Comment

Eh, if the original instance removes the CSAM - the ban and removal federates out to everywhere else, so this isn’t always true.

But if it doesn’t, then other instances removing the content on their side doesn’t federate. So you can either trust every instance that you federate with with your legal security, or you will have to moderate everything yourself as well, just in case someone missed something.

Down the line, the answer here would be for the federative structure to change so that an instance only hosts its own local content, and doesn’t need duplicate content viewed from external instances.

This would be extremely important, but I don’t know if such a low level conceptual change can still be performed with a reasonable amount of work. Remember, for such a change you need to get every instance on board. That would be difficult now, and only more difficult later.

Tbh, it would have been much smarter if the setup would be basically a bunch of independent phpBB-like boards with federated single-sign-on and an app that transparently connects you to whatever instance hosts the content you are looking at.

That’s not why lemm.ee closed down. It wasn’t financial.

No, it was specifically because of the moderation issue: lemmy.ca/post/45390962

source

Sort:hotnew top

Skavau@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

But if it doesn’t, then other instances removing the content on their side doesn’t federate. So you can either trust every instance that you federate with with your legal security, or you will have to moderate everything yourself as well, just in case someone missed something.

Sure, you’re right there - but an instance that kept having problems with removing CSAM would find itself defederated.

This would be extremely important, but I don’t know if such a low level conceptual change can still be performed with a reasonable amount of work. Remember, for such a change you need to get every instance on board. That would be difficult now, and only more difficult later.

Well it would be built in from Lemmy or Piefed. The devs would have to spearhead it. But were the load ever to get to that point, I suspect that would be the obvious move.

No, it was specifically because of the moderation issue: https://lemmy.ca/post/45390962

Yes, so not financial. You seemed to be implying it was financial.

source
- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  Sure, you’re right there - but an instance that kept having problems with removing CSAM would find itself defederated.
  
  Depends… Imagine it also contains some of the most relevant communities and defederating would mean you lose users. That’s not such an easy decision any more. Also, at that point hosting would likely be so expensive that for-profit instances would emerge, and for those defederating an important community wouldn’t be such an easy choice either.
  
  But it’s not only CSAM. For example, there’s illegal speech in quite a few parts of the world. In Germany, for example, a lot of nazi-related stuff is illegal. In russia or china some regime-critical speech is illegal. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the US also joins this club sometime in the near future.
  
  Actually, if you are a non US citizen and you and you want to travel to the USA, it’s already troublesome if you are hosting a website with anti-Trump content.
  
  That kind of stuff is unlikely to be deleted on the original instance if that instance isn’t hosted in the same country.
  
  Yes, so not financial. You seemed to be implying it was financial.
  
  Sorry if that came across. I said lemm.ee was shutdown because of the scaling issue. I could have been more clear with that I meant the moderation scaling issues.
  
  source
  - Skavau@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    Depends… Imagine it also contains some of the most relevant communities and defederating would mean you lose users. That’s not such an easy decision any more. Also, at that point hosting would likely be so expensive that for-profit instances would emerge, and for those defederating an important community wouldn’t be such an easy choice either.
    
    I don’t think that would save it, to be honest.
    
    People would just clone the communities on other instances and rebuild.
    
    I suspect eventually lemmy/piefed federation will not be automatic, but subject to approval.
    
    But it’s not only CSAM. For example, there’s illegal speech in quite a few parts of the world. In Germany, for example, a lot of nazi-related stuff is illegal. In russia or china some regime-critical speech is illegal. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the US also joins this club sometime in the near future.
    
    No-one cares what Russia or China thinks here. Germany? I mean, sure, but this is also a complication for any regulatory bodies trying to police social media sites. As “Lemmy” or “Piefed”, as you know, are not singular entities.
    
    Sorry if that came across. I said lemm.ee was shutdown because of the scaling issue. I could have been more clear with that I meant the moderation scaling issues.
    
    Yeah, in part because they had a “no defederation” policy which came to bite them back.
    
    source
    squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    No-one cares what Russia or China thinks here. Germany? I mean, sure, but this is also a complication for any regulatory bodies trying to police social media sites. As “Lemmy” or “Piefed”, as you know, are not singular entities.
    
    People living in Russia or China might care.
    
    UK might be much more difficult, btw. They now ban all porn without identity checks. So if you host a lemmy/piefed instance that’s accessible in the UK you will need to delete all adult content that makes it to your instance, if you don’t want to violate UK law.
    
    People would just clone the communities on other instances and rebuild.
    
    Cloning communities isn’t quite that easy. Were you present when feddit.de went down? Their communities didn’t vanish. The replications are still up on all other instances, and you can still post there. There’s no indication to a casual user that the instance hosting the communities is down and thus federation doesn’t work. To the users it just looks like participation dropped like a rock with no obvious reason.
    
    The communities were cloned onto a new instance (IIRC feddit.org) but even up to now, people keep posting to the old now-unfederated communities.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments