If I self host a Lemmy instance for just myself and maybe a few friends are there any risks?

VitaminH@lemmy.world to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 163 points –

Looking to maybe self host my own instance, I'm still learning about the fediverse. If a different instance that I federate with hosts something illegal are there risks to me? Is anything from other instances hosted on my server like a copy of it? Or would I only end up hosting things my users post? I'm paranoid and sorry if this is a silly question.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote a pretty good blog post on the legality of the Fediverse, around the time Mastodon was getting popular. It probably applies to Lemmy too. It’s worth a read to familiarize yourself of what kind of legal things you’ll be getting yourself into. You’re on the right track; you can control you and your friends’ content, but you can’t control remote content that gets pushed to your server and that’s the part to worry the most.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer

One thing that stood out is to register yourself as a DMCA agent. It costs $6 or something. Having an agent on record gives instance admins certain protection.

This is awesome info. There should be a place to document all the nuance around hosting an instance plus some tips and tricks.