Lemmy.world seems to have banned the largest piracy community on Lemmy.

satxdude@lemm.ee to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 597 points –
lemmy.dbzer0.com

This has happened once before and they reversed it. But they said this last time too:

The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.

https://lemmy.world/post/3234363

291

Lemmy world:

Users, not even on Lemmy World or directly affected by this:

Pissed Pikachu with torch and pitchfork

I'm not in the loop or even involved with LW's admin affairs, but I would imagine there was a letter or email to them or their service provider that prompted that and likely named those communities specifically. Going out on a limb, I would guess the community removal was a timely response to something like that, and based on LW's history, an announcement will probably be coming soon-ish.

Before you grab your torches and pitchforks, remember: Pretty much every Lemmy instance is run by volunteers that don't have legal departments.

"The cloud is just other people's computers" - It's inconvenient, but those computers are real, physical objects subject to oversight from real, physical law enforcement.

Remember: Pretty much every Lemmy instance is run by volunteers that don’t have legal departments

One lawsuit can shut them down.

Never understood people who don't get this.

As a person who is part of open source communities, on various chairs and donates, the money is extremely slim, and the people involved just want to build cool things.

We are busy trying to keep the lights on for hundreds of thousands of people can enjoy this service. And if a small group of troublemakers force us to get a strong legal threat, we aren't risking the the project's survival for them.

Especially when we don't know the troublemakers, don't have any connection with them, they don't contribute to the platform, etc.

Evidence No. 3783 that "social media" and "privacy" do not mix well together.

Let me repeat one more time:

  • anything you write online should be considered public.
  • There is no "consent-based" fediverse.
  • There is no "GDPR protects me from that".
  • There is no "security through obscurity".
  • There is no "dark corner of the internet".

No matter your morals and ethical values, If you need to have any type of conversation that you think might get you in legal trouble, do not have this conversation in a public forum. Use #matrix if you have to, and even then you'd still need to worry large group chats which may have some undercover agent.

And if you are really concerned about "censorship", then ActivityPub is not for you. Go join forces with the bitcoiners and use #nostr.

Oh oops, you haven't pasted some cool copyleft licence below your words on this niche thread on a niche social media network so looks like I might remix and reuse your content without attribution... Unlucky

I think you got the wrong person, the copyright guy is someone else.

I've seen a few people doing it, but I (and literally any companies scraping instances for content) just lol and move on.

I feel like I've only seen one, maybe two people doing it, but I guess there might've been more.

And anything you write or upload to Lemmy should be considered permanent, as it immediately spreads throughout all the instances and they actually don't have to respect edits or removals. And if instances defederate from each other then they simply can't, as they don't sync those requests any more - if Lemmy.World decided to defederate from Sopuli, this message would become permanent and I could not do anything about it.

Also, this who saga about the uploaded ID picture.

removing pictures really seems like a bit of a nightmare after reading that.

Is it bad that I hope Nostr takes off?

Not at all. I myself have been playing with the possibility of adding support to it on Fediverser, to have a place for the mirror bots.

Yeah like.

This isn't reddit dot com opaquely purging your favourite subreddit for some unspecific corporate reason.

The admins stated quite clearly why they are blocking it ("we don't want trouble, and our TOS lay out that we'll defed from illegal shit for our own safety"), and it is their instance. And unlike Reddit -- The community is still THERE in its home server. It has not been burninated. -- You can just. Make an account elsewhere. It's free. It takes less than 5 minutes. You can even KEEP your LW account for other communities.

Did the admins state anything? I thought the issue here is that LW previously did something without an announcement, undid it and promised to communicate before doing something like that again, and now people are saying they haven't communicated this time.

That's the real issue, not the fact that it was defederated.

This is precisely it.
One other point is, some instance want to focus on certain things, and take the risks, where others don't.
Our community feddit.uk doesn't do nsfw, because it's not worth the headache for what our main focus is.
The guy running lemmynsfw on the other hand, is enthusiastically embracing the challenges involved, and more power to him!

And in the end, it works. We handle Mr. Brains Pork Balls, they can handle...other balls.

Our community feddit.uk doesn't do nsfw, because it's not worth the headache for what our main focus is.

Same for my instance and for the same reasons. We have nothing against that, just, like you said, not our focus nor worth the headache.

And in the end, it works. We handle Mr. Brains Pork Balls, they can handle...other balls.

🤣

I would imagine there was a letter or email to them or their service provider that prompted that and likely named those communities specifically

What I'm curious about is, why haven't lemmy.dbzer0.com received those takedown messages? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source instead of just another instance hosting the content but not actually "responsible" for the content, so to speak? Or maybe they have?

Also curious why lemmy.world has still not made a statement about this or even acknowledged it (at least I haven't seen any acknowledgement so far). Removing the communities from their instance is of course totally within their power and right, but this isn't exactly the most transparent way to do it.

What I'm curious about is, why haven't lemmy.dbzer0.com received those takedown messages? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source instead of just another instance hosting the content but not actually "responsible" for the content, so to speak? Or maybe they have?

So many unknowns. Until LW makes an announcement, it's all speculation. I haven't seen any mention from db0 about takedowns, etc, but those may just be background noise for him. lol

Db0 seems confused based on their comments about this situation over on the piracy community. Said there was zero notice or communication from LW ahead of time

I don't know the inner politics of it, but I did check lemmy.world/instances and db0 wasn't on the "blocked" list. AFAIK, based on their modlog, just those two communities were blocked (unless that's changed since i last looked)

Yeah something’s going on. As of 10 hours ago Db0 has no idea what exactly that is though, which is odd because I believe typically LW would reach out to him about the offending content if it was a DMCA type thing. Idk

regarding your first question - they usually go after the big fish first. dbzer0 might still be flying under the radar, and also might be ina different jurisdiction where the specific plaintiff can't go after them, or where it's harder for them to do so

The thing that gets me is the quote in the OP from last time this happened. It has been +12 hours of silence when you said last time they'd have this discussion BEFORE. Maybe it's for legal reasons but you'd think they'd have said well, something.

The point was transparency, don’t try to distract from the issue.

People speaking out and getting mad is natural and helpful. It's how discourse works at this scale. Maybe the mods change their actions or maybe they don't, but saying nothing about bad things happening won't help anyone and getting mad that others are saying things is stupid.

Are you telling me Reddit is free to have a Piracy sub, but Lemmy isn't?

What's the point of Lemmy if Reddit is more free?

Reddit is an American company, subject to American laws, that has a legal department (i.e. has lawyers on retainer). Lemmy World, like most other instances, is run by volunteers and donations and is subject to the laws where it's hosted and/or where its operators reside.

When you receive a takedown / DMCA / whatever legal mumbo-jumbo applies to your jurisdiction, you have two choices:

  • Comply immediately
  • Fight it in court

The first option is free. The second option costs a lot of money if you don't already have lawyers on retainer and can cost even more money if the court rules against you.

Sucks, but that's the way it is.

Again, I'm only speculating that was the case here. However, given Germany is one of the jurisdictions LW is accountable to, it's not that wild of a guess.

In most EU nations, piracy is usually not even a blip on the radar for security forces and internet providers. Things seem to work completely differently in Germany, where breaking copyright law can carry a sentence of up to three years in jail, alongside a large fine and trial costs. - Source


What's the point of Lemmy if Reddit is more free?

That's such a broad question that I'm not even going to bother. Instead, I'll answer with the same question as when "states' rights" are brought up:

"States' rights Free to do what, exactly?"

You're also free to run your own instance and accept all the legal liabilities that come with that.

When you receive a takedown / DMCA / whatever legal mumbo-jumbo applies to your jurisdiction, you have two choices:

Comply immediately
Fight it in court

You actually have a third option: file a DMCA Counternotice. If my reading is correct, the very act of filing the counternotice allows you to keep the content up unless the original filer "insists" (it's the mechanism against "DMCA trolling"). DMCAis not a jail-free card to erase content from the internet.

Possibly, but the DMCA is strictly a US thing. The comply or fight in court are the only two somewhat universal options.

Other countries have other similar laws, though. LW's TOS says they're under legal jurisdiction of Finland, The Netherlands, and Germany. Not sure what their laws are like, but Germany seems pretty strict about it.

Could be, but still it reeks of overreaction. Without the need of seeing anything else, it's almost impossible that Germany's law is that strict that "linking to (discussion of) pirated material" would be off, since if that was the case Google would be making Germany rich with their fines, which doesn't seem to be the case. It's even worse when it comes down to saying "discussing or mentioning" internet piracy would be illegal - under the way copyright holders themselves understand it, this would mean mentioning the market of secondhand sales would be illegal in such jurisdictions.

Yeah, until LW addresses it, all we can really do is guess. I've just jumped to the most logical conclusion, but that doesn't mean it's even close.

For what it's worth, as an instance admin myself: I don't get paid to run it, I have other things to worry about, and most definitely don't have time or energy to deal with copyright BS. That said, I can completely understand their position and reaction.

Depending on how my day was going, I'd have also probably "shot first and asked questions later" with regard to removing the community and waiting until I had time to compose a post about it and be present to deal with the inevitable drama that would cause.

Hopefully they make an announcement soon.

You seem to be confusing Lemmy.world with Lemmy as a whole. Lemmy is free to be used for anything by anyone.

Lemmy.world is the largest and most mainstream Lemmy server, so they need to be especially careful about legal issues. If lemmy.world gets taken down due to mirroring content hosted on lemmy.dbzer0.com, the whole network would partially collapse because of how many users and communities are hosted on lemmy.world.

It's not even close to worth the risk. This is how federation is supposed to work.

Isnt the federations key idea to avoid collapse if any single instance it failing? This sounds like the system has become too centralized around lemmy.world

It's definitely not ideal to be this centralized around lemmy.world. But it's also nearly impossible to prevent some amount of centralization, especially at our current size. With only 50k active users, we don't have enough people to sustain activity if things were more spread out.

It's still so early. If we get to 500k or 5M users, things will naturally get way more decentralized. A year ago, about 70-80% of the whole network was basically centralized on lemmy.ml. I dont have the exact numbers because I wasn't here yet, but looking back at the stats there were only a few thousand active users at that time and the vast majority were on lemmy.ml

Now, only about 40% of the network is on lemmy.world (20k/50k users). I just think there are natural incentives that will continue to push us in the direction of decentralization, but we haven't quite reached the tipping point where that starts to happen.

If we get to 500k or 5M users, things will naturally get way more decentralized.

What makes you think that? I abandoned my kbin account because all the content is on lemmy and I don't feel like waiting 4 hours to get that content on kbin. People will go where the content is.

That's just because kbin doesn't work properly though. One reason why things are centralized is because there are only so many servers that actually work well.

Events like this removal of the piracy community will naturally cause people to spread out over time. You could even see people try to spread out on reddit by making new subs when they chafed at the rules.

The more people we have, the more diverse we will become, and thus it will be necessary to create new servers to accommodate these different types of people. That's my instinct, but there are many different ways it could go.

Content loads just as fast on small subs as on large subs. Not so for instances. I think centralization is inevitable unless federated data transfer gets faster.

It usually is federated quickly within Lemmy itself. I can't speak for kbin but in my experience on SJW, I typically get all the content from remote instances in real time.

I know there are some technical issues with the scaling of federation though, but hopefully that can be improved on.

Here is a dashboard of synchronisation time between the most popular instances: https://grafana.lem.rocks/d/cdfzs0dwal3pca/federation-health-time-behind?orgId=1&var-instance=All&var-remote_instance=aussie.zone&var-remote_instance=lemmy.blahaj.zone&var-remote_instance=lemmy.ml&var-remote_instance=lemmy.nz&var-remote_instance=reddthat.com&var-remote_instance=sh.itjust.works&var-remote_instance=slrpnk.net&var-remote_software=All&from=now-12h&to=now

As you can see, the only three instances synchronizing in more than 5 minutes are

  • reddthat, based in Australia
  • lemmy.nz, in New Zealand
  • aussie.zone, Australia too
  • feddit.ch, closing at the end of the month

For the 3 first instances, this is due to lag and centralization of communities on LW. Moving communities away from LW would actually help solving that issue (in parallel, Reddthat is planning to open an EU server to reduce the lag)

Are these all lemmy clients?

Lemmy instances. The graph shows how long it takes for content to go from one instance to another, which is a few minutes at most

Gotcha. Makes me wish I had the technical know how to spin up my own instance. Those really are like subreddits then.

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Huh, that's too bad about feddit.ch, at least they have a good alternative in feddit.de I suppose.

Good info btw 👌

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Centralization is a product of social behavior. People will gravitate to the place everyone else is. They won't "decentralize" naturally.

Sometimes people centralize, and sometimes they decentralize. They are both natural social behaviors.

If people naturally gravitate to the place everyone is, why are we all on Lemmy instead of reddit? Why do I have absolutely no desire to be a part of lemmy.world, where everyone else is? People are not all the same.

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It definitely has. Hopefully this decision will nudge people into other instances.

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the dbzer0 piracy community has been around much longer than most of the users here. they spun up when they saw the writing on the wall, and they permit things that would not be permitted on reddit. and, it seems, they permit things that are not permitted on .world.

but the instance is still there. the community is still there.

and you can leave .world, join an instance that hasn't banned !piracy, and keep right on going.

You don't even need to leave .world, you can subscribe to communities on other instances.

Reddit's piracy community doesn't discuss the practical stuff like dbzero's does

You know the meme where Bender goes, "I'll do my own thing, with Blackjack and hookers!"

Lemme provides that. Servers are managed by different groups and you can absolutely make your own, with blackjacks and hookers.

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Great thing about the fediverse is that you have options when admin/moderation actions occur that you don’t agree with. If Reddit were to remove /r/piracy then we’d have no recourse

Very true...as long as the federation of servers remains as it is now, but I'm increasingly worried it won't.

I mean, yes, Dbzer0 still exists, and yes, you can access it from other instances, but Lemmy.world is the biggest one and users here being cut off from it from here will strangle the amount of activity it gets. Visibility is important for the health of other instances and their communities. There's a good reason why alternative subreddits never outgrow the main ones.

There's also a sentiment among some admins and some of the contributors to both Lemmy and the Sublinks project that feels like it runs counter to the premise of Lemmy as whole: an unwillingness commit to a truly shared space or adhere to a standard for what federation is supposed to mean. Instances are not only encouraged to do whatever, they're being given more tools to. And that's good for fighting spam, child porn, and malicious instances, but it doesn't stop there.

I really hope an app or frontend comes along at some point that will seamlessly combine instance accounts and "fill in the blanks" created by instance admins so users can have a clear picture of Lemmy, regardless of the instance they're on.

I mean, yes, Dbzer0 still exists, and yes, you can access it from other instances, but Lemmy.world is the biggest one and users here being cut off from it from here will strangle the amount of activity it gets. Visibility is important for the health of other instances and their communities. There’s a good reason why alternative subreddits never outgrow the main ones.

Yes and no. While it's true that piracy might not get "drive-by" traffic from l.w. users, those users who become aware of it, or who want to access it will be forced to create an account elsewhere than l.w. which will also help with redistributing users to smaller instances.

ITT: People who think lemmy.world is equal to Lemmy.

Go join another instance folks.

Yep, this is why I have multiple Lemmy accounts. That's even one of the biggest strengths of Lemmy.

This will be the third time I will have lost all my comment history and have to recreate my large block list. It's not just a flip of the switch.

Lemmy now has export/import for settings, including blocklist.

Suscriptions and block liste are transferred in two clicks via the settings. For jour history just mention the other account in jour bio.

It is the most popular lemmy instance though, so them banning a community like this is quite impactful.

For sure! It's just sad seeing corporate cucks win out, again. Lol.

Does anyone have recommendations for instances that aren't so proud about censorship?

OP has the answer, come to the place that is being banned: Lemmy.dbzer0.com ! I came here last time .world got all banney.

I'm seeing some balance at lemmy.ca.

Then again, at times I can be pretty clueless. I'm just happy here.

This is why you don't sign up with the biggest possible instances, eventually they will become the biggest possible bottleneck in a network. Anything dot world admins do will affect all of their users, that shouldn't be surprising 🤷

As for dbzer0, this might affect users in the short term but eventually people will figure out how to access the sub from more friendly instances.

Stop crying about it and just join a new instance, pretty simple.

Yeah that. And I say it as someone who, on a good day, will go on philosophical rambles about how piracy is in fact the moral thing to do.

Do people just not get that this is the entire point of a decentralized system?

Hop accounts, you lil' bitch. Don't sit in one server complaining about the owner of that server when you have a billion options.

And if your priority is the piracy community? Make the server that hosts that your homeserver.

Or just have more than one account and use an app instead of the default webpage.

It's not rocket science. People's brains are poisoned by centralization. Back in my day everything was its own separate forum with its own separate account and to be honest, it was miles better like that.

The problem with this is that it isn't really decentralized equally. Lemmy.world has most of the users and getting defederated from them is essentially a death sentence in terms of content and engagement.

I think it's a good idea to make new accounts on other instances, I plan to but without a proper amount of people, lemmy.world is working the same way reddit did.

The problem with this is that it isn’t really decentralized equally. Lemmy.world has most of the users and getting defederated from them is essentially a death sentence in terms of content and engagement.

Self-resolving issue here. If people hop away from LW due to LW making decisions they don't like, LW will cease being the one-go-to-place for stuff. Which is good, it shouldn't be. No one instance should be "the main instance". The right way to use federation is each person & community should make their home at a place where they vibe just right with the fed admins. It's even good for LW itself as it reduces the burden on its server and the workload for its admins.

Also also -- Defederation is a far more nuanced thing than just "is block". There is more than one tool that can be used by an ActivityPub admin.

If LW defederates from your home instance -- You can still manually follow communities that are in LW AND interact with them (unless the admins go out of their way to ALSO block USERS from your home instance), as "defederated from the instance" just removes it from the global timeline/global community search.

What happened here, though, wasn't defederation, it was a block, and a block on two specific communities, which outright prevents viewing & interacting with content from those communities from within LW. Which brings me to: LW's block on the piracy communities from dbzer0 doesn't stop LW users from interacting with dbzer0 as a whole. Or vice-versa. Only with stuff from the piracy coms.

Hopefully this will drive people to switch to another instance, and the issue you mentions will be less present.

I did that the last time and moved here ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Better management, no censorship, better uptimes and quicker upgrades, no need to look back (I moved "momentarily").

quicker upgrades

That's an important one, especially with how long it took LW to upgrade. I completely get why it's more challenging for them due to their number of users, but that could be an argument for enthusiastic users to move elsewhere.

Reddit syndrome still affects a lot of users here, who view having multiple accounts on different answers as an inconvenience instead of a feature of the platform design. The irony is that tons of users on Reddit had lots of accounts without batting an eye, but that extra step of having to lick a new instance is just SO complicated.

It is an inconvenience. Having to track which account can view which communities, with all the drama and defederation happening each week isn't easy.

Picking a better instance for your main is most advisable. Users can accept that the primary benefit of a free and open source federated service can also sometimes inconvenience them, or they cannot. Complaining about the core mechanic of the technology that literally cannot change is silly IMO. Corporate owned centralization leads to enshittification. Your account age indicates that you know that first hand.

Indeed. There are lots of proposals for perfectly portable decentralized user identities, subscriptions that transcend specific instances, and whatnot, but until those things actually arrive that's not the Fediverse we're dealing with. It's a hassle having to switch instances.

Centralized Reddit brain poison tbh.

Your password manager will keep track of your credentials. If you have THAT MUCH trouble keeping track of which communities are on which server, stick to local communities.

Back in the day we had everything be its own separate forum and no one died from that. You're just lazy.

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It’s a major inconvenience and I’ll stick to one. If it can’t be accessed from Lemmy.world it’s not really my problem tbh and I’ll just act like it doesn’t exist.

I've never noticed any defederation from my instance or drama aside from the main posts talking about it, and if you came here interested in a piracy community it's good for that, lemmy.dbzer0.com. "Lemmy.World" seems to be where all the drama happens hah. I have only ever made one account, interact with several different instances without issue. I agree using several accounts would be annoying.

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This isn't reddit. There's a clear solution here: decentralization. Aka, like the entire point why we're on Lemmy in the first place. Join another instance lol.

"No! I refuse to open more than one site! If it's not on this one site that I have decided amounts to the entire threadiverse then it doesn't exist, how dare people make me think? The absurdity of it all!"

.world users doing their thing. It's fine for a starter but not someplace to stay

What a bunch of fucking clowns.

Anyways.... !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

That returns an error.

Is there another instance you'd recommend?

I can see it just fine. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Making a new account isn't difficult; I chose my instance specifically because I wanted access to that particular community.

Which instance do you recommend?

I mean, dbzer0 is the one I actively use, so that one. It's an anarchist instance, it's the one that hosts the community, and I happen to align with the prevelant way of thinking, which made the decision fairly easy.

When "reddit outside of reddit" does reddit things 🫨

To be fair, Rudd is just a hobbyist who runs .world in his spare time. If he’s getting legal pressure, he’s probably going to cover his ass. He’s not a company with a legal dept. He’s a guy with a family and a day job.

Another problem is .world part of US-centric instance

When the people using a free service you're not obligated to provide try and shame you for not taking on multimillion dollar legal departments.

The communities they banned are only for the discussion of piracy(whick is legal). There are no copyrighted material hosted in any of them.

It doesn't matter if they're blessed by the Pope himself. The people who run the instance get to decide what moves through it.

Yes, and I can voice my dissatisfaction with it. I'm not sure what your point is other than trying to tell me to shut up in a more verbose way.

The benefit is that it isn't just another reddit but rather network of reddits

Banned on one? Get from another.

I'm referring specifically to lemmy.world, not to all of lemmy or even the fediverse.

Sad that antipiracy laws are in place.

But understandable that lemmy.world protect themselves against those unfair laws.

The sailing will continue, but, as always, we should be wary of the "navy" and sail with precaution.

I never sail without protection

Does removing mean defederate?

No. Every community is hosted by a server, just as every user account is. Removing a community is similar to banning a user.

So it just means that lemmy.world users can no longer see that specific community, right?

No, it means the community no longer functions and most posts to it aren't available on other servers either. You can view some remnants of it on other servers, but I'm not sure what will happen if you try to post to them.

No that's not correct because the community they banned was not on their instance.

All this does is prevent Lemmy.World users from using or seeing the community. Everyone else is unaffected.

I misunderstood which community was being discussed. You're correct.

  • A server banning a community it hosts effectively destroys that community
  • A server banning a community it does not host makes that server's users unable to interact with it

That's very similar to banning a user.

The pirates will simply move to another Lemmy Instance and re-create the group there. This is the advantage of having a decentralized platform: so one person or small group of people can't ruin things for the rest of us.

Spin up a piracy instance on a server in China or Russia and be done with it.

The communities that were blocked were not on the Lemmy.world instance.

A good way to get roskompozor on your back thought 👀.

Roskompozor?

A Russian word play around Roskomnadzor, i.e. The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, an agency responsible, among other things, for censoring media and blocking access to Internet resources, as well as proceeding with criminal allegations on illegal content.

Pozor (Позор) means "shame".

They are busy blocking localhost

EDIT: dbzer0 had nothing to do with this ban, it was done by a Lemmy.World admin.

I updated my post after another user stated that it wasn't lemmy.world admins that performed the ban but the db0 team that did. I can't say with certainty that's actually the case since the modlog is pretty opaque and I don't have full knowledge of how [federated] actions are propagated & displayed.

I (incorrectly?) assumed since those communities had existed for so long on the dbzer0 instance they had at least tacit approval from the admins there and were in communication with them enough that a full ban wouldn't occur -- when I saw the removal in the modlog I didn't even consider that possibility.

Sorry for kicking up drama here if the Lemmy.World team had no part in this :(

When you check the mod logs and filter by mod you can see that it came from Mr. Kaplan which is a lemmy.world admin.

So yes it was a lemmy.world decision. The question is whether or not this admin was a lone actor.

Oh, noes! There's only like a billion other instances you can access it from.

IIRC they banned piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com months ago. Not sure why it pops up again in the modlog. It was the reason I left lemmy.world.

I believe they reversed course on that ban. It's just recently that they reverse reversed that course.

A lot of people are saying "just connect to another instance", but it would be nice if the client could connect to multiple instances at once, and merge things internally, maybe even spreading the load a bit.

Probably a bit tricky for the web and linking, but maybe something for the mobile apps to consider?

Ideally the only time I'd need to swap accounts is to post.

How would you deal with votes? That's a pretty common action, and having to choose every time would be tedious

You could list your accounts in priority, and the highest account that has access to the post you're reading will be responsible for the vote.

Just have it default to one of them. A simple priority order, preferring an account on the host instance I guess.

Same for commenting, and posting. You wouldn't have to select another account unless you really wanted to.

Considering how well voting has turned out in general, maybe the voting system is the issue.

You know, I don't even disagree with you. Voting really doesn't bring any good to the table, it only creates some sort of hive mind mentality

Plus it allows users to anonymously express disdain towards somebody, not just to their comment or opinion but them personally I've seen this happen on Reddit where people were mass downvoted for seemingly no reason other than being openly trans/queer.

It only gets worse when you use that as a reputation system for restricting users because then it's a social credit system.

The question we should all be asking is why did the defederate?

Alright what instance do i jump ship to?

Come to Lemmy.dbzer0.com that's where I jumped to last time .world got banney.

This is basically the very instance most piracy communities are hosted on, so you get extra benefit of ALWAYS having access to it regardless of defederations.

I like lemm.ee

Same, but if you're used to the more moderated nature of lemmy.world, just be aware that lemm.ee isn't as quick to defederate from other instances. Personally, for me that's a plus, and it's the reason I chose this instance. Bring on hexbear, lemmy grad, and exploding heads. I don't care. I want to hear what everyone has to say, and I can block people or instances if I have to (through Lemmy and the apps I use like Sync and Voyager). But if you don't want to, there are lots of other instances that defederate from those places but still federate to the piracy instance.

lemm.ee doesn't deferderate annoying instances, but they do ban users that disagree with the annoying instances quickly.

Your own.

I wish i could, dont have the money to pay for hosting and my own internet is wayyy to slow for that

I've heard people run it for single users easily even on free tier hosting, like Oracle's.

Really oracles hosting will let me do that for free? Do i need a domain ur can i use some subdomain service for it?

Well this comment section was an interesting read. Interesting how many comments still bend the discussion towards bashing lemmy.ml and defederating from it. People, it's not even the topic of this post?

Also it seems like very few actually read the post beyond the title? The problem is not lemmy.world banning the piracy community, they have the right to do so, that's how federation works. The problem is them making a promise to make announcements about such bans in advance, but they instead did it quietly in the background again.

Did they really do it again, fucking hell. I came here for a better experience then Reddit and I feel like it’s starting to be a worse experience then Reddit. Transparency from admin my ass.

...if your metric is admin transparency, how the hell do you figure that Lemmy is worse than Reddit...?

I feel like Lemmy falls short in a lot of ways but transparency is not one of them

Transparency is there in the sense that the modlog makes clear that a lemmy.world admin blocked the community. If it were Reddit we'd never know how, just that it is blocked.

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Try a better instance. Lemm.ee and Lemmy.ml are both run by competent techies and less knee jerk intolerance to anything other than the prevailing opinion there.

.ml is terrible. They actively ban people who aren't tankies. Reasonable discussion is not allowed there. If there is one instance that should be defederated it is .ml

>They actively ban people who aren’t tankies.

this seems unlikely.

I've seen multiple posts from people who were banned from .ml and I looked at the removed comments and modlog myself, and people are being banned for even mild general discussion of topics debating the legitimacy of totalitarian communist policy.

https://lemmy.world/post/12875282

this doesn't show :

They actively ban people who aren’t tankies.

in fact, for evidence to the contrary, one of the biggest anarchism communities is on lemmy.ml

I'm not a tankie, and I haven't been banned.

You sure you're not confused with lemmygrad?

Yes I know a lot of people on .ml are not tankies but .ml admin is repeatedly banning anti tankie discussion. See my other comment above. Look at the modlogs and you'll find people being banned for critical thinking. I blocked the instance because Lemmy <> lemmy.ml . The code can always be forked.

User accounts can be migrated to new instances with version 19

You’ve hit the nail on the head. The Lemmy experience is quickly beginning to sour. They’ve received an influx of trolls and I’ve run into a few moderators now that seem to be taking harsh actions. Maybe Lemmy isn’t for me after all.

The thing is, this actually if anything proves the strength of the fediverse. Lemmy.world is not Lemmy and Lemmy is not the fediverse. Just find another instance that has not blocked the community yet and carry on with your day.

Lemmy.world have every right to curate the experience for their users as they see fit and/or feel comfortable carrying the risk for.

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Hey it's a free world. You're welcome to migrate to a different instance. Heck why not run your own? That's the power of the fediverse. Or just head back to Reddit.

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Linking to or posting content that's illegal or in violation of copyright should not be allowed, but you don't have to ban an entire community to do that, you just have to enforce the same rules that are in place for every other community on here. Maybe someone can explain this to me, but this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity. Ditto for cryptocurrency, ditto for secure operating systems, ditto for drugs, guns, and any number of other things where community discussion is allowed but illegal activity is not. I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.

It's not as easy as moderating individual posts. Remember, Lemmy is decentralized. If you start your own Lemmy server and I federated with it, I'll get all the stuff you post on my instance too (intentionally oversimplified).

Its up to you to moderate communities on your instance the way you see fit, and up to me to moderate mine. Even though our instances are federated, I can't moderate on your behalf. It just isn't feasible both in terms of the technology and in terms of the sheer volume of content you would have to try to moderate.

If you have a community that posts a mix of things I agree with and things I don't, I really only have a couple options on my end. Basically I can block that community on my instance or block your instance altogether.

The reason why someone might block a community may be more about the legal risk than any moral justification. Depending on where you are, it might be illegal to even host that information. And since Lemmy instances cache posts from other instances, it could be argued that because that community is federated with your instance, you're responsible for the content posted there.

That's all well and good, I agree with virtually all you said. It's certainly the admins' right to block or de-federate any community they want, based on risk or just because they feel like it, I have no issue with that. It's simply my personal belief that discussion of crime is not a crime. Direct links to illegal content should not be allowed, but discussion about piracy in general should carry no more risk that learning about murder in a criminology class, which does not need to be banned just because it's teaching people things they could in theory use to get away with murder.

this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned

using your analogy; it's like banning access to a piracy community because sometimes pirates use it..

pirates sometimes use meme communities too, but those aren't banned, and .world isn't completely defederated from db0, so that's not it.

so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity.

staying anonymous online is not a crime though. copyright infringement is a crime. that's why the analogy doesn't make sense.

scenario is: people are linking to law-breaking content in x-community. therefore, .world is choosing to ban said x-community that facilitates it, to prevent legal liability.

I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.

you're right, while lock picking can be illegal, it's not always illegal. however, copyright law violations are always illegal.

this law-breaking content happens to be copyright infringement/piracy material. another example a host might ban would be a community that is linking to CP, or a community that is linking to Identity theft sources, etc. even if it's just users posting links to this sort of content, I can understand a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability.

I think we're close to saying the same thing, I'm in total agreement that linking to illegal content should be banned, it's the uneven enforcement of that principle across communities that I think is an issue. I know .world isn't hosted in the US, so you don't enjoy broad 1st Amendment protections for free speech, but does anyone really think that discussing crime is itself a crime? If I say "here's a scenario for how a group of people could rob a bank" what crime is that? If I say "hey I think there's people dealing drugs on this street corner" what crime is that? And I can of course appreciate a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability, that's their free choice, they own the server. I'm talking about, on principle, what's wrong with allowing a community to exist so long as that community does not post or link to illegal content? That principle seems to work just fine for virtually every other topic but when it comes to discussion of filesharing, torrents, and the like, then suddenly the "don't link to illegal content" principle isn't good enough and it becomes "we must ban this entire concept for our own safety." That's the admins' right and I have no issue if they want to do that, I just want to point out the glaring double standard between moderating communities so they don't break the rules and banning communities so they don't break the rules.

PSA: Lemmy.ml has a piracy community and federates with everyone world federates with so you can have the same experience.

and federates with everyone world federates with

Not entirely true, I discovered the other day, while helping someone figure out why they couldn't access .ml communities, that .ml blocks furry instances...

Edit: https://lemmy.ml/instances includes Pawb.social and pawb.fun, they're also federated with instances that host furry communities.

Which furry instances are you talking about?

Yiffit.net, ani.social, and lemmynsfw.com. Those are the main defederations that I think are a little harsh.

Aside from those, most of the other blocked instances are pretty egregious (mostly pedophilia and alt-right) and SJW has blocked many of the same ones.

The only major server with less defederation is Lemm.ee.

Lemm.ee is pretty sweet and well run. Ml and ee are superior to world IMHO.

Lemme.ee is great, lemmy.ml is toxic.

Never seen evidence of that...

Yeah, I'm sure you haven't.

Care to explain...

Will you just ignore what I say and attack me with a strawman argument? That's typically what I get for actually talking to lemmy.ml users. Not interested in wasting my time.

So you generalise anyone that uses an instance. I don't think the problem is Lemmy.ml ...

I don't think you even see the irony in your post.

Aren't all three of those used for porn

Idk about ani.social but the other two are. Ani.social has a general anime discussion community that was created as a replacement for the anime community on lemmy.ml and has rapidly surpassed it in activity. You're not allowed to link !anime@ani.social on lemmy.ml either.

Lemmy.ml admins would argue they host loli/pedo content, but ani.social would argue it's just mainstream anime content and it's part of the genre. I don't really know more than that, but I think it's a bit unfair to describe the whole ani.social server as being used for porn.

ani social was anime related, but the admins banned it because they dont really like anime and just tag reasons for censorship as loli, without evidence of it. I dont even actively contribute to the anime community, but was the driving reason why i moved from ml to zip. didnt want to have to deal with unsubstantial censorship with an actual valid reason.

On the other hand, I really would not be surprised if they did have banworthy content on there.

im not doubting the possibility, but not to even provide evidence to the servers admins is a red flag on pushing the ml dev/admins agendas without being transparent about it.

without a level of transparency, the same reason can be used to unjustfully ban anything.

And their agenda is... hating anime?

not liking something enough that you will on bias remove things. In this case, it was anime, but it could basically be applied to any viewpoints said admin would have then if they were that quick to react to just anime. It's the action and how it was handled and less the topic.

Hi, here's your pretty much useless furry check.

Double meaning entirely intentional, because funny.

Lemmy.ml is also one of the worst offenders spreading authoritarian propaganda for the CCP and Kremlin. I hate Lemmy.ml

Examples?

I occasionally see this argument but not yet seen any evidence to back it up.

Same here. I discuss a lot with .ml and besides dumping on capitalism a lot (and rightfully so), I havent seen anything supporting this claim either.

I just searched "china", and didn't notice any authoritarian propaganda in the first 3 pages, but I counted 6 anti-chinese stories.

The closest to pro-chinese stories that came up were that EU citizens can now travel to China visa-free, the CEO of evergrande getting fined and banned from business, and some news story about economic numbers.

Would you care to point it out to me?

Propaganda isn't obvious like that, and the core of most propaganda is truthful. Generally speaking you need to look at the big picture and what key actors want to be able to see probable propaganda.

They'll never say "the CCP is great and Taiwanese people don't deserve freedom," but they undermine people who would defend Taiwan and help shape things so an attack is more likely to succeed (e.g., supporting the Kremlin's attack on Ukrainians).

Not really interested in discussing it more with a Lemmy.ml user. I've seen too much bad faith engagement and don't want to waste my time. Apologies if you're actually sincere.

I think I see the disconnect, you conflate the safety of the state of Taiwan and Ukraine with the people so statements like "I don't think we should sacrifice a million Ukrainians to weaken Russia" come off as undermining the defense of Ukraine.

I'm certain even the pro-independence people living in Taiwan would prefer status quo to looking like Ukraine.

you conflate the safety of the state of Taiwan and Ukraine with the people

I don't understand what you're trying to say

its pretty clear. You're conversing with a tankie.

My guess is it's actually an LLM.

How am I to tell who is a tankie, vs a wumao, vs a Russian bot troll? It can be hard to tell who is commenting in good faith.

I'm kidding, of course. I just block them all. No one using these talking points is worth my time.

Surely anyone who isn't just begging for rivers of foreign blood must be a robot. Just inconceivable that anyone could want less bloodshed.

Why engage with someone who uses a complete hyperbolic strawman like this

A state and it's people's interests aren't the same.

Take self-determination movements; the people in eastern Ukraine want to leave, the state of Ukraine doesn't want to give up territory.

Supporting the state in this case is opposing the people, supporting the people is opposing the state.

If I was in Russia, I'd have pointed at Syrian Kurdistan before the US invasion/occupation of Syria.

That was in 2014, there wasn't even a coherent Ukrainian state and they were going through new presidents every month. A lot changed over the next 10 years. Western Ukraine was shelling Eastern Ukraine right up until the day of the invasion.

Gotta love tankies unironically parroting Putin's disinformation.

Are you suggesting Putin controlled CNN and Al Jazeera English 10 years ago?

Because I'm just recounting what I saw on the news.

do you have any proof of this?

I assume I'd have to hack into the CCP's computer networks to get proof.

what's the point of making things up like this, then?

Wow, personal attacks from a lemmy.ml user, truly shocking.

lemmy ml de-federates with communites and instances without even a reason, not to say that their moderations actions weren't questionable in the past and present.

Lemmy.world is a fucking shithole. It's teenage life crisis tumblr in here.

Is lemmy.world trying to appeal to advertisers? Kinda sounds like it. Banning discussion oriented piracy subs, outlawing paywall bypassing in news@lemmy.world, etc.

I think they're trying to appeal to law enforcement

idt they need to, unless they get a letter. the chances are astronomically low for that.

Do they even have advertisers? Tbh I've had adblockers on for years I wouldn't even know.

Lemmy is probably the worst place to sell to advertisers seen how many people run adblockers around here

They don’t. It’s just wild speculation while in reality lemmy.world probably banned it because they got a legal notice and don’t want to get sued.

Or maybe avoiding litigation? Weird that you think of advertising first, it's like you don't have critical thought.