Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:
We took this action to protect lemmy.world, lemmy.world’s users, and lemmy.world staff as the material posted in those communities could be problematic for us, because of potential legal issues around copyrighted material and services that provide access to or assistance in obtaining it.
This decision is about liability and does not mean we are otherwise hostile to any of these communities or their users. As the Lemmyverse grows and instances get big, precautions may happen. We will keep monitoring the situation closely, and if in the future we deem it safe, we would gladly reallow these communities.
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.
Even if we look past the issue that all of this was in response to a 10h troll account, there was no cease and desist, no threat of a lawsuit, nothing credible AT ALL.
Let’s ignore all of that and say there was, it still means this instance is completely ill equipped to provide any sort of resistance, to something trivial.
It’s like it’s hosted in the middle of Illinois, by John Frank, at 3125 maple lane… Zero layers of protection.
That is awful and means no meaningful discussion can ever happen here. Nevermind piracy, what if people want to criticize the government? Or public figures?
If this instance can’t fight a fake troll it can’t fight and protect anything.
Which means we need to pool resources and fund instances that can and will fight back.
And yes that means fundraising to build up a defense fund and hosting outside the US etc.
Yep. Essesntially it boils down to the entire internet user community banding together against MAMAA FAANG to fight for this protocol. Only thing is, what does a geriatric judge decide when all these massive coglomrates take a side vs a (lifts glasses) Lemmy