Removal of piracy communities - Lemmy.world
alexandrite.app
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: - !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com [/c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com] - !piracy@lemmy.ml [/c/piracy@lemmy.ml] - !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com [/c/steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com] 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.
  • sovietknuckles [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    How do they expect to serve ads to people with that abysmal uptime that they have.

    The probably see it differently, that their uptime is limited by their funding, and additional revenue would help uptime.

    Maybe it will maybe they'll be financially successful but I bet they're probably also going to get defederated and therefore not platform successful.

    The current logic I've seen about why instances continue to federate with LemmyWorld is that they're "too big to fail", the same logic applied to Threads, and I don't see ads changing that. If Threads uses a more PR-friendly way of running ads when they inevitably do, maybe LemmyWorld will copy whatever ad-serving method that is.

    [...] and that's probably just from one person from hexbear who's pissed at them, [...]

    You probably saw someone else say this, rather than making it up yourself, but Hexbear does not DOS anyone, please don't repeat misinformation

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      ·
      1 year ago

      The probably see it differently, that their uptime is limited by their funding, and additional revenue would help uptime.

      They know that they are being DDoSed and have stated as much themselves, where are you getting this information, it sounds like you're arguing that the downtime is because of massive user registrations and not from an attack like they said themselves, even the activity charts shown are indicative of an intentional attack, rather than user load, a single sharp spike in requests or activity preceding downtime instead of a large hump.

      The current logic I’ve seen about why instances continue to federate with LemmyWorld is that they’re “too big to fail”, the same logic applied to Threads, and I don’t see ads changing that. If Threads uses a more PR-friendly way of running ads when they inevitably do, maybe LemmyWorld will copy whatever ad-serving method that is.

      Uh threads has been defederated preemtively by several fairly large instances due to concerns regarding what Meta's control over it and how it will affect federation. Lemmy.world hasn't done anything to suggest they would be a significant privacy and security risk to users, at least not yet, pushing ads to federated servers or collecting and selling user data would absolutely change that I guarantee it.

      You probably saw someone else say this, rather than making it up yourself, but Hexbear does not DOS anyone, please don’t repeat misinformation

      I did indeed hear it from others, don't worry you guys aren't the only suspects in that, though you can't really prove someone from as in registered to Hexbear isn't behind them. I'm not saying they are or aren't affiliated with Hexbear itself but one theory is that it's a person from hexbear and you can't prove that it isn't unless you know who's behind it. Honestly I heard from many admins (Lemmy.world and others) that Hexbear has a spam/trolling/brigading problem so it wouldn't surprise me if a problematic user there was behind it, or at least collaborating in the effort.

      I didn't and won't go as far to accuse the instance owners themselves of being behind the attack but I won't say it isn't a user from Hexbear because nether you or I can prove that it isn't.

      • sovietknuckles [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        [...] it sounds like you're arguing that the downtime is because of massive user registrations and not from an attack like they said themselves [...]

        I have no idea where their downtime is from. If it is DOS-related, though, they would protect against it using a DDOS protection service like CloudFlare, which costs $$$

        Lemmy.world hasn't done anything to suggest they would be a significant privacy and security risk to users, at least not yet

        They have, though. The LemmyWorld admins doxxed a user who they believed (incorrectly) to be Hexbear admin CARCOSA@hexbear.net. Source: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/1754850

        [...], pushing ads to federated servers or collecting and selling user data would absolutely change that I guarantee it.

        We'll see, but the larger they grow, the more permanent they get, and ads only affects that so much.

        I didn't and won't go as far to accuse the instance owners themselves of being behind the attack but I won't say it isn't a user from Hexbear because nether you or I can prove that it isn't.

        Hexbear is not more suspect than other instances, and there is no reason to name-drop Hexbear, alone, in particular. If they're being DOSed, then whoever is responsible is most likely involved in a community that has a culture of DOSing in general, like a Chan, maybe the same one that has actively been responsible for vandalizing Lemmy instances.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          ·
          1 year ago

          I have no idea where their downtime is from. If it is DOS-related, though, they would protect against it using a DDOS protection service like CloudFlare, which costs $$$

          They currently do use Cloudflare actually, doesn't magically stop all forms of DDoS though (ever heard of SQL queries, some of them can take seconds to execute). Anyway I only said that because a big misconception by people is that Lemmy.world's uptime problem is caused by "the Reddit hug of death" as in user traffic and that it's a scaling issue, when it isn't.

          They have, though. The LemmyWorld admins doxxed a user who they believed (incorrectly) to be Hexbear admin CARCOSA@hexbear.net. Source: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/1754850

          That's pretty bad, though honestly it still pales in comparison to Facebook's awful history with collection and selling user data, though I guess how each instance views it. Maybe lemmy.ml (one of the biggest instances to ban threads) would use this to justify defederating from world (maybe I'll let them know about it and see what they say, I know they're certainly not going to go hunting for it on their own).

          We’ll see, but the larger they grow, the more permanent they get, and ads only affects that so much.

          I guess we'll have to wait and see how it pans out

          Hexbear is not more suspect than other instances, and there is no reason to name-drop Hexbear, alone, in particular. If they’re being DOSed, then whoever is responsible is most likely involved in a community that has a culture of DOSing in general, like a Chan, maybe the same one that has actively been responsible for vandalizing Lemmy instances.

          I have indeed seen many things that do elevate Hexbear on the list as of the possible origins of an attack, but there isn't any reason it couldn't also be from one of the chans or any instance that was defederated from them.

          It does seem a bit weird to me though that you are strangely adamant about defending Hexbear, which does also make me slightly more suspicious, though that isn't definitive, many people will defend their instances for totally innocuous reasons. Anyway we're done with this, there was drama and concern (from several instances, not just world) and there's no point in arguing about it when we can't prove anything for certain here. Also this isn't exactly the place for a debate, this is c/piracy not a debate forum.