• Sucks but if Lemmy.World is gonna be the “face” of Lemmy it’s probably best to keep the shadier sides of the fediverse out. Just to keep the damn lawyer trolls off our back.

    Plus it keeps the “uninitiated normies” out of the Piracy instance. At least until they know.

  • Not sure why nobody in the comments is distinguishing between blocking a community on an instance (removing /c/piracy) and defederating instances (saying your users can’t subscribe to otherinstance.com/c/piracy). They are very different things. We should be very skeptical of defederation.

    Removing a community because it violates the rules of your instance is A-OK and every instance should do this. Anybody can run an instance, and anybody can set their own rules, that’s the whole idea of federation.

    De-federating other instances because you find their content objectionable is less ok. Lemmy is like e-mail. Everybody registers at gmail or office365 or myfavoriteemail.com. Every email host runs their own servers, but they all talk to each other through an open protocol. You would be pissed to find out that gmail just suddenly decided to stop accepting mail from someothermailprovider.com because a bunch of their users are pirates or tankies. Or blocked your favourite email newsletter from reaching your inbox because it had inflammatory political content.

    Allowing your users to receive e-mail, or content from subcommunities on other lemmy instances is not a legal risk like hosting the content yourself is (IANAL etc). Same way Gmail is not liable if somebody on some other e-mail server does something illegal by emailing a gmail user. That’s why you can register at torrentwebsite.com and get a user confirmation email successfully delivered to your inbox. Gmail is federated with all other e-mail services without needing to endorse them or accept legal liability for them.

    Lemmy’s strength, value, and future comes from being the largest federated space for link-sharing and other forms of communication.

    De-federation is bad.

    • Nah I gotta disagree on this one. I specifically joined this instance as a welcoming space. I’m glad we’re defederated from the tankie and far right instances. I want none of that here. You can feel differently for the “main” instances or whatever you want to call them, but for me, defederation is amazing.

    • While I agree with you, I’d really love the possibility of block whole instances, just for me. I don’t want my instance from defederating from much, but I’d like for example to block all the porn without having to find myself some christian lemmy instance to move to lol

  •  vidumec   ( @vidumec@lemm.ee ) 
    link
    fedilink
    47
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    i feel like blocking of instances leads to worse echo chambers than subreddits themselves. We gonna have bubbles of federation networks that don’t federate with each other. E.g. lefties, righties, “dark web” illegal shit, kinky shit, and instances that federate with all of them will be blocked by other instances because “use my blacklist or get defederated”. This is gonna lead to hell for users having to create fifty accounts for each bubble. Aint nobody got time for that.

    i wish it remained a user’s option to block/unblock content they don’t/do want to see. Each instance could provide their “recommended” default list of enabled instances, and user can go and enable others, like how NSFW toggle works. Maybe group instances into categories with tags or something, like “porn”, “memes”, “tankies”, “nazis”, “warez”, etc

    • The primary purpose of the defederation mechanism is not to block content from readers, it’s to prevent brigades. A big problem on Reddit is vote manipulation (not to mention shit stirrers showing up uninvited). On Reddit some mods would just ban everyone who ever posted in a subreddit (like T_D), defederation is essentially the same thing.

        •  JoBo   ( @JoBo@feddit.uk ) 
          link
          fedilink
          1211 months ago

          No it isn’t. You’ve got the whole Fediverse to choose from. That’s the whole fucking point.

          If you want every single decision to go your way, run your own instance. Otherwise, quit moaning and find an instance that suits you.

        • Live in someone’s house, then follow their rules. Otherwise buy your own house or find another house.

          That’s what I associate lemmy instances with. Anyways I’m glad that we are free to choose where we maintain our accounts. Unlike reddit wher we cannot even move in order to change the environment, cause it’s all under one management.

    • Most people will not put their time and energy into running an instance which is destined to become a fascist playground with policies like those. You might not like it but in this real world that we are all forced to live in, that is what those policies lead to.

    • You can discuss and promote piracy, but lemmy.world is the biggest instance so hosting links up pirated content will get them shut down. The post is 100% right, just make multiple accounts. You want the illegal stuff distributed. What’s great about Lemmy is you can still have other accounts on those networks.

  •  olizet   ( @olizet@lemmy.works ) 
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    2011 months ago

    I have created my own instance. With blackjack! And hookers, err, NSFW.

    I found a cheap VPS and the easy_deploy script from git, that’s how it started. And for 10 €/month I’ll keep it going with a user count of 1.

      • They say they provide curation of content, keep out lawyers and provide an incentive to seed.

        In practice none of these are provided.

        What they really are, are entities who sell access to copyright infringement material.

        They discourage network effect free sharing. They discourage posting content with investors rules and they impede seeding by creating a zero sum economy where nobody wants to download anything unless they really have to because you won’t be able too seed your ratio back to 1 as everybody tries to seed and nobody disappears.

        It leads to the ridiculous practice of downloading whatever gets posted on the RSS feed, just so you can seed it to other people who blind download stuff just to seed it. Basically a pump and dump scheme where someone always end up holding the bag.

        All this to motivate people to buy their ratio back. I’ve seen one recent case they were charging 20$ to free leech 80gb.

        In other words private trackers are shit, kill private trackers with DHT

        • I’ve never had an experience like that on private trackers. Of the three I’ve used recently, one has no ratio tracking and just a “gentlemen’s agreement” that you seed back. One tracks ratio but doesn’t care about it, they only care that you seed back for X hours during a two week period or something like that, and the last one does track ratio, but you also get points for just seeding content even if nobody downloads from you, and you can use those points to get upload credit. None require a 1:1 ratio on anything.

          I’ve never had problems keeping a good ratio on any of these sites, I just let them seed from my media server until I decide to delete them. I even use a fairly small upload bandwidth since my service provider only gives me like 10Mbps upload.

          • 411, ygg, bunch of others that made me jump hoops to join and then had those shitty policies. I stopped using private trackers a long time ago.

            I equate private tracker with shit tracker and not worth my time nor my seedbox bandwidth.

            DHT should have made trackers obsolete. We should have torrents of torrent files.

      • Speed, quality, safety, and seed status are the main benefits IMO. The downsides are you have to keep a good ratio or at least not hit and run.

        Back when I used public sites I remember most torrents being slow, in private sites many people use a seed box so even if there are only a couple seeds it’s usually still blazing fast. Since uploaders in private sites have some reputation to upkeep, their releases will usually be quality. I also feel completely safe downloading something with only a couple seeds on private sites, but on public sites I worry if I’m downloading a virus if there are no comments and very few seeds.

        The private sites are also usually not big enough for anyone to care about, so the chances of them being taken down or targeted are minimal.

        I have also not gotten one ISP warning since moving over to private sites years ago, and that’s even with not using a VPN

      • I was invited to a private tracker by a friend who swore by them as having way more stability and more people seeding. Turns out, even after interviewing, I was never able to connect to a single torrent. Went back to public and never looked back.

  •  Philip   ( @lemmy@endlesstalk.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    13
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    As an alternative to lemmy.world I would like to suggest my own instance endlesstalk.org.

    I have no plans to deferate or ban anything releated to piracy. Only thing that might change my mind would probably be a company taking legal action against me.

    I also strive to have as little downtime as possible and keep everything running smoothly.

    •  zoe   ( @zoe@lemm.ee ) 
      link
      fedilink
      6
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      only time would prove that ur instance would be reliable.

      also ur instance won’t be an exception: when corps deem that u hav a high enough usercount instance that is making piracy content accessible among users, they wouldn’t hesitate to threat u legally, so federation with pirate instances shouldn’t be a selling point, unless u have an unlimited stock of money to hire a lawyering firm… still, i would gladly vouch for ur instance. We Lemmy as a whole can’t do much against corp action: they have the financial means to afford legal action, or run unlimited ddos attacks for days, bringing Lemmy basically to its knees, we need to learn how to tread through this, instead of acting like tough guys.

      Also hope more people come out and advertize their instance and vowing that they u would maintain it as humanly possible, cause i am running out of recommendations honestly

      •  Philip   ( @lemmy@endlesstalk.org ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        211 months ago

        Lemmy.world does a great job(with a little downtime) and it is the same software we are hosting, so I can only see a couple of ways to make a better “offering”

        1. Better uptime as you mentioned
        2. Different deferation/moderation policy.
        3. Visual customizations(eg. different theme)

        I try to provide a better uptime and a different deferation/moderation policy. I don’t have the skills to make visual customizations, but I have added multiple frontends(like lemmy.world).

        I’m open to suggestions/ideas if there is anything else that could be done to improve the “offering”.

        • so I can only see a couple of ways to make a better “offering”

          (2.) mostly covers pretty much anyone one would want to do, offer-wise. It’s also the aspect that’s currently the most distinguishable across the instances marketplace. But the issue is, it’s one thing to say that you are going to offer a different defederation / moderation policy (“we’re going to allow piracy”, for example) and another thing is sticking to it (“, unless some legal threat”). If what you are saying is “I’m not gonna block piracy until it’s somehow inconvenient for me”, not only is that the same flat offering most of everyone else is making, but it’s also a nebulous offering because it tells a new user nothing useful and offers no commitments: When is that “inconvenient” gonna be? What is the measure for “inconvenient”? What’s gonna happen then? How will we know? (no, suddenly finding that the instance you had an account on now redirects to the FBI is not good enough).

          I’m open to suggestions/ideas if there is anything else that could be done to improve the “offering”.

          Add more qualifications to your offering, such as:

          • Are you going to close upon any legal threat, or only upon a certain degree or size of threat?
          • From the US only, or from any country?
          • Will you close instantly, or will you guarantee a Minimum Survivability Timeframe for eg.: helping users to migrate away, like Mastodon’s covenant does?

          but I have added multiple frontends(like lemmy.world).

          If you add the JS-less frontends, you, like others who are doing it, are doing Yahweh / Arceus / Allah / Amaterasu 's work.

          •  Philip   ( @lemmy@endlesstalk.org ) 
            link
            fedilink
            English
            211 months ago

            Thank you for clarifying(and sorry for the late answer).

            For you (and anyone interested) I will answer the questions you asked.

            Are you going to close upon any legal threat, or only upon a certain degree or size of threat?

            If the legal threat is real(they have a real chance to win in a court) and there is nothing I could do(come to an agreement, move the hosting to another server etc), then I would close the server.

            From the US only, or from any country?

            Server is hosted in Germany

            Will you close instantly, or will you guarantee a Minimum Survivability Timeframe for eg.: helping users to migrate away, like Mastodon’s covenant does?

            As long as there aren’t fines for keeping the website up or I get arrested, I would give a notice, so users can move to another server.