When this instance first started, I don't think it was fully anticipated how large it would get. The place where this instance was when I first stepped up as admin was wholly unsustainable long term. There was little direction as to what the instance's intentions as a website were, and the specific intentions it seemed to lean towards (being a sort of reddit 2.0) is not something we have the ability to handle. Neither monetarily nor legally.
The expectations that this instance specifically would be replacing reddit nsfw content entirely is not realistic, and the expectations that have been had for what all of lemmy is capable of has been much higher than what the backend side of things is at right now. Rome was not built in a day, and the same is true for communities of this nature. We are utilizing a platform based on a philosophy that hasn't been widely used outside of email since the early Internet, while now having to work the laws and limitations that the current Internet now presents as well. It's an experiment, and just like all other communities we have made mistakes and are trying our best while figuring this out together. This is not a business, we are not shareholders, we are simply passionate volunteers.
Right now, our team has been paying attention to concerns and feedback that have been raised. We are currently actively engaged in a discussion of what the next steps are from here. My hasty implementation of the current restrictive content policy was not something to do long term but an attempt to reign in a community with what felt to have little restrictions and many issues popping up. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes of managing a community like this. The current policy as it stands right now, has been a band aid while we discuss further how to move forward. And we have been.
And thankfully we have a much bigger back-end team than before. What has helped the most to provide insight is that we have a back-end team member who has active experience in hosting adult websites within the legal span of the law. We also have backend team members who are helping to build mod tools not just for lemmyNSFW but with active collaboration with others across instances as well.
As we have discussed rule changes and throwing things at the wall, our biggest aspect has been determining if we are on the same page as a team. Unfortunately, a now previous back-end team member decided that he was not. And that's ok. However last night, instead of moving forward and deciding that our ethos as a team moving forward isn't for them there was a post that was made that compiled our original rough draft for new content guidelines and attempted to pass them off as that is going to be our full go to as a community. It isn't. We are discussing things and hashing things out as a team still but have made significant progress moving beyond what was discussed. When changes occur, we will make a post clarifying such changes. We ask for patience, please.
I clearly missed the original drama. But as you pointed out, in order to maintain things long term, some obvious changes need to take place.
As someone that has lurked and watched this instance grow, I see people pushing to turn it into a content farm instead of letting it grow organically. People don't understand that lemmy is not Reddit and there's no glory in hosting stolen content. What lemmy aims to be is a great community of real people. If people want to discuss or share non original content, make them link it, it's better for the server and everyone.
And while I understand that a lot of paid content creators are looking for somewhere near to sell things, this community isn't at that point yet and doesn't actually need the same pictures you spam everywhere to drum up custom. If your picture can be found with a reverse image search, lemmynsfw.com doesn't need nor want it.
Honestly, if this is what the admins want, I really think they're better of rebranding entirely.
Lemmynsfw has a lot of brand name baggage, and it makes a lot more sense to change the name (and perhaps reboot the server since it's only 3 weeks old) so it's rather obvious to everyone that the expectations that many users had when they joined in the beginning aren't valid anymore.
More importantly though, @yay is still the server owner (unless it recently changed), and somehow I kinda doubt what you've said is actually what @yay would want. Maybe Mikey, but not yay.
If they insist on having such an extremely tight focus this instance won't grow and will probably die eventually from lack of interest.
Why isn't it the solution to just mandate that media be hosted elsewhere that people post? Lemmy is a link aggregator after all, not a image/video host.
If there are thumbnails, lemmy would still be hosting the thumbnails on their own server, which doesn't solve all the legal issues.
Sounds like the best solution is no thumbnails or extremely derezzed thumbnails. Vs all the other nonsense suggested.
this. so much this.
Spinning off into smaller more focused servers isn't a bad idea. lemmygonewild.com and lemmyadultimgur.com. The latter will be huge for a few weeks and then when it's time to pay for it, we can ask everyone who got their validation by reposting content from elsewhere to help shoulder the costs and as they all pretend to be deaf, we can watch it slowly die like a beautiful firework in the night sky.
you jest, but you're also making the mistake that many here seem to do, which is mistaking an instance for a subreddit. instances should deal with hosting, moderators within communities should deal with content. anything else is way, way more strict than reddit ever used to be, and they have advertisers and owners breathing down their neck. kinda defeats the purpose of even leaving that place.
In all seriousness, instance admins are our overlords. We trust them to manage our instances. It's a very hands-on job, especially when dealing with sexually explicit and copyrighted material.
The job of an admin is to run a server that can survive. Can survive against copyright claims, DMCA notices and can survive against nefarious uploads such as CP or stuff where people are being exploited.
I remember reading a while ago about the number of women that were being drugged and forced to perform for chaturbate in order to turn a profit.
Luckily, profit isn't something that can be made from here, but in order to ensure that we're not hosting that content, along with CP is to ensure that people are only posting what they own here.
Let's ask ourselves honestly, what is the downside of users uploading pictures they don't own to imagetwist rather than here? Zero other than slight inconvenience. They still get to link it, it's still displayed. They still get to share it.
But the server doesn't have to worry, because the relationship we have with the server is one where we're all respectful enough to only upload what we own/made. We make the server admins lives easier and we get to enjoy a server where the around have time to interact rather than constantly putting out fires.