Dear Network,

In summary, the third quarter of the calendar year 2025 — encompassing the months of July, August, and September — witnessed a pronounced increase in site traffic across three key digital platforms: Policyinstitute.net with its four project pages, de-news.net with three project pages, thorstenkoch.com, as well as the news domain hightechbeyond.com, which is an outlier (having been launched at the end of September).

According to the most recent hosting analytics, the cumulative number of visits recorded during this period amounted to an impressive 40,604,545. To be cautious, that figure also includes search engine crawlers and web applications copying the content of the websites. These may constitute the bulk of site hits apart from a case of suspected hacking on 20 October which saw most of the mentioned websites go down. The relative trend is clear and reflects a considerable upward trajectory in interest, but also digital reach.

A closer examination of the data reveals a very substantial escalation in site hits throughout the summer months. In July, the websites collectively registered 4,143,264 hits. This number more than doubled in August, reaching 11,372,073. The most impressive rise occurred in September, with site traffic soaring to 25,089,208 hits. Considering the fact that not all visits stem from real persons, a note of caution is in order.

In any case, the mentioned growth not only underscores the increasing visibility of all the aforementioned websites but also suggests a broader trend of heightened relevance of the content and services they provide, namely soft security, countering hate and dis-/misinformation.

Please continue supporting my work! By the way, our texts, more often than not, now also contain discussions in audio format.

Sincerely,
Thorsten Koch, MA, PgDip
Policyinstitute.net, de-news.net
1 October 2025