Humans who run instances are real people who have jobs and mortgages and kids. I also like having piracy communities around to balance the greedy ass corporations trying to control media and copyright…I’m glad to know they are there if I need them or feel like screwing around with it. I just wonder if the people ranting all indignantly acting like instances are competing for their usership would feel the same if the most active instance was on a server physically sitting in their basement, or paid for by money tied to them in the real world. Yes it seems pretty unlikely that you’re ever going to run into issues with law enforcement, copyright claims, lawsuits…but how much would you risk for a fucking hobby you do for free? Would you risk your house? Your job? I would not. Grow up. No one cares what instance you use.
Curious to see how this thread will go, as it seems this opinion is indeed unpopular.
I agree with you 100%
A few points I’ve noted in the previous threads
- people confuse defederation and community blocking (in this case, it’s the latter)
- people assume that Lemmy.world is hosted in the US while it’s EU based
- people just feel like they need to announce they are leaving while this is not Reddit, most of the users open an alt and move on with their lives.
Absolutely, literally just swap instances. Hopefully instance migration comes in a similar way that mastodon offers.
I guess with LASIM as a current fix, it can work.
Mod tools are higher priority as far as I am concerned
people confuse defederation and community blocking (in this case, it’s the latter)
This seems to be a big one. LW admins were actually fairly light-handed on this one. This isn’t a discussion of defederation but people are acting like it is one.
I’m just grateful to see that just when folks were beginning to doubt if Lemmy could actually serve as a Reddit alternative, we’ve been able to prove that we’re equally if not more adept at insular slapfighting over petty bullshit and assuming the worst about others’ intentions.
Yes, the “everyone is nice, everyone is happy” days are over, at least for the coming days.
I guess that means we reached a large enough userbase
It means there is now a healthy spectrum of feelings. Nice and happy all the time isn’t healthy.
Let’s just say respectful
Where appropriate.
Let’s agree to disagree
Image a large ascii made emoji of shaking hands. Whatever you just imagined is probably way better than the one I’ve been trying to copy and paste in here. :)
I’m pretty sure someone was being a dickbag to me like, the day I joined, so it was basically a seamless transition from reddit. Though honestly, the last time I was on any kind of public site without anyone being a shit was when I moderated a forum a decade ago, at least up until we passed maybe 200 users. I’m pretty sure that’s about the limit before someone has to act up.
Right around Dunbar’s number
Lemmy ultimately can’t serve as a reddit replacement, but not because of the people. It’s the technology that won’t scale. If we took all the slapfighting that reddit had to offer, every instance would crumble trying to replicate a million snide and argumentative comments.
I’m still consistently surprised that so few people seem to have realized that you can just make an alt on another instance that federates with blahaj (or the instance itself) if you feel like it.
And as to the server owner: they’re doing this with donations and out of the goodness of their hearts. That kinda gives them the right to run their server as they see fit. If you don’t like it… either find another instance, make your own, or shut the fuck up.
Not super user friendly to have to be constantly switching instances if an admin does something you don’t like, but totally agree that these are just the trade-offs that are made when you choose to use a free and open source software
But like, it’s a fundamental characteristic of the fediverse.
This place isn’t for everyone. If someone can’t eventually wrap their head around the concept of separate instances with distinct and sometimes drastically different administrative standards, and that alts are a reasonable and correct solution to (de)federation/network fragmentation… well, this probably isn’t the right place for that person.
For sure, but still not user friendly in practice by nature. Admins can switch, you might be happy in an instance today and unhappy tomorrow and the only option is to blow up your account and make a new one somewhere else.
And that’s the attitude that makes sure this platform never grows.
The reality is that most people don’t want to manage multiple accounts or even know what instance they’re on. That kind of stuff only matters to tech people. The average user wants one account that does everything, not a bunch of seemingly identical accounts.
I’m still not sold on the fediverse anyways. Federation often seems to hold things back more than it helps tbh.
You’re assuming that lemmy users and instance owners want monotonic growth, and I do not at all think that that can be safely assumed in the fediverse. In fact, I’d bet good money that a lot of users and instance owners would love to keep their own instance sizes relatively small, and furthermore don’t want to grow their userbases too fast.
And I find that defeats the whole point of the platform. If there’s no growth there’s no point in continuing to stay here. The communities I care about are so small over here that they’re barely worth having, let alone participating in.
If they didn’t want to be seen as a Reddit replacement then it shouldn’t have been advertised as one. If growth isn’t wanted then there’s no point to the platform and it’ll never gain any more users.
This is also why it’s good to have large instances such as LW. Most users can go to the one big instance and then the ones who want to stay small can without harming the growth of the platform.
The fact that you say that makes me think you’re someone who wasn’t around for bulletin board forums in the 90s and early 2000s. They were perfectly sustainable, and generally extremely long-lived. There are more than a few of them out there from that era that are still kicking around and going strong, and they don’t have massive, unsustainable growth.
It’s 100% possible to have a relatively static, moderately sized userbase, and to still have a vibrant, nuanced, productive community. You just either haven’t interacted with any, or your expectations have been so deeply skewed by the Facebook/Twitter/Reddit meta of “constant OC all the time no matter what” that you don’t understand that in many contexts a firehose spraying greywater isn’t really “better” than a gently burbling mountain spring.
I dabbled in them, but never saw a point in a community that small.
When niche communities have less than 10 active users there’s no point in continuing it. When a community can only get a few hundred people active at any given time on Reddit it has 0 chance of survival here without growth.
I’d rather a stream of crappy content to a trickle of ok content any day without a single bit of hesitation.
Not to mention it’s not like Reddit where they’re doomed to their fate. The fedi is literally designed to get around this. That’s the whole point! Swapping instances is absolutely free. Though it is a bit of a pain without official migration tools so hopefully that gets fixed soon.
Though it is a bit of a pain
Almost painless using https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim (showing the link for potential readers, I think I remember sharing it to you a while back)
Yeah but the point is that it should be like Mastodon where it’s built in. Or at least with Lemmy, it’d be more appropriate just to be able to import/export your subscribe list, blocks, and settings.
I guess everyone would like this built in, as well as instance blocking and moderation tools.
Those are the three big topics to be addressed, and I assume they require quite a lot of work from the devs and the rest of the contributors.
Yeah also it’s easy to forget that these are devs doing this in the free time out of goodwill. They aren’t a company with an IPO they’re trying to hit.
Glad we have that tool 👍 but it’s not a full migration to my knowledge. I don’t think your post history migrates with you, for example. Just one ramification of that is if someone replies to an old post of yours, you won’t know on your new instance.
Also folks that have established communities on an instance (shameless plug for [email protected]) can’t uproot and move it to another instance (yet).
Glad we have that tool 👍 but it’s not a full migration to my knowledge. I don’t think your post history migrates with you, for example. Just one ramification of that is if someone replies to an old post of yours, you won’t know on your new instance.
Indeed, but I’m not sure even Mastodon offers that feature. I’m in that case quite often as I have a lot of alts. It’s okay for now, I don’t usually change accounts that often, and when I do, I have a one-week timeframe when I change the previous account as well.
The community moving is another issue, but for that one to happen would be really though. Quite easy to abuse, because attackers could just create fake communities with thousands of GBs of pictures and just dump those on targeted instances. It’s easier to monitor normal content creation, and even limit the creation of communities as some instances already do.
Indeed, but I’m not sure even Mastodon offers that feature
Firefish does let you import your Mastodon GDPR export, so it can be done. However the problem Lemmy will need to solve if it wants to offer this functionality is that all those posts are bound to new accounts, so you’ll either have duplicate posts or they won’t be shown.
A “true” post migration feature that replaces the owner of an existing post (as opposed to making backdated posts) would likely need an ActivityPub extension that the entire ecosystem an agree to, and of course that needs to consider proper authorization so a malicious instance can’t take over an account with a malicious migration request.
Hmm good points. Maybe moving communities should require admin approval from the instance you’re moving to?
Could be, but then the issue is that you would need to have a look at what is inside that community.
Who is going to ensure that GBs of text, comments and links are all legal and safe content? We are talking about piracy here, but there could be CP or other nasty stuff.
It’s quite a large risk to blindly trust someone to dump such a large amount of content on your instance.
Also folks that have established communities on an instance (shameless plug for [email protected]) can’t uproot and move it to another instance (yet).
You can moderate cross-instance as far as I’m aware. I agree that communities should be able to move as well, but from what I’ve seen from previous attempts by other communities .world admins will just find new mods and reopen the existing community.
I agree with your unpopular opinion but also think the people should feel free to bitch if they want to. I’m just happy to be here not giving dollars to Reddit.
I’d just rather them have an actual point than just complaints .Like how in their understanding are the instance runners in the clear when it comes to copyright laws. Like an actual point. Or how are they going to help the instance if there were to be legal trouble.
If you don’t like it… don’t read it. :)
Everyone vocal on “your side” seem to have really limited world view and generally just bad attitude. No one seems to be willing to even explain the logic behind why this is wrong or at least show some understanding of the problem.
Edit. And by “you” I don’t mean pirates, do what you want, but the people complaining about an instance protecting themselves from possible legal trouble.
Imo it’s fine if they want to block the community - it’s their instance. Whatever. But the logic is kind of twisted.
Discussing piracy isn’t illegal, full stop. They don’t host pirated content, they don’t link to pirated content, hell they don’t even link to websites that link to torrents. It’s literally just discussion.
The owner of Lemmy.world is allowed to block them out of fear, that’s their right. But it’s still a complete overreaction ignited by a transphobic troll account.
Now this makes a lot more sense than what I’ve read here! I can understand the ire.
I was the guy that originally posted the announcement to c/[email protected] that hit the front page. Posted it from my lemmy.world account that I’ve since migrated from.
The guy you replied to has the same opinion as me. I shared it because I disagreed with the decision and thought that it deserved to be spread to inform others - and since it’s only mildly infuriating that seemed like the best community for it.
Everyone vocal on “your side” seem to have really limited world view and generally just bad attitude
It’s funny that you wrote this because I genuinely couldn’t tell which side you were talking about at first. When I made my post I was shocked by how many people who didn’t care about the community block felt the need to be dismissive, talk about overreaction, said that people were whining and should shut up, etc. Shocked because it was a big tonal assumption. I wasn’t whining or complaining, just discussing. And if we should shut up over a single post about it, how would we ever get the word out so that those who disagreed could leave. “Their side” seemed really bull-headed with bad attitudes to me. It felt like we were being told to just quietly leave without making any noise - but how would we know to if we didn’t make any posts or comments?
Anyway, this isn’t to accuse you or “your side” of actually being that way. More so it’s just highlighting how when we’re only dealing with text, it can be very easy to assume a certain tone, especially when it’s someone you disagree with. We could probably all benefit from questioning our assumptions a little more often. I know there are people on “my side” who get far too vehement about it. But overall, we just want freer access to information
That comment was made after exclusively arguing with folks who had nothing to say, expect that the decision was fascist/narcissistic/etc. No explanation beyond weird buzzwords.
I’m not complaining about them protecting themselves. I switched, remember? I’m complaining about OP’s complaining of others complaining, and those like him. I get it, liability for the lemmy provider. Makes sense. But then to be like OP and kick those that just lost something they liked while they are down… kick him back.
OP certainly feels free to, ironically.
I don’t mind people voicing their complaints… it’s just the making a mountain out of very mole hill that I have a problem with.
💯
A bit of looking makes me think the admins have a legitimate concern here. Platform immunity in the EU isn’t quite as strong as it is in the US in general, and it’s specifically weaker with regard to copyright.
A successful copyright lawsuit (maybe even an unsuccessful one) could bring down the whole .world network, which hosts multiple federated services for many people. There could be personal liability for the admins as well. The admins should try to protect against outcomes like that, and the EU should probably strengthen its platform immunity laws.
And again, they’re volunteers, they’re already doing a service and they shouldn’t be forced to take legal risks they don’t want to.
It’s really annoying how lazy people are, the solution is to just have multiple accounts. It’s two clicks to change accounts but those lazy mfs have no response to that except that they don’t want to.
On top of that, they’ve been dealing with an ongoing DDOS for weeks. Is blocking piracy communities the response most of us want? No. Is it the best solution to get the most out of limited volunteer resources right now? I think the case for that is strong.
I think this is the right take. Americans have Section 230 (for now) that quite broadly protects communications platforms from liability over what 3rd parties (users) post to their platform about Piracy. We also have the 1st Amendment which more or less protects anything you say short of direct, specific calls to commit crimes and some types of slander/libel. It’s why we can say goofy shit like “now I’m not saying you should do this or encouraging anyone to do this, but if you were going to anyway here’s how:…” and get away with it.
In the EU, not so much. They have “methods and means” rules that can get platform owners in trouble for 3rd parties just posting about BitTorrent clients or providing advice like “Google X if you want to find Y” on their platform if it’s smells of possible piracy. We’re so used in the US to just being able to disclaim everything we say that this is a bit shocking. But talking about tools and techniques, even if you preamble with “now don’t ever use these for piracy bros, ok, I don’t advocate for using this advice in that way” is not going to save the user or even the platform owners from trouble. It is not just about posting direct links to pirated content or hosting/torrent sites. Maybe a point that is little-understood in the threads I’ve been reading on here about this.
Not sure where LW is hosted, but successful lawsuit absolutely doesn’t matter, just the existence of one. You spin up a server, host your instance, and any corp with their army of lawyers decide to sue. Just stop and think about what a pure hassle and the cost of even responding to the suit is. You’re probably in for a few grand and dozens of hours just on having a suit leveled against you. They don’t have to be morally right, legally right, they don’t have to to win, these companies can ruin lives and it’s just a Tuesday for them.
You basically said what I meant by this post without being an asshole like I was
If I ran an instance and there was even a fraction of a percent of a chance I could get ruined financially by some media company whose lawyers have a slow day…I might either shut it down, turn it over to someone else, or take some possibly overly cautious steps such as…what we’re talking about. We wanted social media that isn’t controlled by corporations. We got it except uh oh that means we don’t have lawyers like Spez, Zuck, Elmo have piles of.
I get what you’re saying, but calling people spoiled teenagers won’t change anyone’s mind. Attacking people is never a path to changing their mind.
You’re probably right. I was venting. Didn’t mean to offend anyone but people were getting silly with their outrage and felt like lots was misplaced, immature, short sighted
Humans who run instances are real people
This is the main problem here - the site is explicitly and legally run by a specific set of humans. Not by LemmyWorld Corp. Not by LemmyWorld LLC, but by “Jelloeater” et al. TBH this is a dumb idea. I don’t even run my own personal website as myself, let alone a forum with third-party content.
Having the admins and operators spend $50 for an LLC filing would shield the operators from most of this personal liability, even if the site itself would still be at risk of action.
An LLC registered with what government…Finland? Maybe a non profit would serve this purpose but then you have to have a board and meetings. Sounds like a lot of work.
Since the domain is registered in Finland, presumably it’d be created there. If an LLC has a single owner, you don’t need to have board meetings or anything. The sole owner would be whoever owns the website registration.
Gotcha.
How you gonna complain about people not thinking this topic through then argue without understanding the basics of legal incorporation? Go with humility, my friend
I’ll make sure to message you any time I’m about to comment so you can tell me if I have the credentials to have an opinion…thanks
Glad you learned your lesson, you’re welcome
It’s not easy to just open an LLC in every country.
It doesn’t need to be every country - just one.
Not very easy to open an LLC in a different country
The domain is registered in Finland, so someone at the top must live or have a proxy presence there.
In what countries was Reddit registered in then?
Don’t know. USA I guess? Why does it matter
Because they had no problem allowing r/piracy to exist before everything went to shit
Ye but people in Europe can’t just open an llc in the USA
Oh wow, they didn’t even create an LLC? Seems like a big mistake.
The real issue is that LW has become the de facto front page of Lemmy. No instance should have as many users/communities as they do. It gives them too much power over Lemmy. They could probably kill many instances if they decided to defederate from them.
100% agree. The system wasn’t designed to have a few massive instances…many, including myself, didn’t understand at first and thought Lemmy.world was… Lemmy… Much better to have dozens to hundreds of smaller ones and have a few accounts here and there. It’s probably good for people to realize no one controls the fediverse and separate themselves from the idea of even having a “home” instance for all uses. Maybe.
LW is likely the first of a few super instances. The next big migration from Reddit should be pointed at another instance prepared to handle the load.
If the fediverse grows and scales then instances the size of LW will probably be more common. People like to be where the other people are
I’m having issues registering on others atm. Lemmy.ml said it was closed when I attempted. Lemmy.dbzer0.com appeared ro let me sign up, sent me a verification email, which was accepted, but then every login attempt just cyclew and reloads for me. No error message. Reset password to verify that it was an account, got email, reset password successfully, then same thing.
For something I want to be casually doing, it’s kinda annoying.
Edit: dbzer0 just needed time. I saw a mention of authorization, but I guess I just assumed that would happen before the verification email. My bad.
Yeah the registration flow in Lemmy (on all instances basically) is not that mature.
They probably could but if they do so without cause, then likely they will lose users and have others defederate from them, too.
I think when it’s easier to migrate accounts between instances, were more likely to see more movement. I had an account on Lemmy.workd and this one. I was hesitant to abandon the world one as I’d already curated blocks and subscribes. It felt like starting over, doing so again elsewhere.
There are now tools to automate but it’s not as simple as it should and likely will be and those tools aren’t baked in.
I imagine that if that instance is flooded with new users and continues to grow, niche communities may become even more attractive as irrelevant content overpowers what many users want to see. It’s also good that new users have a place like that to easily find content, even if it’s broader than what will make for a long term community with adult discussion. Both kinds are good.
The only reason I picked Lemmy world is it was one of the listed communities on the Lemmy instance list. It listed by user numbers, so it’s likely to stay there, if that website continues to be just a list of instances. The advice is to pick an instance that matches your interests, but few instances are purpose built for that. I’d want to trial Lemmy as a new user before doing that level of research.
The issue I have is with the mods spite-banning users who expressed negative sentiments over it.
Did that happen?
deleted by creator
Oof. Luckily wiser heads prevailed
No, an open record prevailed.
Yeah that was not a great look, and a large part of why I run my own instance. The professionalism of a sites admins has a large affect on the community as a whole. You want people at the top that don’t have massive egos.
I left for greener pastures rather than complain.
Which is exactly how the fediverse is supposed to work.
Understandable tbh, I wouldn’t want ppl like that arguing on the instance I host with my own money, time, and dedication.
🤣 I find it hilarious on these threads, no matter how petty, immature, misguided, overreaching, spiteful an action is, someone will post “understandable”
I’m glad the LW admins have the foresight to consider things like this and other areas of concern. It’s good to see LW admin admit when they don’t know enough about something and are being cautious. I don’t think Discord should be the place for any announcements though. Hopefully LW can get the legal protections or assurances necessary to host all of the content people want to see.
Why does LW even use discord? It’s a good chance to get people to use matrix
Yeah I don’t get the discord thing.
LW already came out and said announcing on Discord was a mistake (as in, they didn’t mean to do it in the first place, rather than meaning in hindsight it was regretful) and it won’t happen again.
The biggest thing is simply. "Lemmy.world "…
If someone really is that upset, create your own instance. Find an instance that agrees with you and swap it. I’m not anti-piracy, but this seems like a fundamental difference between you and Lemmy World, that essentially means you should find a different instance.
(or go create an account on a piracy server and here if that’s what it takes)
lemmy.world is obviously WORSE than Reddit now. Reddit saved her users.
https://torrentfreak.com/reddit-defeats-filmmakers-second-attempt-at-unmasking-anonymous-users-230731/She punishes bad mods but does NOT block any communities with shitty reasons as Lemmy said.
Lemmy devs said “Just an instance did. Lemmy is not evil!” as it were someone else’s issue, and blamed Reddit somehow.
Then, did other lemmy instances de-federate lemmy.world? Did Lemmy devs blame lemmy.world? No, no, and no, they did not! This problem is not about an instance but Lemmy platform. They did not understand that SNS is not a playground for blocking-all-he-dislikes kids. This act will kill themselves as R*ssia is doing now.
I mean… The piracy communities have very useful links to wikis all about how to sail the high seas…
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really have any skin in this game, I dabble in a bit of piracy now and again, and am broadly pro having a community for people to chat about it although I don’t myself.
But at the same time when a community description has a link to a page with comprehensive lists of the best sites to download/torrent from, including a cute little goat emoji next to the best ones, let’s not be disingenuous. (That wiki is terrific btw)
If theoretically someone did decide to investigate you for having links to lots of legally dubious information available on your instance I don’t know the law in other people’s countries but in mine it wouldn’t be worth the hassle or attention. I say theoretically because at the moment Lemmy is probably too small to get attention but still.
I can see why people might want to play it a bit on the safe side if they’re not sure if they’re going to get into trouble over something or not.
The internet is a silly place.
Let’s not go to Camelot.
I’m so tired of the “just change instances” argument that comes up every time mods make a bad decision. It’s as bad as “just watch something else” for movies. Like yeah, literally everyone recognizes that you can choose how to spend your time, but that fact isn’t a magic buffer against critisism.
I understand that but also I can change instances in two clicks on an app once I’m signed up. I was going to post this one with my world account but it was going slow so I switched. Same two clicks to view piracy or porn. Yeah it would be easier to not have to but I understand why someone would simply choose to not fuss with it. Running these things is basically a hobby.
Imagine if you were invited to a party at a friend’s house…well, this friend got mad when you started lighting off fireworks at midnight and waking his neighbors up…this friend makes you take your shoes off when you come in their house. This friend doesn’t want you to watch porn because the kids are playing video games in the other room. Well it’s a free country right, why can’t I light off fireworks? As your friend I want you to have fun at my party man, I really do…that’s why I invited you…but my neighbors will call the cops and I have to deal with then in the morning. And my wife will kill me if the floor gets all scuffed up. If you want to leave the party because of that I’m sorry.
It’s not meant as a “magic buffer to criticism.”
It’s just a more polite alternative to “nobody gives a shit what you think, so fuck off.”
Gotta love how it’s somehow simultaneously “I’m so annoyed everyone’s talking about it” and “nobody gives a shit”. Make up your mind. You don’t get to have it both ways. Maybe you don’t give a shit, but a lot of people do, and they want to discuss it. Not everything is about you. Also, gotta love the irony of someone showing up on someone’s forum to loudly declare how much they don’t care about something.
Stop it! You’re making me miss reddit awards! Because your post needs awards!
Everyone should switch instances, but not because of this stuff. LW is just too large right now. The fediverse wasn’t designed to have so many people in one place. Communities were supposed to spread out and build their own specialized instances. This attempt to recreate reddit on one instance never should have happened.
It’s as bad as “just watch something else” for movies.
This is more like “I hate the way this movie looks on this TV!” when you have free alternative TVs you could use instead.
This logic doesn’t even work for tvs. Even if I return a bad tv to get a better one, I’m still gonna leave a bad review on the amazon page.
True, complaining that you think the instance sucks is valid - but I do think how inconveniencing it is should factor in. Since you can simply make a new account on a different instance and continue viewing the exact same content, getting too bent out of shape about it is a bit silly.
