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 feel like there's an air of suspicion that the admins (I guess myself included, except I really don't want to consider myself an admin outside of infra and code) are not being truthful. I think padded was frustrated, and that happens when you debate about something you're passionate about. I don't blame him, we all make mistakes and overreact, myself and the other admins included.
But here's what happened. I'm eastern US timezone, so all this was between at 7pm-1am for me after an already long day, but never the less, we engaged in debate over the rules for over 5 hours straight. For context, Yay sent a screenshot that he woke up to over 1500 messages from us. I went to sleep at 1 and conversations continued.
It started with Mike proposing (what some of us felt were) draconian rules. I typically stay out of the "general admin" room, but gavi asked me to come give feedback. so I did and we all started discussing them. After about 2.5 hours of debate (probably like 930pm), Mike asked for people to use an emoji to show how they feel about them, the result was 2 thumbs up (gavi, mike) and 2 thumbs down (me, padded) - OUT OF 14 PEOPLE. It was not "a vote" - it was purely to gauge sentiment. And all it did was draw more discussion, almost no one even put a reaction except mike, gavi, me, and padded.
Padded got heated during the discussion and said he felt like he was repeating himself, even though I was agreeing with him and that's kinda just how hard debates go. Eventually, I made it clear that I would not sysadmin a database of people's IDs who want to post on this instance. Others chimed-in in agreement. The idea was dead before it started. it was also pointed out repeatedly that the tools would never exist to enforce "source only" and padded made good points that "sourced" content can be faked with a PH logo pasted over it.
His last message was this:
Then almost immediately after that I said this:
In my opinion, padded seemed unhappy with everything, it felt like his stance was that if we didn't allow it all then we shouldn't allow anything and we have no right being the "lemmynsfw" instance. So then padded posted summaries of the draft that no one agreed to, and then got banned with a shitty message in the modlog and the post purged as a reactionary response. Mike got reprimanded for the ban message, we regretted purging it, but what's done is done. TBH based on the way purging works I imagine it's still available on other instances if you really care. But we can't "unpurge" messages, we SHOULDN'T change modlog messages.
But after he left, the conversation turned to how do we handle, and what are our legal responsibilities relating to, CSAM , how do we geoblock virginia/utah/etc, whether loli hentai can get any of us in trouble, how do we even define "loli", how do we handle "extreme" content on the feed, and how do we determine if CNC is actually CNC and not NC.
And that's basically still where we are still now, but we've made progress and I think we're all getting on the same page. The past few nights I've been digging into lemmy code, including the pict-rs library, to figure out exactly how purging content works, how the federation aspect works, and what changes we need to make our instance safe from legal repercussions, and protect other instances from hosting content they may not be comfortable with.
Regarding purges, the only remaining piece after a purge is in the "admin_purge_log" table which lists the post id, the creator_id, the admin_id, the given reason, and the timestamp. This data is viewable from the "admin view" of the instance, but not to regular users. I don't believe purges are federated.
Our instance has purged 8 posts, 3 of which were test posts, 1 was padded's, and 4 others were before I was involved so I don't actually know. I assume it's involved with the de-federation ordeal.
That's the long and short of it. Please remember, Reddit had billions of dollars to pay lawyers to deflect any liability. We don't. I believe our current donation total is like $200 last we talked, probably more now, and the server costs were like $80 for june and expected to be much higher for July. We're discussing going out of pocket to get a lawyer. I think a more detailed account of finances will be shared soon.
The finalized content policy will be shared soon for feedback and then hopefully implemented. We're working on how to be more transparent with communications, server costs, and donations.
This shit is hard, I don't get why people want to dismiss it as a simple thing. People have gone to jail over this kind of content, and even if we could win in trial, none of us want it to ever come to that.
I just want to write code, lol
I hope that you don't geoblock states. I understand if you must do it, but the age verification laws those states are trying to create were already ruled unconstitutional years ago by the US Supreme Court. I guess we can't predict how current courts will rule on it, and I know being small you certainly wouldn't have the funds to defend any lawsuit. But, with some exceptions (Pornhub being the big one), most sites have chosen to ignore those laws.
Anyway I hope I'm not too negative in my tone. I really appreciate how thoughtful you guys have been, and support whatever direction you end up going in.
Just my opinion, but I say it's better to err on the side of caution. The big players will sort it out in time. The risk is being taken on by those volunteering their time to keep the site running, while the reward is primarily just going to the rest of us. That being said, it's also easy for me to say since I don't live in a state with those laws.
I absolutely agree with you, and don't want the site operators to take on more risk than they have to. It sucks to have to try to comply with an unconstitutional law, but if it's necessary to minimize risk, I totally understand.
Geo blocks are kind of a bad solution to a bad problem, especially since geolocation can be very inaccurate. People outside the states in question get blocked based on IP just because the network infrastructure is tied together. Heck, in the past I've seen my IP address get geolocated more than 1000 miles from my physical location.
Anyway, I understand why it's a very effective solution from a legal / CYA point of view. The laws themselves may be illegal / unconstitutional, but like you said, only the big players are going to have the resources to challenge it in court.