m fully aware haha, and the article is on a CO site. At the time I made my account, lemmy.ml seemed to be the best option, even with the poor TLD choice.