Hello World!

As we’ve all known and talked about quite a lot, we previously blocked several piracy-focused communities. These communities, as announced, were:

In our removal announcement, we stated that we will continue to look into this more in detail, and re-allow these communities if and when we deem it safe. It was a solid concern at the time, because we were already receiving takedown requests as well as constant attacks, and didn’t want to put our volunteer team at risk. We had zero measures in place, and the tools we had were insufficient to deal with anything at scale.

Well, after back and forth with some very cool people, and starting to have proper measures as well as tooling to protect ourselves, we decided it’s time to welcome these communities back again. Long live the IT nerds!

We know it’s been a rough ride with everything, and we’d like to thank every one of you who were understanding of us, and stayed with us all the way. Please know that as users, you are what makes this platform what it is, and damned we be if we ever forget it.

With love, and as always, stay safe in the high seas!

Lemmy.world Team

❤️

  • @[email protected]
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    202 years ago

    because we were already receiving takedown requests

    How are you dealing with these now?

    have proper measures as well as tooling to protect ourselves

    Is this just in relation to the attacks or also the content, can you share anything?

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Assuming they don’t want to end up like Aaron Swartz… I’m guessing they are deleted. Unfortunately it’s just too expensive to try to fight DMCA notices. Kim Dotcom has been trying that for a full decade now - his legal costs have surely stretched into tens of millions of dollars and he’s lost pretty much every step of the way. All the money he’s burned on this has delayed a lengthy prison sentence, he’s unlikely to win and would have got a lighter sentence with an early guilty plea.

      As to the tooling… AFAIK it’s not possible to delete some things in Lemmy. I expect they’ve fixed that now. At least for things that are likely to be on the receiving end of a DMCA notice.

  • @[email protected]
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    142 years ago

    Was worried after the first week that the decision was made and moved past but I’m very happy to see that not he the case. I like this instance but the removal of communities I browse is tough to look past so this is much appreciated.

    • @[email protected]
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      302 years ago

      To show what happens if you don’t listen to the community before making changes, I’m guessing.

      • @[email protected]
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        192 years ago

        But they are not incentivized to grow numbers exponentially like shareholder funded companies. They make money from community involvement and value-added services. Instead, they removed these type of contents because they felt like those communities needed to reform their overall community personality. In the end, it is all a community effort to help one another. now that users have switched, there is less legal pressure, and the people who moved have helped make these other servers better. It was a win-win for us. I am grateful to all the people who made the move and participated in posting to their respective communities.

        Also, this helps lessen the host cost on them. Lastly, a federated community is not the same as these mega corps.

      • @[email protected]
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        112 years ago

        My humble opinion is that the community can fuck off in matters like this. The random poster isn’t risking life-destroying legal trouble like the people running the servers are.

    • kratoz29
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      102 years ago

      Well, I did it too, and it is not worth making a whole comment about it because all of our reasons are predictable and this is the Fediverse and spreading is good.

      Now, I’m a bit out of the loop with the server uptime and all, but maybe if things are better I can consider Lemmy.world my backup account again… because I don’t really have one anymore.

    • Rentlar
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      542 years ago

      I think it’s fine and healthy for the fediverse if people spread out across different servers, it distributes the hosting cost.

      I don’t see a problem with announcing they “moved and aren’t coming back despite the reversal” on this particular thread, it appears relevant.

  • LimeWire
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    412 years ago

    I thank you for the work put into reversing the block.

  • EtherealMoon
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    372 years ago

    Thank you for being willing to protect this service when necessary, and improve it when able.

    • @[email protected]
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      33 months ago

      It’s real confusing.

      They state that they’ve done this right there, but it seems like there might have been a miscommunication somewhere and doesn’t look like anyone ever actually got around to removing the block at a technical level. Both piracy communities are still currently blocked on lemmy.world a year later.

  • @[email protected]
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    932 years ago

    I’m glad you guys took a measured approach. This right here is the difference between a corporation and Lemmy. I can’t imagine a for-profit reversing its decision in the interest of the community unless it affected their bottom line or stock price. Hats off to the admin team for working through all these complex issues.

  • @[email protected]
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    122 years ago

    Fuck yes. Thaaaaaaaaank you so much!

    Even if this weren’t what I wanted, I’m delighted to see leaders who can change their minds. Thank you for that, too.

  • @[email protected]
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    702 years ago

    “Please know that as users, you are what makes this platform what it is, and damned we be if we ever forget it.”

    A lesson u/spez forgot.

          • kratoz29
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            32 years ago

            We had zero measures in place, and the tools we had were insufficient to deal with anything at scale. Well, after back and forth with some very cool people, and starting to have proper measures as well as tooling to protect ourselves, we decided it’s time to welcome these communities back again.

            This sounds very ambiguous to me, regardless I am happy they backed up this decision.

      • kratoz29
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        22 years ago

        If I was subscribed to them are they able to de-suscribe me? Or they should just reappear in my personal feeds like the UCM “blip”