As discussed in quite a few HN threads, I agree with what seems to be the consensus that DMCA is a mess, ripe for bad actors. And, as discussed often, recourse against bad actors who file purposefully fraudulent takedowns is hard to attain due to the wording of 512(f) which at a superficial glance allows for damages but which requires proving in court not only that the infringement claim is false, but that the claimant knew it was false. (Not "should have known", not "reasonably would have known", but "actually knew-in-their-hearts knew".)

But it is what it is, not much we can individually do about the law.

But we can choose our hosting platforms and there seems to be variation in how hosting platforms handle DMCA takedown requests they receive.

Some, like Heroku, still give notice and have AFAIK a 24 hour cure period and document a counter-claim process. At least that was my fairly positive Heroku experience a couple years ago when a bad-actor competitor filed a provably fraudulent DMCA takedown on Friday night. (We presume they hoped we would not see any notifications until Monday by which time the cure/respond period would have elapsed and our site would have been taken down.)

But others including Render - based on a few posts in their community forum - apparently will take sites down without notice in response to a DMCA takedown request. (Easier/cheaper for the host, no doubt.)

Our year-long saga of suing a competitor (even with a very positive outcome) was still fresh in my mind when I was recently investigating hosting alternatives. So I'm possibly more attuned to this business risk than others. (Render is unfortunately out of consideration at this time for that reason.)

So I'm curious if anyone else explicitly considers DMCA handling policy when choosing a hosting platform, and if so, where did you land?