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

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    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.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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      “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.

    • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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      Remember: Pretty much every Lemmy instance is run by volunteers that don’t have legal departments

      One lawsuit can shut them down.

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        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.

    • rglullis@communick.news
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      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.

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        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

      • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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        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.

        • rglullis@communick.news
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          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.

    • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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      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.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        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.

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
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      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.

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        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.

        🤣

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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      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.

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        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

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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          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

          • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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            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)

            • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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              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

      • ben_dover@lemmy.world
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        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

    • satxdude@lemm.eeOP
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      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.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      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.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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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

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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.

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    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.

    • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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      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.

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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          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.

        • Blaze@dormi.zone
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          Hopefully this will drive people to switch to another instance, and the issue you mentions will be less present.

    • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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      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”).

      • Blaze@dormi.zone
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        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.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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          Great question, see when instances have management level disagreements like this there really isn’t any purpose to using their communities from a remote account.

          Unlike a lot of people who “migrated” I realize it ultimately doesn’t make a difference using these communities from a remote server because they are controlled by this one and ultimately will be affected by defederations and bans. So I only migrated my non-lemmy.world subscriptions to the other instance accounts and left the local ones on this account.

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      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.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • Lemonparty@lemm.ee
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          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.

        • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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          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.

        • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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          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.

      • BURN@lemmy.world
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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.

        • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          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.

  • cum@lemmy.cafe
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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.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      Yeah people are really weird about this. They want a free distributed forum hosted by small admins, but don’t want those individuals to take basic legal precautions? Piracy might be moral, but it’s a liability which will absolutely impact the viability of servers in many places. Grow up.

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      The Lemmy instance doesn’t actually host pirated content, does it? It’s just information about pirated content and where to find it, right? Who the fuck cares about this

  • lorty@lemmy.ml
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    When “reddit outside of reddit” does reddit things 🫨

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      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.

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        Another problem is .world part of US-centric instance

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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      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.

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

        • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • lorty@lemmy.ml
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            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.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      The benefit is that it isn’t just another reddit but rather network of reddits

      Banned on one? Get from another.

      • lorty@lemmy.ml
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        I’m referring specifically to lemmy.world, not to all of lemmy or even the fediverse.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • Zak@lemmy.world
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      No. Every community is hosted by a server, just as every user account is. Removing a community is similar to banning a user.

      • Neato@ttrpg.network
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        So it just means that lemmy.world users can no longer see that specific community, right?

        • Zak@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • satxdude@lemm.eeOP
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            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.

            • Zak@lemmy.world
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              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.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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    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.