cross-posted from: https://lemmy.basedcount.com/post/114721
My humble takes on the most popular Lemmy instances, or "how to piss off the whole Fediverse with a single meme".
Here are the links to each one of the mentioned instances:
Far Left Centre Left Centre Right Far Right Lemmygrad Exploding Heads Hexbear Lemmy.ml Lemmy.world Beehaw Pricefield Lemmy Based Count sh.itjust.works Blåhaj Lemmy Divisions by zero Lemmy NSFW Hack Liberty
You might be right but that’s a weird stance to take.
I just wish everyone understood that hosting a website that lets thousands of anonymous people talk and post whatever they want can be anxiety-provoking. Imagine waking up and the front page of the site you own is hosting CSAM or being served a legal document that you’re now being sued by CompanyX over hosting of pirated content.
The dark web, p2p networks, bittorrent etc all exist to fly somewhat under the radar, and they seem to be less closely regulated because they require a certain level of experience to even use. The web and apps in the app store on the other hand are easily accessible with a few clicks or taps and not much knowledge. I’ll just say that I’ve worked as a web developer for different companies and whenever we had “DCMA takedown requests” we usually had one of the higher-ups walk over to our desk and waited until they knew all copies of those files were completely removed from their servers. I’m just talking about things like breaking embargo and showing images of a product before it’s been released, not piracy or CSAM. Now figure the instance owners likely don’t have a legal team of their own, so even the threat of a lawsuit means no more instance for everyone.
Nothing right or left wing about that. People don’t like getting sued and having to lose everything.
The thing is that those communities weren't distributing pirated content. The were discussing priacy which is perfectly legal no mater how you stretch the law. Also the legal argument is bogus anyways considering division by zero, the instance that hosts that priacy community and sever others like it, is hosted in Germany which is among the countries with the harshest anti-piracy laws. It's not like it's some back alley dark web instance. If they were doing anything remotely illegal piracy wise the German government would have shut them down immediately. The only real reason for blocking those communities is a moral one and the anti piracy moral stance does strike me as slightly auth-right.
The difference between what you described and what I described is moderation and rules. It's just risk and risk level that the volunteers who run the instance are willing to put up with.
Have you considered creating your own instance? If you aren't in the US this might be easier for you to take on this risk than say US admins.
And if blocking is the concern, just get an account on the priacy instance! Easy peasy.