Update: I contacted with current big owners, other older friends and lastly from some friends from here. Mostly all of them living in US so they don’t want/can’t host it. So I’ll keep hosting without being on moderation side. @gavi@lemmynsfw.com will post about details I guess. @gavi@lemmynsfw.com is the new top admin.
As you know, it has been 2 weeks since I opened the instance and it has grown quite a lot. Likewise, the time I have to devote to this work has increased a lot.
I’m dealing with lemmynsfw more than my IRL job right now :D This is bothering me. Also, having an NSFW instance instead of a normal instance makes things much more difficult. If you remember; I had my biggest scale fuck up with the post “we allow loli content” :) This situation wore me out. Also a lot of problems are bothering me, both as a software and as a community.
That’s why I’m thinking of transferring the instance and the domain to a person I trust. Who can maintain the deployments and also know this stuff. I will also roll over any donations made, excluding the current month’s expenses.
I’m sorry if I’ve upset anyone. That’s all from me.
Hey just a quick FYI, if anyone here in the US is thinking of taking this instance over, I would strongly recommend becoming extremely familiar with correctly implementing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and related laws. And I don’t mean just reading it and thinking “I am a smart person, I get this now”. I mean learning how large social media sites and their T&S teams actually implement it for real. Otherwise you will very possibly go to a PMITA prison and wind up on the sex offender registry.
I’m not messing with you. The feds do not fuck around with this stuff.
American law is honestly just deeply convoluted and annoying. Having to take into account the 50 mini countries in a trench coat hyper-specific legalities is so fun!
You’re not wrong, but the CDA is federal. TBH, if this instance were hosted in or run by someone in North America, they would probably want to get a lawyer well-versed in this sector of law. I can recommend a couple if it comes to that.
Can you give us a quick ELI5 on that?
I’m not familiar but I thought as long as you weren’t producing, looking for, or storing, you were good.
Also if you are based in us and host in let’s say Afghanistan does it still apply? (This is just curiosity without wanting to read and understand pounds of legal jargon, if it’s too annoying to explain dw bout it)
When I say section 230 it’s actually shorthand for a much bigger tangle of rules: the CDA, the DMCA, SESTA/FOSTA, 18 USC 2258A and sometimes even 2257 regulatory compliance, and I’m probably missing a bunch.
Basically, if somebody posts illegal material on your site, be it copyrighted material, underage stuff, defamation, true threats, pro-terrorism stuff, advertisement of sexual services, revenge porn, snuff, etc you are not on the hook for that stuff in either civil or criminal courts as long as you jump through some very specific hoops both ahead of time and after if and when you become aware or should have become aware of such material (except the sexual services thing, which is a specific carve out due to sesta and fosta. Plus what qualifies for advertisement of sexual services can be a tricky issue.)
These hoops are very specific, and your jump through them can be triggered in a number of different ways, and both the hoops and the triggers can be moving targets depending on recent interpretations of the rules, court precedent, etc. Some people think that this is not real because a lot of places are able to skate under the radar for a long time which breeds a false sense of complacency, but as soon as the feds come a-knocking you better have all your papers in order or they drop the hammer on you. This can include both massive civil and criminal liabilities depending on the specific nature of the content and where it comes from.
And this isn’t even including any of the credit card compliance stuff, which means if you want to take donations or payments to your platform using any service that takes credit cards there are extremely onerous burdens of record-keeping and content management you need to follow well over and above anything the government requires.
Your “producing, looking for, or storing” conditions are not correct. Producing, obviously, yes, on a number of different levels. Looking for, actually no, you’re allowed to look for all you want. It’s if you find it that you’re in trouble, but the looking itself is fine. I mean it’ll be exhibit 2 in the criminal case against you because it proves intent, but if you look but don’t find you’re actually ok in most cases. “Storing” is very complicated. Did you know that you’re storing it? If you did, did you report it? If you did, how are you storing it, who has access to it, when did you report it, who did you report it to, and what format was your report? If you didn’t know, should you have known? Did someone report it to you? Etc etc etc.
TL;DR: GET A GOOD LAWYER AND DO WHAT THEY SAY.
Re: your afghan example, the short answer is yes, because the US government has jurisdiction over you as a US person. Even if you’re hosting the material in Afghanistan, if you have direct control over it then it is your material. Now from a practical point of view, getting an Afghan ISP to cooperate with an FBI subpoena may be a pretty tall order, but always remember that the feds have effectively unlimited resources and unlimited time to crush you like a bug if they want to.
Kind of concerning that looking for certain stuff is just fine, but I guess searching for narcotics is also perfectly legal.
One more question and I’ll leave your expertise be, if someone ran this forum negligently and were in the US, got raided and found to be negligently hosting (received reports of) some revenge porn, snuff, and cp, what kind of charge/years are they going to get? Generic distribution charges? Distribution with some sort of modifier? Seems like something they would have a special charge for but I could see it just being distro.
Thank you for the immaculate reply/breakdown, top tier reply.
Oh, there’s no way to answer that question in a general sense. It 100% depends on specific circumstances – literally anything from probation to several hundred years in no-parole federal lockup.
Running this lemmy instance involves hosting
The law doesn’t actually care about hosting as much as some people think that it does. The law cares about whether you are providing the material, and whether you’re hosting it or not is often immaterial to that question. To what level linking or embedding something counts as providing it is something that you don’t want to have to have your lawyer argue before a judge, because sometimes it’ll go your way but a lot of times it won’t, and either way you’re going to be paying your lawyer bajillions of dollars.
This is overkill, just don’t host anything you aren’t comfortable with, and let people go make their own for anything you aren’t. That’s the entire point of defederated design. Ignore the idiots who think this is reddit and are screaming about censorship and let them go deal with the headaches involved by making their own places. Signed a fellow sys admin of many years who actually knows what this is like.
This instance isn’t my jam but an instance like this should really have a team behind it. That is a lot to start but once it is set it becomes immensely easier. Consider it, but it also is respectable to pass it off. Good luck.
Completely agreed. This is just too much for just one person to run everything.
Respect man.
Even though you’re stepping out, you’ve done amazing work kickstarting an essential part of this new ecosystem.
I agree the software can be a bit of a pain in the ass to manage. And humans. They can be quite annoying, especially in mobs.
Again, thanks for helping this revolution get started, and hopefully you’ll find peace in a less demanding role of this movement.
Even though it was short, it’s been a treat working with you.
@clopulous@lemmynsfw.com @Limeey@lemmynsfw.com @SecretLemmyUser_@lemmynsfw.com @paddedperson@lemmynsfw.com @___@lemmynsfw.com
Friends, I sent an offer to some knowledgeable people, but they said they could not do it. Understandable for sure. Is there anyone among you who has the knowledge to make the migration to their own server without me?
I would be able to,i would need information on what it is currently hosted on and access info, but i should otherwise be able to transfer it without issue.
Im a software engineer with a very stable job with flexible hours, and ive been looking for a long term project to get into. if it were transferred to me i could ensure a stable long term home for it. Edit:changing to=>for
I do sysadmin and software dev I can help where needed but I cannot provide hosting. Are you sure you’re willing to take on the responsibilities of moderating against illegal content?
I don’t know the tools available through Lemmy but we need strong controls again CP, rape, etc with effective logging and fast response times to takedown requests.
Yes I’m sure and i know that’s going to be difficult. Illegal content needs to be prevented on the site. Currently my understandings are that the tools available through Lemmy are slim, and much will start out as a manual process, and pressuring/ ensuring mods are active in patrolling their own communities to the greatest degree possible. However I understand that the buck would stop with me, not with the mods at the end of the day. Shit rolls uphill and if communities are unsafe that would be a failure on whoever hosts this for not providing support to mods, or for allowing unsafe communities to propagate.
I also understand that realistically its going to be a job where you get alot of hate for just about all your decisions :/
This is true, but I assume also that the timing and procedures depend mainly on where the server is hosted. So it is very important to choose a place where the legislation allows some freedom. For example, I am in Italy and, if it is hosted it directly here, the law is not very restrictive regarding what pornographic material can be possessed, obviously although one does not knowingly possess child pornography, which therefore should obviously be eliminated as soon as possible. The gore, on the other hand, cannot be held and it would therefore be necessary to use a host in another country.
I am in canada, which has no laws preventing the hosting of gore content, They do (obviously) require we prevent CP both real and animated.
And what hosting were you thinking about to keep everything up?
It would take me a bit to do more thorough research on what is currently being used, and the issues that people have run into there. But i would be looking at primarily AWS, or Azure. Are you guys self hosting or using a hosting provider already ? Also depending on the current network traffic expectations its possible it could be self hosted (although again this would highly depend on what the current situation is and is very unlikely)
The ui version in the footer says “UI: 0.18.0-nsfwpatch” - i assume there is a nsfw server patch too. Have you found those repos? We should check the code in there and make sure content is handled appropriately
I beleive the repos are under LemmyNsfw’s git page https://git.lemmynsfw.com/lemmynsfw
Ok so I don’t actually see any major change to the codebase there that helps protect the instance owner. The js patch doesn’t seem to be working right, I don’t see those blur/autoload controls in my sidebar on desktop. And to the server the only commit is apparently to “show nsfw by default”.
I think you would be wise to consider more patching to handle things like auto-purge on certain reports, ensure that deleted content is actually deleted from the server, etc. I haven’t reviewed the full lemmy codebase but I’m not convinced it’s going to be enough to keep things on the up-and-up in an instance like this.
The JS patch was deployed for a very short time (remember when the NSFW box was showing checked but wasn’t? Yeah). Any further development seems to have been done on the Lemmy code itself, under different tags (not branches)
I was wondering about the “ensuring content is actually deleted” bit, as right now theres a bug causing deleted posts to show for people. That definitly will need to be resolved in terms of auto purging, we would have to look into it, but i would prefer an alternative solution or a higher bar than just certain types of reports ( like suspending the content until reviewed, or autopurging only on a higher number of reports) that way someone cant just take down comunities by reporting everything.
Thank you for outlining precisely why I don’t want the job. Much respect to anyone knowingly willing to take all that on. No respect lost to anyone who admits that it’s too much for them to handle.
It’s funny; I’ve made a couple suggestions that the admin team liked, and some of the other responses seemed to think I myself was part of the team. One said they knew it was my server to run as I saw fit (“but…”), and another asked if I was going to kill their c/. Uh, no to both of those, actually. I’m just some dude.
Can you give more information on the setup ?
Are you renting a VM? If so can you migrate the account over to someone?
Was this setup with Ansible or Docker ?
DevOps Engineer I deal with migrations all the time
I also work in devops and willing to help out or be available to consult / bounce ideas off of if needed.
Yeah. If you give me access to the current system, I could migrate it to a new server in a few hours. I host with DigitalOcean, so they support pretty much anything imaginable.
I could do it without problems, the only problem would be that I need access to the current hosting to be able to migrate all the data present.
I am currently a computer engineering student and therefore I should have enough free time to be able to manage the project without too many problems
Yes. How do we get in touch?
Sent out a matrix group link in DMs to most of you (i hope? lmk if you wanne be added.), feel free to join so we can figure this out.
Big thanks for getting things started on this growing platform! 🙏 Was a bummer that big instances like lemmyml jumped straight to de-fed but figure thats part of the growing pains. Your efforts are still appreciated.
Hope you stick around as an admin, while I may have disagreed with some of the things you’ve proposed and done, it’s really refreshing to have someone in charge who not only actively listens to the community, but goes so far as to ask the community about possible issues and matters that haven’t been brought forward.
Really gives a human face to the community, thanks for being so down-to-earth here.
❤️ Best wishes man
As a heads up, I am more than willing to help with the front admin stuff, backend just isn’t my expertise. If someone is willing to do the backend more I can do more front end stuff. I’m experienced with management of large communities and would be comfortable approaching some of the current pressing issues in a transparent way as well as opening up some discussions with other instance admins to try and address their concerns. I’m honestly just approaching things the same way I did when dealing with a large minecraft server. Horny adults are just grown up feral teenagers, I guess.
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind helping with some of the admin load as well. Honestly, I think a space like this is important. I also have a fair amount of experience in the professional NSFW field, on the production and distribution side, so I’m at least familiar with a lot of the issues.
To be clear, I am in no way volunteering to own or host this instance. I absolutely can’t handle that level of hassle right now. But admin stuff, I’m down.
I also think that if somebody does take it over, we really need to have a larger discussion with everyone about transparency, mission, administration etc. Like is this going to be a community, or is it going to be a fiefdom? It’s really hard to have both.
I agree. Presenting a united front within the admin team is likely the best way to move forward from here, as well as to best move forward and address some recent problems. I think communities like these are important, specifically well managed NSFW communities. NSFW communities are going to exist regardless, but careful coordinated moderation really needs to be a priority to make it a space that fosters content that can exist in a legal and safe fashion. I feel also if this community is going to survive and maintain federation with other instances, there needs to be a means of establishing direct communication with other instance admins. I’ve reached out to some yiffit admins today to try and create a line of communication at least on that end. I think generally though that instance admins even outside of lemmynsfw need to coordinate together regardless and have open lines of communication to make sure their communities are interacting in healthy ways as well. That open line of communication between instance management helped mastodon stabilize as a community when a bunch of users flooded in.
The Fediverse is built for community, collectivism and collective action. Reddit is built to funnel people, Lemmy is built to connect. It is a different beast and social spaces like this work best with social collaborative teams. People also need breaks from this stuff, especially if there’s spaces like this where they may be exposed to emotionally disturbing things… Most Mastodon Servers run with teams. @yay@lemmynsfw.com I am not your target demographic, but there is certainly potential and need for a space like this here. It is also important to have an admin team that cares as you seem to. There are tonnes of similar content on Mastodon as well if you look, you may be able to ask the admin teams there for advice. Because you are pioneering it here, you will have to go through the trials they did, but there are friends here and help, if you ask. It seems that you are trying and that is not a bad thing and should be encouraged. I will probably block this server tbh eventually but I want there to be spaces here that are not for me. You are building something new, it’s ok to falter.
Diplomacy is another big issue, but yes I agree. Better to be proactive than reactive on that front
Sorry you got so much shit for that, you definitely didn’t deserve it. Thank you for all your hard work and goodluck going forward.
Well thanks for full transparency! I think that’s dope.
I’d be interested in taking over or helping moderate. I run several servers already. I’m a software engineer. Hit me up on DM and I’ll tell you my IRL identity and my GitHub.
I am interested since I run servers and already have the infrastructure in place.
I just have to get familiar with running a Lemmy instance on Docker. Also, I don’t see any documentation on how to transfer a Lemmy instance.
I think he means he already has someone to transfer to, he isn’t asking who wants to take over.
Still, you could open your own instance if you have the infrastructure, it’s always good to have similar instances in case one of them goes down or something.Yeah, I know a lot about running dedicated servers and VPS. I am learning about self-hosted Lemmy instances and how to run them in Docker.
I am currently setting up a VPS to test out a Lemmy Instance and how to migrate between domain names.
Scaling is no issue for me since I already do that for a few clients.
Where are your servers based if you don’t mind me asking? Feel free to DM if you don’t want that to be public info lol
I have one dedicated server in the US and three VPS at Vultr. VPS at Vultr locations is nearest the client’s place of business since they only do a 100-mile radius of the business. My dedicated server uses CDNs from QUIC.cloud to Cloudflare. I can spin up VPS anywhere in the world.
Are you based in the US and familiar with dealing with the legal end of hosting this kinda stuff/would be comfortable doing so? For transparency I am not the person to talk about this with, @yay is, I am just curious.
I have been running adult sites since the late 90s. The legal end is not hard if you have everything in order. I have it all under a media company with business insurance.
It is easy.
If I were to run a Lemmy NSFW instance I would have my lawyer write up the exact legal terms as PornHub, YouTube, and Reddit.
My system admin would also REX any banned words, flag accounts, and flag IPs; anything uploaded would be the user’s responsibility. I would also create a moderation bot.
I have absolutely no interest in the front side admin (content moderation, etc) but if we can find hosting in a country that won’t send me to prison for being a part of this, I can do most sysadmin of backend.
Whatever admin team develops from this feel free to dm me and we can discuss how that would work.
Huge respect for being the change you wanted to see in the world. This instance needed to be created and I’m glad you were the one to pull the trigger.
That’s why I’m thinking of transferring the instance and the domain to a person I trust. Who can maintain the deployments and also know this stuff.
It’s somewhat unclear if you’re looking for someone, or you already have someone and just letting us know.
Adding my internal monologue here:
- it would be a shame to close THE nsfw lemmy server, especially since it’s so new and at the same time it got so much traction
- however, because it got so much traction, the costs will rise quickly (both in terms of money and personal time invested)
- to all you porn enjoyers (ie everyone), you can’t expect this lemmy server to survive by its own - there is no company behind it to finance it, there are no investors, there are no ads
- the only way this could work is if a lot of the people coming here would donate
I have close to 20 years of IT experience, growing from a stupid dev to a stupid manager. One of my last positions was engineering manager for a Twitch clone, which had pretty small numbers of users - the most we saw was 10k concurrent users on a stream. I’m saying all this not to boost, but to convince you that I’m not pulling things out of my ass - costs can easily reach 5 figures monthly if the growth of this server continues.
Now, if you have a phone or laptop, and the internet connection needed to visit this lemmy server, you do have spare change. If you could donate 12 dollars or euros PER YEAR, spread out in 12 equal payments of 1 dollar or euro per month, you would help immensely. Really. 1 moneys per month. You can afford it. You can be a fisherman in Uganda and still afford 1 dollar per month. You have enough coins thrown around in your car to make several months’ payments. So do that now, go to Patreon and set-up a monthly payment of 1$, if you want to see this server still around a couple of years from now.
@yay, if you do want to donate the server to someone, here’s some ideas on how to make the server work and grow:
- have a k8s setup (k3s on a couple of nodes works really well)
- PostgreSQL HA (from Bitnami) on the cluster
- separate storage box (or boxes, with CephFS or some other distributed filesystem)
- another separate nsfw server for scat/gore/other weird shit so lemmynsfw doesn’t get defederated
- consider setting up a company to own all of this, in case of legal issues