this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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"We're gonna be the instance for everybody! Not you. Not you. Not you either. Ew. Not you. Who let all this riff-raff into the room?"
Between that and the constant downtime, this account might be short-lived.
They are literally going through the same pains as any other social media sites that start getting big. Every social media site wants to be "all-inclusive" until you have to start worrying about content moderation and liability. Shit gets intense.
As for the "downtime," they've done posts about it. They are being constantly DDOS'ed by someone (assuming another defederated instance owner). And given your annoyance of it, it sounds like the DDOS is working as intended. The instance admins have done a fantastic job so far and I intend to wait it out.
Yeah fuck those instance owners for not taking on legal risk! We don't pay them and they should pay for our legal fees out of respect for the content we generate (which is copywritten and could get the instance owner in legal trouble)!
Edit: typos. Also, to explain: I just want y'all to consider the folks who keep the instances running and the legal risk they take. Some instances don't want to take on the risk. It's not a left/right thing, it's a risk-assesment thing. Removing content that might get them in legal trouble doesn't mean that the instance is taking a political, ethical or moral stance on the topic. It's really weird to think otherwise. My point was that when the instance owners get a dmca takedown notice (doesn't really matter what country, doesn't really matter if theh own the rights to that content or not), they are faced with a choice: do nothing and get sued, possibly needing to shut down the free service as a result. Or, they can choose to remove the content.
Conversational forums like lemmy are still places where links to pirated content can exist. I know people just talk about pirated content and that it's moderated but hear me out: sometimes people get busy and fall behind. They could then end up with a lawsuit.
To avoid this, a reasonable policy might be to just avoid the topic altogether. But that doesn't make them right or left wing, it just makes them regular site admins without an unlimited amount of money or the desire to go off grid and on the run. Yeah, that's the worst case scenario, my point simply being "free service run for long time if rules prevent legal threats to the service's livelyhood" see: napster.
They have a right to be exclusive and we have a right to not like it.
There are rights and there is if what theyre used to do in a situation is reasonable. Here, the point isnt that you dont have the right to complain, its that complaining that they should risk getting in legal trouble isnt reasonable.
Some jurisdictions are relatively more permissive than others, so the legal risk is not uniform. There will be some user flows until the instance landscape has settled.
Which jurisdiction, mine or yours? Or what about the other person who will comment under this?
Is that the 123.52.33.19 jurisdiction or the 95.32.122.99 jurisdiction?
In other words, on the internet, how are you going to reliably change the content to fit the viewer’s jurisdiction?
Just so people know, when you send a request to the internet, you’re not sending a request from your home address, you’re sending it from an IP address. Those IP addresses are not linked to City, State and Country, at least not reliably. MaxMind has a “GeoIP” database of “best guess” countries for IP addresses, but even if lemmy software were to implement geoIP gating like this, you’d have to taylor individual communities to individual jurisdictions and..
NO ONE IS DOING THAT. Nor will they anytime soon, most likely.
On the internet, it’s far easier to just shut the topic down, as was done with piracy. Sure, folks can share pirated content inside the “spiders” community if they wanted to, but that’s at least a little harder for rights holders to find than the “piracy” community. And by rights holders I mean companies that scan the web for keywords and link and send out automated DCMA takedown requests.
Your point may stand in court but we’re on the internet and those instance owners are likely trying to avoid going to court.
Again, instance owners aren’t instance owners because they want to be your political advocates in court, at their own expence, at the threat of the site being shut down.
The relevant part is the legislation of the instance hosting location and the degree of anonymity of the instance owner and his attitude.
Hetzner is the very opposite of bulletproof hosting, the owner of lemmy.world is fully public and his attitude to potentially problematic content is on public record.
Unless the hosting location is in the principality of SEALAND, and even if it is in SEALAND I think you’re going to be surprised about jurisdiction. Edward Snowden revealed a while back that all traffic crossing us borders is monitored. If the site is in the US, the server is within their jurisdiction and can easily be seized. If the site is outside of the US, traffic to that site is monitored from traffic originating from inside the US.
What if the content is hosted overseas? Doesn’t matter, still sued
The internet is global. Local jurisdiction for copyright infringement isn’t something I would hang my hat on. With greatly paid lawyers comes lots of power.
read: the ability of the instance owner to shield themselves from legal trouble by trying to outrun it. (not a sustainable practice).
read: the preferences of the instance owner to sheild themselves from legal trouble.
read: the ability for users to post content that might get the instance owner in trouble with the expectation that it will not get the instance owner in trouble because it is legally-sound or otherwise outside of any jurisdiction of US law.
read: the instance owner complies with the law.
read: the instance owner’s preference for the instance owner to sheild themselves from legal trouble have been mentioned online. uh huh..
I don't seem to be able to make myself understood. Once again: monitoring of (encrypted) connections is irrelevant. Or just getting the data from your own federating instance.
Consider an anonymously paid bulletproof hosted lemmy instance. The admin is unknown, the hosters are not responsive to takedown requests, jurisdiction is neutral or welcoming. I can think of multiple such controversial instances that have survived for decades. It's the gold standard, but silver or even bronze is far better than a jumpy self-censoring guy hosting stuff at a severely problem-averse hoster like Hetzner.
If end users want to add protection layers to that it is their own prerogative and out of scope. EOT.
No I understand you quite clearly. You want to make the instance owner liable for your content. I am saying the instance owner does not want to be legally liable for your content. Do you seee how the world does not revolve around your wishes and desires? How much are y'all paying this instance owner to make it worth their while for taking on all this risk, zero monies? Yeah that won't work, and the community is likely to be banned or defederated. Oh look, like it did.
I am just explaining the reality. You are explaining your desires.
Example: Some pedophiles started posting CSAM to lemmyshitpost, and now lemmyshitpost is down. Do you understand me yet?
Yes, I've also made accounts on some other instances. Not made the jump to run my own yet, the code base is not yet sufficiently stable nor are the moderation tools yet there.