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. @[email protected] will post about details I guess. @[email protected] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Friends, I sent an offer to some knowledgeable people, but they said they could not do it. Understandable for sure. Is there anyone among you who has the knowledge to make the migration to their own server without me?
I would be able to,i would need information on what it is currently hosted on and access info, but i should otherwise be able to transfer it without issue.
Im a software engineer with a very stable job with flexible hours, and ive been looking for a long term project to get into. if it were transferred to me i could ensure a stable long term home for it.
Edit:changing to=>for
I do sysadmin and software dev I can help where needed but I cannot provide hosting. Are you sure you’re willing to take on the responsibilities of moderating against illegal content?
I don’t know the tools available through Lemmy but we need strong controls again CP, rape, etc with effective logging and fast response times to takedown requests.
Big thanks for getting things started on this growing platform! 🙏 Was a bummer that big instances like lemmyml jumped straight to de-fed but figure thats part of the growing pains. Your efforts are still appreciated.
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
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.
I have absolutely no interest in the front side admin (content moderation, etc) but if we can find hosting in a country that won’t send me to prison for being a part of this, I can do most sysadmin of backend.
Whatever admin team develops from this feel free to dm me and we can discuss how that would work.
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
I think he means he already has someone to transfer to, he isn't asking who wants to take over.
Still, you could open your own instance if you have the infrastructure, it's always good to have similar instances in case one of them goes down or something.
I have one dedicated server in the US and three VPS at Vultr. VPS at Vultr locations is nearest the client's place of business since they only do a 100-mile radius of the business. My dedicated server uses CDNs from QUIC.cloud to Cloudflare. I can spin up VPS anywhere in the world.
Huge respect for being the change you wanted to see in the world. This instance needed to be created and I'm glad you were the one to pull the trigger.
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).
It'll be sad to see you go, but perfectly understandable considering everything that's happened. Just opening the instance alone and governing it for as long as you have is already an amazing amount of effort, so I hope you won't lose sight of that in spite of all the challenges.
Definitely hope you take some time to take care of yourself as you step away from here. Best of luck with finding someone to take over.
Thank you for starting this instance and all your hard work, I appreciate how open you've been with this community and hope you continue to be part of it even when you pass it on. I understand it must take a lot of time and effort to maintain this service!
I'm guessing this will be a recurring thing that happens in the future where folks get burned out. I don't fault anyone for getting worn out hosting stuff for people.
Thank you for all your hard work to date. Unfortunately, I don't know nearly enough about any of how this actually works behind the scenes to volunteer, but I do want to express that you've done a great (if thankless) job so far. I think a place like this probably NEEDS to exist in the fediverse, but it's also understandably a huge job, probably larger than just one person. Good luck, thank you, and I hope you find a new admin (ideally a new admin team) soon.
It's unfortunate, but understandable. There's no shame in admitting when you've bitten off more than you can chew. It happens to a lot of mods. Thank you for the work you've put in, and I wish you the best.
Is there any word on who the new admin is going to be? What should us users expect, moving forward?
For now, no changes. Whenever things are expected to change, announcements will be made. Right now it seems a matter of finding someone who can take on the backend stuff.
There seems to be enough interested people that even if this one were to die, a "phoenix lemmynsfw" or few is almost sure to happen. Of course the issue with that would be getting all the activity back again, so it would be nice if that did not happen.
I understand the workload, even just finding content to bootstrap communities is taking more of my life than I want. Thank you for filling a hole in Lemmy when it was needed, I hope your replacement can keep the ship running as smoothly as this.
You explicitly invited content that would be difficult to discern from illegal, underage nsfw content
And that was a problem--Yeah, no shit
To borrow from a comment about kbin:
"Making that work requires more mods than a Bethesda game"
I genuinely appreciate that you wanted and attempted to run an instance that would be largely nonjudgmental on content, but, damn, you really shouldn't be surprised that inviting "loli" content would be (at the very least) an enormous challenge for moderation
Dude didn't know what "loli" actually meant because he's not a native English speaker. Cut the guy some slack already, it's not cool to kick sometime when he's down.
Instead of downvoting with no response I feel like its worth clarifying, from what I have discussed (to my own knowledge) the intention was not to intentionally invite illegal underage nsfw content or content that is hard to discern from such. There was a desire to establish community transparency on the matter and engage in a discussion on the nuances of such a rule and how far the limits should reach, and it wasn't really handled well due to a very big language barrier not being able to properly convey the intended conversation in the way it was meant to be presented. FWIW, I am very much personally against loli/shota content and wouldn't have offered to help out if this wasn't the case.