this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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This has happened once before and they reversed it. But they said this last time too:

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.

https://lemmy.world/post/3234363

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[–] [email protected] 319 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

Lemmy world:

Users, not even on Lemmy World or directly affected by this:

Pissed Pikachu with torch and pitchfork

I'm not in the loop or even involved with LW's admin affairs, but I would imagine there was a letter or email to them or their service provider that prompted that and likely named those communities specifically. Going out on a limb, I would guess the community removal was a timely response to something like that, and based on LW's history, an announcement will probably be coming soon-ish.

Before you grab your torches and pitchforks, remember: Pretty much every Lemmy instance is run by volunteers that don't have legal departments.

[–] [email protected] 134 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

"The cloud is just other people's computers" - It's inconvenient, but those computers are real, physical objects subject to oversight from real, physical law enforcement.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

"but it's not my computer, so you should be willing to host any of it"

[–] [email protected] 76 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Remember: Pretty much every Lemmy instance is run by volunteers that don’t have legal departments

One lawsuit can shut them down.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Never understood people who don't get this.

As a person who is part of open source communities, on various chairs and donates, the money is extremely slim, and the people involved just want to build cool things.

We are busy trying to keep the lights on for hundreds of thousands of people can enjoy this service. And if a small group of troublemakers force us to get a strong legal threat, we aren't risking the the project's survival for them.

Especially when we don't know the troublemakers, don't have any connection with them, they don't contribute to the platform, etc.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Evidence No. 3783 that "social media" and "privacy" do not mix well together.

Let me repeat one more time:

  • anything you write online should be considered public.
  • There is no "consent-based" fediverse.
  • There is no "GDPR protects me from that".
  • There is no "security through obscurity".
  • There is no "dark corner of the internet".

No matter your morals and ethical values, If you need to have any type of conversation that you think might get you in legal trouble, do not have this conversation in a public forum. Use #matrix if you have to, and even then you'd still need to worry large group chats which may have some undercover agent.

And if you are really concerned about "censorship", then ActivityPub is not for you. Go join forces with the bitcoiners and use #nostr.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Oh oops, you haven't pasted some cool copyleft licence below your words on this niche thread on a niche social media network so looks like I might remix and reuse your content without attribution... Unlucky

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

ZUCKERBERG HAS NO LEGAHL AUTHROITEE YO MY UPLOADS I RETAIN ALL OWNERSHIP FOR EVERYTHING.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

This is how the real world works

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think you got the wrong person, the copyright guy is someone else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I've seen a few people doing it, but I (and literally any companies scraping instances for content) just lol and move on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I feel like I've only seen one, maybe two people doing it, but I guess there might've been more.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

And anything you write or upload to Lemmy should be considered permanent, as it immediately spreads throughout all the instances and they actually don't have to respect edits or removals. And if instances defederate from each other then they simply can't, as they don't sync those requests any more - if Lemmy.World decided to defederate from Sopuli, this message would become permanent and I could not do anything about it.

Also, this who saga about the uploaded ID picture.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

removing pictures really seems like a bit of a nightmare after reading that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is it bad that I hope Nostr takes off?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Not at all. I myself have been playing with the possibility of adding support to it on Fediverser, to have a place for the mirror bots.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah like.

This isn't reddit dot com opaquely purging your favourite subreddit for some unspecific corporate reason.

The admins stated quite clearly why they are blocking it ("we don't want trouble, and our TOS lay out that we'll defed from illegal shit for our own safety"), and it is their instance. And unlike Reddit -- The community is still THERE in its home server. It has not been burninated. -- You can just. Make an account elsewhere. It's free. It takes less than 5 minutes. You can even KEEP your LW account for other communities.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Did the admins state anything? I thought the issue here is that LW previously did something without an announcement, undid it and promised to communicate before doing something like that again, and now people are saying they haven't communicated this time.

That's the real issue, not the fact that it was defederated.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

This is precisely it.
One other point is, some instance want to focus on certain things, and take the risks, where others don't.
Our community feddit.uk doesn't do nsfw, because it's not worth the headache for what our main focus is.
The guy running lemmynsfw on the other hand, is enthusiastically embracing the challenges involved, and more power to him!

And in the end, it works. We handle Mr. Brains Pork Balls, they can handle...other balls.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Our community feddit.uk doesn't do nsfw, because it's not worth the headache for what our main focus is.

Same for my instance and for the same reasons. We have nothing against that, just, like you said, not our focus nor worth the headache.

And in the end, it works. We handle Mr. Brains Pork Balls, they can handle...other balls.

🤣

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I would imagine there was a letter or email to them or their service provider that prompted that and likely named those communities specifically

What I'm curious about is, why haven't lemmy.dbzer0.com received those takedown messages? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source instead of just another instance hosting the content but not actually "responsible" for the content, so to speak? Or maybe they have?

Also curious why lemmy.world has still not made a statement about this or even acknowledged it (at least I haven't seen any acknowledgement so far). Removing the communities from their instance is of course totally within their power and right, but this isn't exactly the most transparent way to do it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What I'm curious about is, why haven't lemmy.dbzer0.com received those takedown messages? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source instead of just another instance hosting the content but not actually "responsible" for the content, so to speak? Or maybe they have?

So many unknowns. Until LW makes an announcement, it's all speculation. I haven't seen any mention from db0 about takedowns, etc, but those may just be background noise for him. lol

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Db0 seems confused based on their comments about this situation over on the piracy community. Said there was zero notice or communication from LW ahead of time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't know the inner politics of it, but I did check lemmy.world/instances and db0 wasn't on the "blocked" list. AFAIK, based on their modlog, just those two communities were blocked (unless that's changed since i last looked)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Yeah something’s going on. As of 10 hours ago Db0 has no idea what exactly that is though, which is odd because I believe typically LW would reach out to him about the offending content if it was a DMCA type thing. Idk

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

regarding your first question - they usually go after the big fish first. dbzer0 might still be flying under the radar, and also might be ina different jurisdiction where the specific plaintiff can't go after them, or where it's harder for them to do so

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The thing that gets me is the quote in the OP from last time this happened. It has been +12 hours of silence when you said last time they'd have this discussion BEFORE. Maybe it's for legal reasons but you'd think they'd have said well, something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

The point was transparency, don’t try to distract from the issue.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

People speaking out and getting mad is natural and helpful. It's how discourse works at this scale. Maybe the mods change their actions or maybe they don't, but saying nothing about bad things happening won't help anyone and getting mad that others are saying things is stupid.