Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:
We took this action to protect lemmy.world, lemmy.world’s users, and lemmy.world staff as the material posted in those communities could be problematic for us, because of potential legal issues around copyrighted material and services that provide access to or assistance in obtaining it.
This decision is about liability and does not mean we are otherwise hostile to any of these communities or their users. As the Lemmyverse grows and instances get big, precautions may happen. We will keep monitoring the situation closely, and if in the future we deem it safe, we would gladly reallow these communities.
The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.
Please make announcements on lemmy instead of exclusively on discord moving forward. That is the biggest issue here, the lack of public transparency. Such a decision affects all instances, not just lemmy.world and making it publicly known is important
This was a misunderstanding from one of the team members. It has since been discussed and will not happen again. Lemmy.World and this announcement community is our primary platform,
Thank you. It is appreciated.
Thank you for this
Aged like milk.
Just another misunderstanding bro
Are we raising posts from the dead?
Speaking of removed communities, can an admin respond to this please: https://lemmy.world/post/3165787
Misunderstanding eh?
Yeah. You misunderstood that they are liars.
is this the new most downvoted post on lemmy?
Thats why you all should chose an another instance.
These communities are not even hosted on lemmy.world, this is an absurdly overreacted response. There were no signs of any legal trouble and I can’t understand how lemmy.world specifically would be the target of such legal action. If you want to host an instance, you should do everything in your power to allow discussions on any topic, while in necessary cases disallowing direct posting/linking of illegal content. Instead, you chose to block a community that has long been known to avoid having any trouble with the moderators.
Let’s also not ignore the fact that these communities literally prohibit Links or content from being posted to them. So even if people make the Federation argument about cross-hosting it’s all moot in the end because the community doesn’t allow it in the first place.
Here is a link to the rules of the Piracy community you will notice if you have any form of reading comprehension (or if you actually read it and aren’t just trolling, like many people here) that rule 3 specifically prohibits linking to or hosting files, which many people making the federated hosting argument seem to leave out of the equation, likely because it destroys their argument altogether since their argument is about illegal content being hosted, but no illegal content is hosted in the first place (and any that is usually is removed by the mods for breaking the rules, just like it is here on Lemmy.world).
I think the problem is that because of the way that the fediverse, they ARE hosting the content. They effectively copy the content from that community onto their server to distribute it to all the users of their lemmy instance. So from a legal perspective they are hosting the content and they would be held liable for a distributing it.
I think the problem is that because of the way that the fediverse, they ARE hosting the content.
And the “content” is discussions about piracy, not piracy.
Come on. Small instance indie devs don’t have the bandwidth and storage to save all seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 4K.
And on top of this, the removals were done following the request from a troll account, by a user involved in far more questionable discussions than the legal discussions currently going on in the now-removed communities. Should no attempt be made to differentiate between a legit legal concern and trolling?
Good ol’ Bungiefan_ak, creating troll accounts on any instance that’ll have them to troll all things piracy and post transphobic and hateful shit wherever they go.
What is it about Destiny that attracts pieces of shit?
The ad hominem criticism is irrelevant. The communities should be removed or not removed based on the server’s policies regardless of who first raised the question.
It’s not ad hominem to say someone is acting in bad faith.
Preemptive strike
aka shoot and ask questions later
Doesn’t matter if they are hosted here or not. The way federation works is that threads on different instances are cached locally.
We have NO issues with the people at db0 - we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more. As mentioned in the OP we would like to unblock as soon as we know we can not get in any legal trouble.
as far as i have seen (as a subscriber to c/piracy) there is no links to pirated content and they are very clear that that is not allowed
the vast majority of the discussion is on morals of piracy, anti piracy measures, etc etc
I feel like there should be a major distinction between caching remote content and hosting that content yourself. Does Cloudflare get in trouble every time the FBI seizes a site that used Cloudflare routing, CDN, or caching? Not as far as I’m aware.
Discussing piracy isn’t illegal. It would be one thing if they were hosting pirated content, but they don’t even link to anything.
If that were to change I’d understand the decision, but this just seems silly to me.
“we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more.”
This is an unfortunate aspect of individuals/small groups housing the fediverse vs big companies. Big companies have lawyers and the capital to back them, individuals do not.
If I was in your shoes, I’d do the same thing. I appreciate your wish for thus to be temporary. I hope you will share your findings once you come to a final decision; information like this is relevant to all those managing servers.
Soo ultimately you personally will be the only person determining what people can and can’t see, based on your perception alone. You don’t like something, you’ll ban it. You worry about something, you’ll ban it. And there won’t be a trace without you saying “we banned something”. Which means there are no checks at all to you powertripping in the future. How is this supposed to be free, open and general then? This is even worse than reddit was.
You fucking donkey, did you read their comment before you replied to it? They aren’t doing it just because they want to; there are legal implications.
There really aren’t. Talking about piracy is allowed in Europe. Sharing stuff isn’t. This is a kneejerk reaction. Also, please don’t talk to people that way.
I will talk to rude people that harass the admins of a free service that way.
Well by your logic maybe you should go kiss Reddit’s ass then if you feel that way, they’re hosting a free service and people criticize their decisions and reactivity.
The fact that we fund this place with donations gives us all the more right to criticize them for it. Are you also going to attack people for ceasing their donations because after this I’ll never donate another cent to them ever again, and I encourage anyone else reading this to do the same.
It’s their house, you’re just visiting. If they are concerned, there’s no one else to help. If they get in trouble, will you be stepping in to help them? No.
Once you start hosting an instance that has open registration, it’s not just “their house” anymore. They are providing a service to people. They do so willingly. Arbitrairly blocking instances because you don’t know how something works and don’t bother to check it isn’t the way to host a free and open instance.
Nah, their box, their responsibility, their rules. They could shut it off tomorrow, ban people randomly, change what posts are allowed, federate as they choose. We can’t do shit, and that’s fine cause we can each make our own instance or join another
Edit Any assumption you have durable rights or privileges is just untrue.
Yes, they offer access willingly, as in “at their will”
They CAN do all of those things but people would be right to critique them for it. Freedom isn’t freedom from criticism or complaint. Furthermore they want this to be a functional community as much as their users do which is why this discussion even exists.
That doesn’t refute anything I said. Their house, their rules.
You can criticize mom for setting a bedtime, but you must go to bed.
Feel free to contractually agree to pay all their legal fees, in that case.
There won’t be any legal fees since the communities being talked about are allowed in the EU. Other people have made the same point already, but if you are scared of litigation, then you can’t host a forum at all. There is always a place where your forum breaks rules. I.e. no disparaging Putin in Russia. Making fun of the twitter CEO is more likely to get you a lawsuit than any of the communities mentioned, yet it is allowed. Also, it never is a straight up instantenous lawsuit. It always starts with communication saying “don’t do that anymore please”. Once you reject, then a lawsuit is viable and not frivolous. So you can wait till that happens and then block those communities, once a company actually complains. Not when you think that maybe somewhere in the future something might happen or maybe not.
Truth is, lemmy is small fries. It will be that for a long time with the issues it has. Nobody cares about a tiny community hidden way deep inside.
It’s so nice to see so many lawyers in this thread offering their legal counsel…it makes me feel very safe when I start hosting piracychat.doodad next week. I’m assuming they will all be willing to defend me if I do get sued since they are so sure I won’t. 😃
What needs to happen for you to be confident you won’t get in legal trouble, and thus unblock them? Change on the db0 side? Lemmy.world admins getting legal representation/advice? Something else? I’m curious how you all see this playing it out in the future.
Highly doubt there’s anything db0 can do. lemmy.world is in Europe, piracy has hefty legal ramifications.
Like you could argue that it isn’t piracy all you want, but if faced with the possibility of your hobby landing you decades in prison and millions in debt, would you do it?
Just create an account at db0, this really isn’t the big deal people make it out to be.
It would be preferable if you would lie less. Evil pirate uploads potentially_infringing.mp3 to to filehost. Filehost actually serves potentially_infringing.mp3, a community on db0 hosts a link to potentially_infringing.mp3, lemmy.world caches locally a copy of data from db0. Of those the one guy directly uploading the information is at risk of an extremely unlikely single digit thousands of dollars.
Nobody not even evil pirate himself is at risk of decades in prison or millions in debt. Companies responsibility basically ends at taking stuff down when specifically notified of infringing content.
Not all of Europe. In most parts (especially Eastern Europe) the most you will get is a slap on the wrist if you are really really unlucky. And decades in prison aren’t a thing anywhere for simply sharing links to pirated content.
No one thinks of Eastern Europe as European beyond geography, excepting perhaps Eastern Europeans themselves.
Prison notwithstanding, financial ruin is a definite possibility.
People are making a mountain out of a molehill over this. The instance owner doesn’t want to risk any legal issues over hosting this instance, and I get that. Just create an account on db0 and use that. It’s not a big deal.
Instance admin isn’t some big corporation trying to silence your free speech. He’s just a dude that doesn’t want his hobby to bite him in the arse.
I don’t think I ever heard of a case where somebody has been condemned for piracy in Italy; I also know plenty of people who torrents/stream, yet none who uses a VPN to do so.
In Germany though, afaik, they are quite insane with their anti-piracy laws.
We have NO issues with the people at db0 - we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more. As mentioned in the OP we would like to unblock as soon as we know we can not get in any legal trouble.
Words are empty, offers are void in Nebraska. You already took steps against people who simply mostly discuss piracy. What concrete steps can you take now to show that you’d actually unblock “as soon as we know”?
Well, caching content is not the same as copying it. The major difference in the court would be that caching is automatic - and as such you are not in complete responsibility of what it is you copied. If you do everything in your power to comply with any DMCA notices, then I couldn’t realistically see lemmy.world being targeted. This is an analogous situation to eg. accidentally opening a website containing illegal content. Sure, your computer did download the contents to the RAM, but what matters is that you acted in good faith and did not attempt to get the contents, it just happened in the process of browsing the web and as such you could not reasonably expect to receive such content.
Well, caching content is not the same as copying it.
A cache is literally a local copy.
Fighting legal challenges requires lawyers, even if you are in the right. Lawyers are crazy expensive.
Unless I’m missing something, you don’t need a lawyer to take down a post that you’ve received a DMCA removal request on.
You do if you get sued because you missed something. It’s not like lemmy world can moderate every post from every server. Any single user can get any federated community’s content pulled locally just by subscribing.
So by that logic, .world should defederate from all other instances, just to be safe?
Complacency isn’t a legitimate defense against criminal activity and corporations are extremely litigious over piracy. Would you rather lemmy.world spend all their money on fighting lawsuits, or building a better instance?
Any community that is creating questionable content should create their own instance and not seek open federation with the entire fediverse. That kind of behavior is reckless and counterproductive to what we’re trying to do here.
Something that’s getting lost in this conversation is the nature of the infringement and what that means to the copyright holder. Memes could be considered a form of infringement, however in practice they often serve as free publicity. The intent is not to deprive the copyright holder of revenue, but use the medium to express themselves. Exposure increases, and so does the likelihood of revenue from the conversion of new fans.
This changes with public conversations of piracy, because the nature of those conversations drift into how to deprive and evade the copyright holder by providing users just enough information to find pirated content. From a legal standpoint this can be used to prove aiding and abetting, a crime that be considered equal or an accessory to depending on the jurisdiction.
The admins are aware of how Lemmy’s content caching works, and now publicly acknowledge the existence of their federation with dbzer0; whose piracy communities are its strongest asset. Any defense of ignorance is out the door. Without banning the communities LW becomes an accessory if dbzer0 becomes liable, as would any other instance who caches dbzer0’s c/piracy.
To those who still disagree, that’s fine. Open your password manager, make some new accounts on other instances, enjoy the lemmyverse. But you have to agree that it is unreasonable to demand you hold the evidence of my crimes because it would inconvenience me otherwise.
Better defederate from all instances then.
Better to create your own instance then.
It’s about reducing risk not eradicating it and there’s a huge difference in risk in being targeted for legal action due to hosting c/piracy (via caching/mirroring) than from a single piracy post in c/hellokitty.
Memes are protected under fair use doctrine as satire. Most places, IANAL.
I am aware. My point is more to do with how the copyright holder perceives the actions of the individual(s). If the copyright holder feels the work brings more attention to their IP in a way can be converted into sales then they are less inclined to take legal action; even if some in the community may be openly pirating. Some however miss these opportunities thinking its just another instance of unlicensed usage.
The great thing is, now you’re 100% empowered to move forward and host the responsibility yourself. Demanding volunteers shoulder potential liability (when you yourself admit you can’t understand how there’s any in the first place) is juvenile.
The moment a volunteer is hit with a DMCA notice or any threat of legal action, you think they have any interest in going through the court system? You can do it first.
I think you don’t understand what a DMCA notice actually is. The whole point of it is to give you a chance to remove offending content. The “threat” of legal action won’t actually result in anything, provided you comply, and that is exactly why I do not understand the preemptive actions, when there is basically no such thing as immediate legal threat in case of DMCA notices. The copyright holders often do not want to go through the court system either and will gladly accept pre-legal-action compliance.
You seem to know your way around the law then, so please be the change you want to see in this world. Host a piracy instance and show everyone here that we were wrong and that the admins were just overreacting.
I can openly admit I am breaking the law for example by using torrents for piracy - and I seed as much as I can, though it in theory makes me liable. So yes, I am the change I want to see - piracy should be free to discuss everywhere
You can go further: host a piracy instance since you seem confident enough and prove us wrong. Why are you avoiding this part? I’m not the only one having suggested this to you.
Sure, if someone uses it then it’s no problem for me. There are much bigger communities already out there though, so I see no reason to do that. I’ll set it up right now to show you
And here you are (after fighting with docker for an hour) http://pankuleczka.ydns.eu/
I take back what I said then and I commend you for putting money where your mouth is and I hope you know what you’re doing. That’s something that the others are not willing to do but feel entitled to expect from LW because it’s not their necks on the noose.
The power of the panopticon lies not in being able to see and punish all deviant activity, but to encourage self-correction in all potential deviants who must always assume they are being watched.
I think you don’t understand what a DMCA notice actually is. The whole point of it is to give you a chance to remove offending content.
it really isn’t, the whole point is to streamline the capability for copyright holders to remove content they think they have rights to, without a lengthy court cases. it’s still a lot of overhead for any service to manage and also still opens you up to legal action.
From DMCA.com:
The document stipulates the content that has been stolen and republished without permission with a request for removal. It must be created and submitted in a specific manner so as to comply with the law. Failure to do so means the “notice” to remove the content will not be followed by any party involved in the infringement.
In exchange for the immediate removal of the content the publisher receives safe harbor from litigation regarding the illegal publication of copyrighted content.
Yes those are the words defining the initial safe harbor agreement well done.
I’m talking about in practice and how the dmca has actually been used. Why do you think companies like youtube entirely sidestep the dmca? They do it because the dmca is a huge drain on resources and still opens you up to litigation if you make any mistakes (like not working on the weekends for your volunteered lemmy instance that suddenly got 10,000 dmca requests from Sony pictures)
You’re fighting a famous “intent warrior” you can’t win. They exist only in their own head where they can’t lose and don’t have an idea how things really work…
It doesn’t really have anything to do with DMCA (a US law). Lemmy world is hosted in Germany which is even harsher on copyright than the US with much stricter penalties.
The world doesn’t revolve around the US.
It does have a lot with DMCA. Maybe not specifically the DMCA, but all the relevant regulations all around the world that are equivalent to DMCA because of copyright treaties. And yes, while you are right about Germany being more dangerous in terms of piracy (mainly because of copyright trolls), the relevant authority handling the case could very well be the USA court system.
The content is hosted on lemmy.world - that’s how the fediverse works. Each instance pushes updates to other instances and they host it locally for their users. The issue is that the admins here can’t moderate a community not on their instance. So if an instance is located somewhere it is legal, it might not be legal at the location of another instance.
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. It’s a cache. Is Cloudflare liable for hosting lib genesis then? Because cliudflare caches much worse stuff than copyrighted pictures and books.
There’s a lot to talk about but afaik Section 230 that defines every website in US says that host is not responsible for user content and I honestly don’t see how big copyright could prosecute lemmy.world here that’s not even hosting data directly.
I enjoyed helping this place grow and doing my part to discuss here but I disagree with this decision and I’m going to evaluate looking for a different home instance.
This is incredibly reasonable and reflects the exactly appropriate amount of urgency and emotional reaction to this happening. 👏🏻
Lemmy.world maintains a local copy of every external community. This is how federation works. Any piracy related posts on those subs will be copied in their entirety to lemmy.world servers, so lemmy.world could potentially be sued for hosting that content. Being the largest instance makes it a target.
It is rare to get advanced notice of legal problems. Usually the first you hear about it is a cease and desist, or a lawsuit. Lawsuits are costly to defend even if you’re doing nothing wrong.
I don’t like this decision. But it is a sensible one to protect the instance. If you care about piracy discussions you can visit those communities directly or on a different instance that made a different decision.
There is no suing for that, talking about piracy is perfectly legal. That’s called freedom of speech for your information
One link in one discussion that slips through is basically enough.
No it shouldn’t. If it does with your law, tell me your country and I’ll come help you throw the government once we are done with ours in my country
What part is illegal? Are they sharing files on that instance and your instance re-hosts it?
From my understanding, discussions are legal, guides are legal, tips are legal, but actual files (aka “copyrighted content”) is illegal. There are no files shared there, links at maximum, but institutions should be after those content-sharing websites, not forums.
I am against this decision and I am happy that I am not part of admins team.
Keep in mind, The Pirate Bay is “technically” not breaking any laws… how has that been going for them? You don’t have to break laws to get in trouble if you are pissing off rich people. They’ll find something, anything, to nail you on. It’s totally ok for random normal people to not want to be “heroes” to a bunch of other random people they don’t know. Heroes attract villains, and instability. And while it’s just starting to get off the ground, lemmy doesn’t need villains or instability.
Let the smaller, less visible servers do the shady but “totally technically legal” stuff. Big servers with big targets on their forehead need to be stable and drama-free.
The Pirate Bay is “technically” not breaking any laws
It does, it holds torrent files which usually “holds and shares” a copy right infringing content. While mentioning that website isn’t gonna bring any problems, linking the actual torrent file or link to that might bring problems.
It doesn’t hold any torrent files for over a decade now. It’s all magnet links which know nothing about the content.
People are terrified of the possibility of litigation to the point that they won’t even host conversations about piracy on fringe community subs for fear of reprisal.
Its just the state of play for everyone on the Internet. Terrorized by the spectre of a frivolous lawsuit.
And still people are crying about this.
You can literally change to another instance. That’s the entire point of the Fediverse. If you don’t like a decision the admin has taken, you can move elsewhere.
The entitlement of some people these days is ridiculous.
The fuck are you talking about? Most sane people go “Damn, this thing I like is now doing a thing I don’t like. I’m going to let them know and hopefully enough people agree to change it back.” but people like you with full fedi brain go “Whelp, this instance has a mod whose name contains two letter U’s in it, better change instances.”
You’ve watered down what the word entitlement so much I’m starting to doubt you ever knew what it meant. Entitlement is demanding your preference be catered to for the sake of it, community is giving feedback on what makes sense and what doesn’t. A general, all-purpose instance shouldn’t ban content except in extreme cases like they themselves state, which is illegal content. Piracy is not illegal, it’s ambiguous. Communities about piracy are not illegal and are infinitely more legal than the act of piracy.
This action makes very little sense when looked at sensibly and rather than hopscotch around instances like your mom in an all-male sorority I think we should give feedback to make an instance better before discarding it carelessly like a used condom in that same all-male sorority.
Bro the fuck YOU talking about?
What would convince anyone to blindly accept liability for 100k users on a volunteer basis? If you owned the servers and your name was on the line, would you feel comfortable hosting “ambiguous” (your words) material?
Your tone echos the people that yell at FOSS devs on GitHub. You are the entitled one. It’s hilarious, you think you’re entitled to random people accepting liability on your behalf.
Friendly reminder 4chan has an entire board dedicated to posting magnet links to torrents as well as guides on how to use them in rare cases. On the clearnet. For everyone. If you don’t want to be a magnet link directory, fine, that’s an understandable position. Ban communities that allow magnet links. It is sheer paranoia to ban a community that merely engages in the discussion of piracy and related content and banning swaths of content on a general purpose instance defeats the entire point of ‘general purpose’.
But again, telling on yourself not knowing what the fuck entitled means. You’re seven layers of stupid treating piracy like it’s fucking CP.
Ratio.
Also lol at using 4chan as your example of how to run a site
Lemmy world clearly stated that they were not a “free speech” zone, that they would have rules, you joined anyway
This kid just said Ratio. Bro go back to your Twitter echo chamber, I’ve never given a shit if my opinions are popular, I care if they’re right.
By all means, be the most popular idiot you can be. None of what I’m advocating for is ‘free speech’ you lemming, it’s the contradiction of a ‘general purpose’ instance to ban content out of preference and masquerade it as legal liability. It’s not illegal (in the United States) so if it’s based there (which it likely is but I’m open to being wrong), it doesn’t break the rules even though they claim it is and does. So either they’re lying or are misinformed and according to Hanlon’s razor, one should never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently be explained by stupidity.
So to recap It’s not illegal. It shouldn’t be banned. I hope the admins change their mind. Take your ratio and hang it up on the fridge for your mom.
I moderate/founded six communities hosted on lemmy.world. There isn’t a way for me to transfer those to a different instance.
Why would you need to? People from any instance can subscribe to those communities. Use your lemmy.world account to mod the communities and browse with another.
It’s a headache to constantly have to switch between accounts to check reports and moderate. I also don’t want to keep the communities on an instance hell-bent on blocking/defederating from other communities/instances all the time.
If you don’t like it host your own instance with all the blackjack, hookers, and liability you want; instead of bitching about what toys someone else has in their sandbox.
Maybe you should have read the rules amigo.
I did and the db0 community doesn’t directly link to pirated content, so it violates none of the rules on this instance.
It seems like it would be difficult to keep track of all the instances that have/haven’t banned the communities/instances you’re interested in.
Like if someone wanted to move to an instance that hasn’t banned these piracy communities, how would they even know where to look?
EDIT: I found this:
Awesome Lemmy Instances has a list where you can see how many instances block/are blocked by each other https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
You get it. This is why Reddit isn’t going anywhere and people are just downloading the official App or patching Infinity or Sync with ReVanced Manager. I’m an advanced user, FOSS advocate, die-hard Linux user and one that gets 90% of their mobile apps through F-Droid. I love the idea of the Fediverse, but I am struggling to use it for my own needs without all the defederation stuff getting in the way and becoming very hard to get around. If someone like me is having problems, then it absolutely isn’t ready for prime time.
In fact, I still use Reddit through a patched 3P client because my non-techie and non-political communities aren’t moving at all. As an example of something more mainstream: I’m a heavy Stardew Valley player. The Stardew community on Lemmy is dead, but on Reddit it’s very much alive and new posts gets thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments daily. What seems to be alive here is the kind of content tech-savvy people are more likely to consume: tech, politics, news, that’s it.
It reminds me of the Linux desktop back in 2017. It was promising and it was beginning to get more interest and traction, but still when you tried using it was eh. Almost there. But not quite there. My laptop would boot and run my Firefox and development tools fine, but then the audio codec would die and display “Dummy output” until I rebooted (in the best case, I had to reinstall Ubuntu in 2 cases where audio permanently died), or my Bluetooth earbuds would stop working properly or at all seemingly at random, and when I woke my laptop up from sleep there was a 1/5 chance that GDM would hard lock and force to me to SIGKILL my entire GNOME session if not SysRQ reboot to gain back control - and this was on Ubuntu-certified SKU running a certified ISO in a state that I had left so default desperate to see it working properly that I had not even changed the default wallpaper. There would always be something a touch too inconvenient. For me, it was audio and sleep not working properly. So you would eventually image your laptop back to Windows and go with it, while knowing in the back of your mind you shouldn’t, but you want to actually get stuff done and play your games, which actually launch without Wine crashes or GPU driver errors - this is how I feel using Reddit now. Linux has matured way past this point and it can now act as a main system no problem and be a reliable performer with a scope that covers 90% of use cases well, the dream was achieved. I hope the Fediverse will follow a similar curve with time, but after months of trying the Fediverse out a way or another it still can’t stop reminding me of that older stage of Linux: promising and growing - but not quite there, and unreasonable to use exclusively.
Reading all these comments it’s clear that a lot of people have unrealistic ideas regarding what Lemmy and the Fediverse are supposed to be (or maybe it’s me with weird ideas).
The Fediverse is just a bunch of apps that can all communicate with each other through a shared protocol. There is no requirement for them to be free speech platforms or host everything. The whole purpose of defederation supports the idea that instances are free to associate or disassociate with whichever instances they want. Furthermore, nearly every guide I read on joining Lemmy state that you should choose instances to join based on shared ideals/beliefs.
For everyone saying “I’m leaving lemmy.world” I say “Good. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” When the instance you join no longer aligns with what you want, you go to another instance and then you’ll be back to viewing all the communities you want to see. That is what the Fediverse is all about and how it’s designed.
Sure but currently switching is a huge pain in the ass as you cant really take over your posts not to mention the migration of your communities which is currently impossible. So all the people saying somwthing like “just switch to another instance” tend to forget that this isn’t really possible at the moment.
Do you have to take your posts with you? I’ve seen people mention this before but I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal. I do agree about the communities though and feel that there needs to be an easy way to export your subscriptions so they can be imported on another account.
I like to have a history of my posts linked directly to my account. It’s what I contributed to the community and I’d like it to be a part of my profile.
I think the issue is that .world has put itself forward as some sort of super lemmy. The landing page for new users. I agree people should move but also that we do kinda need a superish lemmy, but one that maybe has all the good and bad. Would it make any sense to have an instance that has no communities of its own but also has all the instances?
Honestly, I feel like self-hosting a single user instance is the ideal way to use the Fediverse. It gives you full control over what you see. However, that would require self hosting to become so simple anyone can do it.
I don’t think it is so difficult but I also think that would lessen the depth and breadth of lemmy as a whole by limiting full participation behind self hosting.
I think the issue is that .world has put itself forward as some sort of super lemmy.
Citation needed. All the admins of lemmy world ever purported to do was host a well-run general-purpose (aka not topic-oriented) lemmy instance. It was and remains that, and part of being a well-run general purpose instance is managing legal risk when a small subset of the community generates an outsized portion of it.
Being well run meant that they scaled up and remained operational during the first reddit migration wave. People appreciated that, but continuing to function does not amount to a declaration of being a super lemmy.
World also has kept signups open through good times, and more recently bad. Other instances at various times shut down signups or put irritating steps and purity tests along the way. Keeping signups open is a pretty bare-minimum bar for running a service though, it is again not a declaration of being a super-lemmy.
Essentially lemmy world just… kept working (until recently when it has done a pretty poor job of that). I dunno where you found a declaration that lemmy world is a super-lemmy, but it’s not coming from the lemmy world admins, it’s likely randos spouting off.
The advertisement and push they did on sites like reddit and their listing on join-lemmy.org (when they where still listed) made them the biggest instance. And with the name Lemmy.world they did nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that. If this was all randos pushing the instance then boo to them, but I also saw nothing from .world not claiming to be the bigger instance(super lemmy)
… advertisement and push they did on sites like reddit…
The lemmy world admins advertised on Reddit? Can you link an example?
… their listing on join-lemmy.org…
Until recently EVERY lemmy instance was listed on join-lemmy.
And with the name Lemmy.world they did nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that.
They run a family of servers under the world tld, including at least mastodon, lemmy, and calckey. They’re all named similarly.
I also saw nothing from .world not claiming to be the bigger instance(super lemmy)
They ARE the biggest instance, but that happened organically. It’s not based on any marketing claims from the admin team about being a flagship/super/mega/whatever instance. People just joined, and the admins didn’t stop them (nor should they). It’s not a conspiracy to take over lemmy. It’s just an instance that… until recently… happened to work pretty well when some were struggling.
If people leave to run their own piracy lemmy depending on where they host it they will probably get raided and have no lemmy.
The commenter obviously don’t understand that at lemmy.world it hosts copies of content outside its instance which is why you block communities if you don’t defend the whole instance.
I can host an instance. I don’t care about “raiding”. If you get raided, it means you have not properly separated your online and real identities.
Well, for starters if we looked at lemmy.dbzer0.com we can see the domain is held by tucows which is based in Canada which are a copyright protection friendly country. Sure the server is hosted on njalla.net which is based in Sweden. How hard do you think it would be for the FBI to gain the info they needed to:
- Figure out who pays the bills and owns the server?
- Get a copy of the server data for analysis?
The only way to resist this would be to host your instance on the darknet with good sec even then that is not 100%.
Again, if you properly separate your identities, than the answer to both questions is simply impossible, since you are not the one figuring on the bill. The only thing they can achieve is link you to some IP behind 2 VPNs and 5 proxies, good luck to them if they want to dig through all that while avoiding you noticing and simply deleting all data from one of them making you completely separated from any illegal activity.
If people leave to run their own piracy lemmy depending on where they host it they will probably get raided and have no lemmy.
The “FAFO” approach
While I’m not ethically opposed pirating, I understand and would probably do the same for a server I was hosting. Anybody remember Kim Dotcom’s mansion raid?
What I do not understand is blocking a community surrounding magic mushrooms… No one is going to prosecute the L.W admins for people discussing shrooms/their use…
Substances are legal/illegal depending on where one lives, just like weed which is apparently perfectly fine to post here, even tho possession is a death sentence in some countries.
It simply doesn’t logically follow that weed, or even alcohol communities are permissible while a shroom community is not.
Banning any content deemed illegal in any country in the world establishes a very dangerous precedence (if that’s the justification here). Free speech/dissenting from the government is illegal in many places in the world.
One thing the community must remember tho, is that you have to operate your server in accordance with the law in which country you’re hosting it (in this case Germany).
I’ll gladly admit I’m not too familiar with German law, but it seems unreasonable to expect government persecution for hosting servers which hosts a shroom discussion community.
Our new home.
Whoa wait wtf, they blocked a mushroom community? I didn’t hear about that
Thanks for only banning the communities and not the entire instance as a whole. That is a much healthier approach to deferation.
I much prefer this over how lemmy.blahaj.zone defederated the entire lemmynsfw.com instance for one post the admins didn’t like.
Coming from that particular instance, the fact they would be petty enough to defederate an entire other instance over some minor thing, should not shock you.
Uh, @lwadmin@lemmy.world … what’s up with the banning going on in this thread? I noticed on a.lemmy.org that someone was labeled “banned” and their comment was simply “Ight, I’m out”
The mod note was “Let us help you”.
There are more similarly weak (spiteful?) bans that certainly don’t seem to be at a standard for a ban. “Litterally 1984” was another one. Is that all it takes to be banned here?
Edit: Many (all?) the users I referenced as banned are now unbanned from the site, but now banned from this community.
Just wondering and looking at the mod log for one admin and maybe I am crazy but are they unbanning and rebaning users? (Keep in mind it goes new on top):
- admin Banned @snake from the community Lemmy.world Announcements reason: troll
- admin Unbanned @snake
- admin Banned @soviettaters from the community Lemmy.world Announcements reason: Troll
- admin Unbanned @soviettaters
- admin Unbanned @ilfi
- admin Removed Comment Spineless pieces of shit. by @sused reason: toxic
- admin Banned @sused reason: Bye
- admin Banned@ilfi reason: Inactive account comes back to troll. Bye
They’re unbanning them from a sitewide ban and then immediately banning them from the lemmyworld community.
What in the hell?
The next Reddit/Lemmy is going to be ran by AI lol, us humans are too easily corrupted by power
I hope that this demonstrates to people that the oppressive reddit behaviour is not confined to special individuals (such running major social media sites), but is a systematic occurance in online forums. Simply switching from one toxically moderated space to another is not a solution. But this is where the strength of ActivityPub/fediverse lies: we are able to leave for another server while still using the same fundamental service and being able to interact with the same content as before. I would recommend startrek.website as a new or second home for those who wish to migrate.
I’m probably being overly cynical, but I have a pretty unflattering option of volunteer moderators and the type of people that seek out such seemingly thankless positions-- and their motivations for doing so. I know this might seem-- bizarre-- considering where I am posting this, but I think it nonetheless.
I like lemmy because there’s a modlog to see these things. I do not believe that these users would be unbanned if it hadn’t been noticed in the modlog. And it appears they’re unbanned from the sitewide ban, but still banned in the community. Not sure what sense that makes.
If your instance gets big enough, you’ll also have to deal with petty tyrants seeking out positions of petty power.
I think some of this instance’s admins are not onboard with the rest. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
Well the radio silence on it sure seems like they’re circling the wagons to protect an admin that clearly isn’t emotionally mature enough to be in such a position.
The “ight I’m out” ban note was… hm. Not a great look. Comes across as petty and vindictive.
There are worse, imo.
user @snake posted:
Did you ever consider ceding ownership of the instance to an entity with greater legal capabilities?
In the end, it will not make sense to try to keep this instance running if the owners are unable to provide adequate service to its users.
and was banned for:
reason: Go get your service somewhere else
Definitely not a great look.
Ehhhh… the other two comment/bans seem a tad vindictive. This on the other had seems to have a different tone to me. It’s thinly veiled criticism and almost feels like a threat, especially if someone has been DDOSing your server for weeks.
Lemmy.world admins, I am truly asking you to please reflect on how bad this looks. It honestly makes you seem like you can’t handle criticism and if people get that vibe they will use it to absolutely fuck with you. I know from my own personal experience. I understand that you’re volunteers but this is a step in a very bad direction that will only serve to cause more issues.
FFFUUUUU! I just deleted my reddit account because lemmy doesn’t have a power-tripping hostile mod problem so it’s better to just permanently move here. I’m so naive…
You have full access to the piracy communities as your instance hasn’t blocked them. Here is the link
Agree.
This decisions seems emotionally driven. That will not work on the internet.
You created rules. Use your rules to make your decisions. Don’t use your emotions.
It won’t only bring the site into disarray, it will bring you moderators and your emotional states into disarray.
Make your rules as black and white as poasible. where grayness raises, create new rules.
Can someone please post this stuff on lemmy world in its own thread? This needs to be brought to attention.
The people responsible for this need to then either concede that they have done wrong, leave or otherwise be made to leave.
How fuckin childish.
Are you paying anything for this service? No. It has costs to maintain while they’re shouldering that on their own and giving you this service for free.
Get over yourself. The entire point of the fediverse is that anyone can host an instance. You can spin up a little free instance yourself and federate or defederate/block anything you see fit.
Why don’t you? I’m gonna guess because you want a low effort, free service to get your scrolling fix. In which case, they’re right. Go to a different instance that suits your values more. If you want an instance that won’t defederate or block others unless absolutely necessary, go join Lemm.ee. They federate with basically everyone and don’t block hardly anything.
And, Lemmy world is federated with them. So you won’t lose a single thing here if you move there.
Is it really childish to quote what someone else said and question it? Seems like quite an overreaction on your behalf to be honest.
Yeahhhh, please leave reddit (they still run ads there for this instance) for lemmy.
I guess they wanted people to feel at home?
Surely there is a discussion to be had around what is and isn’t allowed, there are plenty of subreddits discussing piracy without dolirect links that are playing within the rules.
Especially because discussing copies of your own data also happens in such communities. There must be clear guidelines what can and cannot be discussed. Also, it would have been nice to have those communities selfregulate. For example, giving them 30 days to comply, e.g. removing any content that breaks the law.
Because the fediverse i about democracy. If laws stand in the way of democracy since they have been brought up by governments influenced by global corporations (which are by definition autocratic) then they must be ignored.
So, striking a balance to not get anyone in trouble while not working for IP holders is the way.
Because the fediverse i about democracy.
Isn’t it, like, the opposite? With the main assumption being that you should find an instance that aligns with your interests and values, not find an instance and try to vote for it to become something you like? That is technically “voting with your feet” but instances don’t actually need a large population to stay running.
It’s only about democracy if you make your own instance. Otherwise, you have to follow the rules of wherever you’re signed up.
If you make your own instance, as a one-man thing, then it’s not really democracy at all either. The only way it would be democracy is if you made your own instance and specifically said “all decisions will be made via vote” and you actually had users around to participate in those votes.
Your instance is your vote in the fediverse as a whole.
A vote for what, though? What is being decided, and by who?
You are deciding what content you want to see. If you’re on an instance run by someone else, that will never be under your control.
Yes. The thing is there is zero content breaking the law, so they would have looked ridiculous
Reddit has the money for legal defense when companies try to go after redditors. The mods and administration for world are volunteers and don’t have th resources to defend themselves. It’s unfortunate but this move makes sense as part of the bigger picture.
Sure. But we’re a group of volunteers and we would not like to find out the hard way what is possible and what not. We would think meta discussions about piracy should be allowed as long as there is no linking to actual illegal content.
But is pointing to locations with illegal content legal or not? And having members/admins worldwide it makes it even harder to be sure.We don’t want to find out the hard way and this is a better safe than sorry measure. Again we personally have nothing against the people on these communities or against the communities itself.
should go ahead and ban image uploading to lemmy.world, as there is likely a ton of illegal, copyright-violating content that hasn’t been stress-tested for fair use.
The music community could be an issue for the same reason, this logic is problematic
I support your decision. Want to see the new instances that will pop up now hosted by your critics 😄
Yeah. Talk is cheap. Running a server is hard work.
Smart, might as well shut down this whole thread then as we’re discussing piracy here too, right?
I love Piracy!
Did you ever consider ceding ownership of the instance to an entity with greater legal capabilities?
In the end, it will not make sense to try to keep this instance running if the owners are unable to provide adequate service to its users.
Yikes. Bit trigger happy with the ban hammer there. It’s at -40, isn’t that filtering enough?
Edit: it was an instance ban initially, this is more reasonable.
Eesh if posting a slightly hurtful comment is enough to get an entire instance ban… I wasn’t going to move home instance just because of those communities but the bans is way more of an eye opener.
to an entity with greater legal capabilities?
Someone who has the necessary legal capabilities is going to be a corporation. And that’s exactly why we left Reddit.
No. In Germany we have something called gGmbH. It’s basically a non-profit Limited. But IANAL, no idea if and how this would be able to protect the admins.
So this nonprofit is going to run the largest Lemmy instance?
I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t.
I guess I don’t see any reason why it would.
Yeah I’m subbed to few piracy comms just because I like to see how that side of things is going. I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website. It’s all been news and discussions and that’s it.
Actually, Reddit was far worse with huge ass lists of links to games and sites.
I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website.
You ignored the “assistance in obtaining it” part, because members of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com have been doing that. Also:
EDIT: oh boy, shill posts a lie, innocent pirate mob upvotes. I literally post a proof that what he said is completely false, innocent pirate mob downvotes.
Are you trying to say I’m a shill? Lol wat.
I chimed in with my experience. You chimed in with one example expecting it to be the end all of the discussion.If you really want to talk about who does what, look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps for online services so you don’t have to pay for them. Someone’s been asking for assistance in obtaining things alright.
my experience
Which is very far from reality. I literally just opened the community and randomly found that thread, I didn’t even have to try hard. You tried too hard to make them look good here:
I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website. It’s all been news and discussions and that’s it.
Also, maximum cringe here:
look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps
And, so what?
Why are you so butthurt? I wasn’t even going to respond to your comment because I read it and thought fair enough.https://lemmy.world/post/3206301
This is asking for the same exact thing that your apparently so upset over.Chill.
butthurt
It does seem to me that you’re the one who’s butthurt because I called you a shill though? You literally lied, I don’t even see why you still reply. Also, very pathetic of you to compare using an alternative front-end with something that’s clearly illegal.
Yeah dude you totally caught me lying. Everything is falling apart now that you’ve exposed me lol
The above comment says “I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file.”
proceeds to post a screenshot where they just name the site and not pointing any the particular pirated/copyright infringing content.
I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website
you missed this part, you’re all trying too hard here
I think some of you have no idea how legal issues will occur. Unless you are linking actual content or the (direct) link to the copyright infringing content, you will not be having any legal issues. That’s why big piracy discussion subreddits in reddit ike r/piracy are not taken down yet.
Even YouTube has copyright infringing content. Now will .world get any legal notice for linking that? No. Will .world get a legal notice for having comments or posts having a direct YouTube link to the copyright infringing content? Yes. That’s how things work.
Hope you guys understand that instead of slamming every reasonable comment.
Linking this comment by @zikk_transport2@lemmy.world for better understanding
discussions are legal, guides are legal, tips are legal, but actual files (aka “copyrighted content”) is illegal. There are no files shared there, links at maximum, but institutions should be after those content-sharing websites, not forums.
👎🏿👎🏿 BOO! 👎🏿👎🏿
👎🏿👎🏿 BOO! 👎🏿👎🏿
👎🏿👎🏿 BOO! 👎🏿👎🏿
that’s brutally honest
Ight, I’m out
Between Beehaw and LemmyWorld, I’m on my third account at this point. What starts as an alt quickly becomes the main under the right circumstances. 😂
Gotta choose progressively smaller instances until you self-host.
Join smaller instances, they don’t do that there
I wish I could find the post/comment from a small instance admin that said it quickly became a nightmare trying to moderate without a team, and people were filling their drive storage with white noise files and crap, needing to be purged twice. I believe they even mentioned they were shutting down the instance and it being a cautionary tale of why not to join a smaller instance.
EDIT: waveform.social
Thank you so much for finding it! This is it. It really sucks that it has to come to that.
You can solve your “problem” by running your own instance and federate with whoever you want
Thats actually what I‘m gonna do at some point. Your instance needs to be exposed, right? No chance it would work behind a firewall without a tunnel?
If you want to federate, then yes. Your instance needs to accept the activity pub messages sent by the instances you federate with. You would also need to send out the apub notices whenever you do activity on your instances
That makes total sense. I guess it was wishful thinking on my side. So I‘ll need to wait until I‘m ready to get a vps then. Thanks for elaborating. :)
Here’s my new account. I found a random tiny instance and am chillin. I’d rather you not ban my new account (since I did nothing wrong) but bygones will be bygones.
From the modlog
Banned @soviettaters@lemmy.world
reason: Let us help youThat is petty and thin-skinned af lmao
EDIT 1: Account has been unbanned sitewide
EDIT 2: Banned from !lemmyworld@lemmy.world instead, for “trolling” \_(ツ)_/¯
At least there is a public modlog for accountability on Lemmy
The modlog is a great feature. Thank you for sharing
At least there is a public modlog for accountability on Lemmy
This is one of the features I like in Lemmy so far. Accountability for actions.
The people whining are not the people that could face multimillion-dollar lawsuits over the issue. Like it or not, media companies are powerful and will go after websites seen as promoting piracy. Do what you reasonably have to do.
The copyblight strikes again.
This decision was the logical one, however, it was only rendered logical because of the awful state of copyright law.
