Why unacceptable? As the runner of an instance I get to have control over my own little walled garden - it's literally the primary strength of federation. If anyone, at any time, is unhappy with the content moderation policies of the admins of their Mastodon/Calckey/Peertube/Lemmy/kbin instance then they are able to find a new home - or maybe start one of their own, like dbzer0 did.
Not sure I understand your point - yes the runner of the instance has the ability to do whatever they want, but that doesn’t mean whatever they want to do is a good idea. If the decision is implemented my response would indeed be to move to a different less problematic instance, after complaining a bit to see if I could get the decision reversed rather than having to flee.
Actually, that could be the reason why sometimes the user finds things unacceptable, because some instance owners treat their instance like their “own little walled garden.” It’s a real pain to shop for an instance when you don’t want a walled garden but rather an open medium through which to access content you wish to see. I see some instance owner decisions as reasonable (like staying away from misinformation and fake news) and I see others as a little bit unreasonable. I try to stay out of walled gardens. I like to roam free and make decisions for myself because I’m a smart boy, I know what I want and how I want it.
lemmy.world/instances is the public list of which foreign instances are federated with or blocked. LemmyWorld is federated with dbzer0 still.
Lemmy.world did ban multiple piracy-related communities from both local and foreign instances, and you can see that activity in LemmyWorld’s public modlog here: lemmy.world/modlog . Filter by action = “removing communities” to quickly find the mod actions.
A piracy focused instance that is hosted in a country with minimal to no piracy laws sounds like the way to go.
I don’t get why all of the 12 year olds on here are bitching that the admins don’t want to deal with potentially getting the instance shut down and/or jail time. People don’t understand that the real world has consequences.
If you have the means to do so, you should do it. I saw an instance today that is like that. It’s called radiation.party, I think. I would do things this way if I could. I just don’t have the equipment at home at the moment and my ISP won’t allow me to have a static IP. All you need is a computer you don’t need to use for other things plus a static IP.
There were no legal issues or threats, it was just some troll with a brand new account from a different instance that tricked admins into blocking those communities. See the other post lemmy.world/post/3175920 (if it loads, lemmy.world having uptime issues as usual)
Most rational people choose to limit their exposure to liability before it happens rather than increase their exposure to liability and wait around to later have to defend themselves.
Are you suggesting the proper course is to maximize your exposure to liability and then be forced to defend yourself later?
Most rational people choose to limit their exposure to liability before it happens
I had a feeling someone was going to reply with the “let’s ban things because they might be problematic in the future” reasoning. What’s interesting with your line of thinking is that there are many more communities that Lemmy.world admins should also consider banning due to possibly being a legal issue later on. In fact Lemmy.world admins haven’t even banned all piracy related/adjacent communities, they literally only considered the select few that were mentioned by the troll account.
I’d argue with this action Lemmy.world admins have actually put themselves in a more legally dubious position. They are now picking and choosing which sorts of liability to be exposed to. There is now historical precedence that the Lemmy.world admins specifically choose what to keep unblocked on their instance.
The people who have to fight the battles are the people who ultimately should have the responsibility and the privilege of picking those battles, no?
Everything you said may be true, but it’s not you that would be responsible for fighting their battles is it?
They may be completely wrong…and they may be putting themselves in a more legally dubious position…but it is their battle to fight if it comes to that…so the ONLY people who should have a say in what battles they pick to fight are them, not you, not me.
But it isn’t that it might be problematic in the future, it’s very likely that it will. Look at what happened with RIAA and youtube-dl, reddit and film studios. The movie and music industries are very trigger happy when it comes to suing anyone even remotely related to piracy.
Also picking and choosing which sorts of liability you’re exposed to is normal, it isn’t an all or nothing situation.
A fundamental weakness of Lemmy is that every instance has to mirror all the content it’s users have subscribed to. This means that each instance is hosting that content, and is legally liable for hosting it.
I can certainly understand why the admins would choose not to violate their country’s laws.
I can even understand them choosing to do things based on their personal morality, ethics, and biases since users can always choose to use a different instance at any point in time.
Absolutely - this is the strength of federation, and why I think communities should be distributed across many instances, while users can gather at instances where the administrative policies are consistent with their values.
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