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Removal of piracy communities (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lwadmin@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] M0oP0o@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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?

[-] PriorProject@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] DharkStare@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] M0oP0o@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] muddybulldog@mylemmy.win -1 points 1 year ago

The risk, however, is that you're going to be potentially liable for things that you DON'T see but are hosting due to federation.

[-] Zaktor@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Federation only duplicates stuff an instance's users subscribe to, so if you're a single user instance it wouldn't copy anything you don't see (if you actually vet your subscriptions and regularly view their content).

[-] DharkStare@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

That was my thought as well. A single user instance with no local communities would only be storing posts from communities that one user subscribes to. Assuming the person subscribes to only what they want to see, that will be all they get (and any risks that come from storing information from those communities).

In a hypothetical situation where there are only single-user instances and community instances (instances that function as the source of communities), the only ones taking on risk would be the individual users subscribed to a community and owners of the instance hosting the community. There wouldn't be a need for an admin to make decisions to protect themselves that affect other users.