Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:
We took this action to protect lemmy.world, lemmy.world’s users, and lemmy.world staff as the material posted in those communities could be problematic for us, because of potential legal issues around copyrighted material and services that provide access to or assistance in obtaining it.
This decision is about liability and does not mean we are otherwise hostile to any of these communities or their users. As the Lemmyverse grows and instances get big, precautions may happen. We will keep monitoring the situation closely, and if in the future we deem it safe, we would gladly reallow these communities.
The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.
This whole conversation is getting me legitimately frustrated. The unmitigated gall to say that creating an account somewhere else is “a real chore” when speaking to a group of people who are running this place for free and making it available to him, for free, is staggering. Maybe it’s just a lack of understanding or caring how much work it takes. I’ve done stuff like this before, it’s not simple. Probably if Antik were doing what he does for lemmy.world at a job, he’d be making six figures at that job. It’s fine and nothing wrong with them choosing to contribute that, but going to their server and then shitting all over them for not doing it the way you want them to, in a scenario like this where all they’re trying to do is protect themselves legally, is an incredibly entitled, childish, rude, selfish, and ultimately destructive thing to do.
It’s very different from reddit running their business, screwing the users because it’s not about the users, and people getting upset with them. There are no investors here, there is no IPO or marketing budget. It’s just some people deciding to host a service they think is important, and you’re coming on here whining about how they need to do what you say, even if it puts them in legal danger, and if they don’t you’ll go somewhere else. Okay, sounds good. Go.
You are correct that Railcar8095 didn’t explicitly say that lemmy.world owed him the hosting of this pirated content. He just made vague passive-aggressive statements which implied it, with threats to no longer bless the admins by consuming resources they were choosing to make freely available to him, if his requirements weren’t met.
Staggering.