It is great to have experienced users around. Certainly I hope together we can learn and improve from one another, particularly the people running things, even if they lost your confidence. I don’t know how experienced they are or the particulars of the situation, but I do believe there is no bad will and I hope they will get a better hang of it. It really sucks that there are users that could have their life really impacted for something like this, so I hope they take care of themselves and be cautious, and we all be mindful of each other, especially of those more vulnerable as you mention.

Thanks for your input.

Why would you feel comfortable providing them with any information of yours if you live in a country where you may be concerned for your safety - not even now, but in a few years - for having the unmitigated gall to admit you are (gay/trans/bisexual/a believer in a socialist meritocracy/atheist/muslim) on a place where there are no legal precautions actually being taken? Where the word of someone sending a letter matters more than what the law might actually say?

As I said, I agree that communication has not been great. I can budge on that, even if it is not even my original point. The admins (and all the fediverse really) could more clearly state that everything on this site is basically public. This is not Signal, this is not Telegram, this is not the dark web and this is not a corporation with a legal department. User should be mindful of that when posting. It is precisely people under immoral laws and governments, or concerned about personal safety the ones that need to be careful about their activities, because if their risk is anything greater than downloading a videogame without paying, some guy in another country reaching out to a lawyer for an hour is not likely to provide them relief. I don’t like that, but is the reality. The site should improve on making the users aware of that reality.

About my original point, it seems that we agree that the site is not under any obligation to provide legal shield, whatever legal options exist or not, are costly or not. It would be great if they provided them. I think setting up an operation like this at own cost for free is a show of values and the quality of a person, and I think that would show if the stakes were higher, like the examples you provide. It would also be great that people with expertise in legal affairs, like you seem to be, volunteered to carry on that job, like the admins carry the technical job voluntary. But not them nor you or anybody should be forced to do so. Exclusively the users up in arms almost demanding piracy free-for-all content, are showing unjust entitlement and misunderstanding about how the fediverse works.

I hope you’re not going to take this the wrong way

Absolutely not, I also agree, as some others have pointed out, that there have been mishappens with communication, so I’m glad that there’s discussion about the issue. Thanks for clarifying with your knowledge and doing so nicely.

this is not at all what is involved in legal services or remotely the costs involved

To be honest, everything I know about that is what I have read about the number of cases when platforms or other kind of purveyors of piracy are sentenced to or settle paying tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even millions. Those are real cases where the people involved obviously felt very confident about their legal safety. Surely, most of the situations are not like that and don’t even get to be in the news because of how insignificant the resolutions are.

But, is there a way to be sure about what kind of outcome would lemmy.world would get to be completely confident about doing or not doing one thing or another?

Costs for lawyers are typically in the $100-$600/hour range, with very few (top partners at large firms) getting into the $2k-$3k/hour territory. A lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property is going to land smack in the middle of average these days, around $250-$350/hr.

Is that just one time? Is that total to get a safe and definitive resolution? Or is that every time the situation arises? What about companies that exist exclusively to massively send takedown requests? What about copyright trolls? If the instance openly accepts the legal liability, the number of times that this happens will decrease, increase or stay the same?

The reality is, them making guesses - and immediately backing down to any request - is a problem for anyone using their servers. Its a real concern

I guess we go back to the point I tried to make. My position is that the instance admins are not obligated to be a legal shield for the users to have any kind of content that we want on the platform. This is not a privacy-focused nor a free speech-focused service, never has been, data is not encrypted, users have identifiable information, there are commercial services being used to run it, used under another set of TOS and hired with real world legally responsible identities. To say ‘Well the legal cost of keeping piracy on the site is not that high I think’ seems like an unfair position to me.

I do pirate stuff myself, sometimes because it is more convenient, sometimes because it is moral, sometimes is the only option. But I take the responsibility of doing so myself. If whatever site I use decides to shut down tomorrow, I won’t make a fuss about it. Demanding to someone else to face the possibility of legal trouble because it will only take them a few hours and max a couple of thousand dollars and is comfortable to me, is what seems concerning to me.

I don’t like the decision, like most people here.

But it’s unbelievable to see the reaction of many users. Providing a free uncompensated server and bandwidth and monitoring and all the related stuff is apparently not enough. There’s is people basically demanding free legal representation, protection, and challenges to many country laws. That’s completely insane. The comments criticizing the instance for ‘folding’ against legal request better have ready 100k USD for retainer of a top copyright legal firm, with even more ready for a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Otherwise it is just nuts to me the responses we are seeing.

Again, of course I don’t like it and will consider my options like moving instance, but I understand that I am responsible for the content I seek and the legality of it. I will not feel entitled to offload the burden of that responsibility on someone else demanding that it be carried for free.

To the instance admins I only have to say thank you for the service you provide, thank you for putting in actions the spirit of sharing and community. And please do exercise your right to protect yourself legally.

For us users is seems so simple as just export our stuff and go somewhere else, but for the instance admins there have been so much time and other resources invested that certainly must be sad and frustrating to risk it all, so it’s better to follow the way that leads to the continuation of the project, and we should understand that if we want the project to continue, like I do.

I wish there were better options, like better laws or the independent tech for better protection and anonymity, but this is the reality of what we have and we all have to engage with things as they are. We can keep demanding changes to the people really in charge of the system instead of fighting among each other.

Oh boy.

Everything everywhere all at once.

And I did like it to a point but absolutely don’t see it as the phenomenon that was presented as. I saw it as a good film that lacked nuance and subtlety, instead of leaving stuff for the viewer to discern it rather just loudly announcing with bright signs ‘This is profound, we are very artistic’. While the quirkiness and comedy were fun, it always felt to me like if marvel had suddenly decided to make an indie film, with all the good and bad that carried.

Obviously I was shunned by everybody else so what the hell do I know lol.

A Republican lied? And the media just ran with it? And the rebuttal and truth won’t get nowhere near the same coverage? I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.

I’m in the same situation. What has worked for me to make me engage more is the opposite, I subscribed to a bunch of smaller communities about my interests and then I feel more compelled to comment something on a post that I know about.

Sometimes there’s not much conversation happening but at least I’m providing what I know or my opinion, and ‘rewarding’ the poster for providing interesting content, even if that has not much quantifiable value for them.

I also switched my default feed to my subscriptions instead of All, that way I see less active posts instead of the super popular ones where everything has already been said hours ago.

Let’s hope for a smooth upgrade and many thanks to all of you making this possible to all of us users!

-Me talking to people on twitter after nov 22 and before leaving

Im approaching the point of a new phone, and I’ve been wondering about what would be the equivalent of an iPhone durability-wise (I’m still seeing iPhones 7 being used daily) but for android. I was actually considering a used pixel but now you left me very confused lmao. It seems the good build quality is not a constant.

of course because what reason would anyone have to assume anything? we are going into this situation completely without context or background, so we better wait for the FACTS to come out, that will surely be reliable and truthful because they come from a trusted source, the democratically elected government of a world leader.

/s just in case.

godamn lula.

Among the seriousness of the situation, I just want to say that I find hilarious that after these things happen, nazis online always go “well those aren’t real nazis because look how fit they are, they are all in good shape, and are marching! they must be feds because of all the walking and going outside! we real nazis could never!”

Didn’t uninstall any of my AdBlock layers, but YouTube didn’t survive.

Even though I actually never saw the famous popup, the whole thing made me take steps after months of feeling that the recommendations sucked and I was often wasting lots of time watching stuff I didn’t even like.

Now I’m actually getting back into reading and audiobooks, and using invidious for the occasional watch.

Yeah I’ve also been having issues with fedora and been thinking of switching to Arch… Looking forward to it

Probably there are many places with no specific provisions against that but surely that would count for authorities as some sort of disruption of traffic, which are intentionally vaguely defined to cover such ambiguous eventualities.

A shame, I think it would be neat.

Probably not what he meant, but it has happened twice now to me that I wear shoes that had been stored for a year without use, but in good condition. After I used them for half an hour or an hour, the rubber sole crumbles literally in little pieces.

that would be great of course but you know who’s very ready to double down and lose billions instead of saying ‘uhmm you know what I think I was wrong and I need to correct course’?

yeah that guy

not directly making money but they can keep creditors at bay by showing not so ugly MAU numbers

i’m not gonna say to anybody that they should stop using twitter right now or they are morally evil, but I would say to everyone that it would be so funny that banks took twitter from him if things declined too much

Well at least I’m gonna get to see it since now the vaccine will kill everyone who took it ‘within 10 years’ instead of 2 as it was originally predicted.

Ahh that makes sense. Seriously I have seen all kinds of jokes and justifications but haven’t really seen an actual explanation. Thanks.