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.
This is an interesting point. I am reading this from a different instance. I wonder if merely federating with this instance from a US based instance requires the same thing.
Well, there’s a discussion on the lemmy github that sort of touches on this issue, because right now instances cache federated content. So let’s say somebody posts a bunch of illegal content here, and before it gets nuked by mods it gets federated to beehaw, which caches the material. Now beehaw is technically hosting illegal material, and they may not even realize it.
Honestly would make more sense if everyone defederated it for this reason. If you want lemmy.nsfw, go to lemmy.nsfw. That way none of the other instances have that risk. And I personally would be fine if NSFW didn’t show up randomly in my feed. When I want to see it I can swap profiles or switch instances.
Sure, but that disincentivises people from posting and participating in the community, because forcing people to have two profiles is a significant barrier. Easier and better to just implement not caching images flagged nsfw in the codebase
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Yes, mainly because there aren’t many instances where you can reach every other instance. FMHY is nice in that regard, but if the mainstream instances defederate from it, I may have to do the same. Really hoping that won’t happen, but it seems inevitable.
Most third party apps for Reddit had profile switching built in. There’s a third party Lemmy app called Connect for Lemmy that just came out that boasts multiple profiles for multiple instances.
You’re not wrong about the second part, though.
Jwrboa already handles that as well.
I wish there should be a way to have communities opt-in in regards to federation without fully defederating. Like, instead of completely pulling the plug a way of preventing things from entering all would ideal. Same thing with instance wide NSFW tagging.
Or an option for instances not to cache NSFW communities. I can tell you that even if I had the means to host an instance the idea of the collective internet being in control of what is stored on a device in my home would still deter me. The NSFW part pushes that content even closer to that line.
As far as I know, there is an option to only federate with whitelisted instances. It kinda breaks the whole idea of being a federated network, still doesn’t entirely prevent “bad” posts from reaching your instance, and I don’t know of any specific instances that do it.
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.
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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.
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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.
Good luck with everything and thanks for starting this instance!
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.
❤️ 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
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for all that you’ve done, it’s very much appreciated. Don’t feel bad about it, I totally understand why it’s overwhelming. You couldn’t pay me to run a server like this.
Well thanks for full transparency! I think that’s dope.
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
I think this is incredibly important, in some ways this instance in particular, but no one can ask for more from you
Nothing to apologize for - you’re not leaving everyone high and dry, you’re hanging in there and working through what sounds like a personally difficult transition.
So I’ll just say this: thank you for taking the responsibility thrust on you with due seriousness. Most people don’t understand the importance of community, and what we owe to it.
When you hand it over, do it knowing your part is done, fully and completely.
And if you need to step away, step away - do the exchange from a distance, and if things fall through and no one you trust is there to take it, that’s okay too.
I think there’s a certain amount of responsibility when you find yourself at the center of something, but that responsibility only goes so far - if you need to step down and the community won’t step up, that’s not on you
Thanks for all the work you’ve put into the instance - best wishes.
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.
Thank you for everything that you’ve done until now. There will always be a minority of haters, but please know there’s a lot more of us who really appreciated your work (even if we are relatively quiet).
