3 ms·

Related, what's "modern best practices" in both software (ie what to write) and operator (ie you are running software, and need to do something with DMCA)? I a

Related, what's "modern best practices" in both software (ie what to write) and operator (ie you are running software, and need to do something with DMCA)? I ask in the context of ActivityPub, Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, etc. I'm writing software for ActivityPub and i want to ensure self-hosted instances have the tools to respond and manage to legal .. threats (or w/e) like DMCA. Likewise i don't even know what is good advice for people to manage these notices. Of course there's also all the other undesired things too, CSAM, etc. Hosting user content is tough, heh. As someone invested in getting people to self host more of their life in ways like ActivityPub, that also then means more exposure to this type of .. stuff. Not sure what the current consensus even is, tbh.

deadly_syn 3y ago
Isnt the beauty of activity pub that you can tenat an instance juat for yourself? That could avoid a lof ot the legal headaches. You could also make it invite only through yourself, your instance doesnt need to be big if everyone elses is.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  That would be nice but i don't think it's realistic in the general space. ActivityPub in what i've researched so far is inefficiency for that granularity of P2P. For example I've seen complaints with Mastodon where small instances get ignored on the federating. Which i believe translates to data that comes from those instances taking a long time to get populated on the larger instance. Leaving the smaller instances feeling like they're speaking into the void - as no one replies, because no one can see it. Instead i think it will shine with many small instances. 500-30k maybe? Still similar issues with federating, but less so than hundreds of thousands of 1person instances. I'm focusing on what i'm calling micro instances, 50-1000 range i suspect. So we'll see.
imtringued 3y ago
The solution is to make instances publish their block lists and import these block lists to the self hosted instances.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  I don't think that touches on specific content violations though, does it? Ie dealing with a notice of a DMCA on something from a non-blocked host (or your own!)
schroeding 3y ago
One thing you have to be aware is that there are many hosters (like e.g. Hetzner, which is excellent otherwise IMO) who will drop you like a hot potatoe (i.e. blackhole your server in the best case, terminate your account in the worst) if they recieve multiple DMCA notices (or abuse notices in general) for your IP / Server / VPS. It does not always matter if those are actually legit if they look credible enough and thus, if someone hates you very much, it can be used as a weapon to kill your instance. This can be somewhat remedied by hiding your hoster via something like e.g. Cloudflare, if having a middle men is acceptable.

deadly_syn 3y ago

Isnt the beauty of activity pub that you can tenat an instance juat for yourself? That could avoid a lof ot the legal headaches. You could also make it invite only through yourself, your instance doesnt need to be big if everyone elses is.

unshavedyak 3y ago
That would be nice but i don't think it's realistic in the general space. ActivityPub in what i've researched so far is inefficiency for that granularity of P2P. For example I've seen complaints with Mastodon where small instances get ignored on the federating. Which i believe translates to data that comes from those instances taking a long time to get populated on the larger instance. Leaving the smaller instances feeling like they're speaking into the void - as no one replies, because no one can see it. Instead i think it will shine with many small instances. 500-30k maybe? Still similar issues with federating, but less so than hundreds of thousands of 1person instances. I'm focusing on what i'm calling micro instances, 50-1000 range i suspect. So we'll see.

imtringued 3y ago

The solution is to make instances publish their block lists and import these block lists to the self hosted instances.

unshavedyak 3y ago
I don't think that touches on specific content violations though, does it? Ie dealing with a notice of a DMCA on something from a non-blocked host (or your own!)

schroeding 3y ago

One thing you have to be aware is that there are many hosters (like e.g. Hetzner, which is excellent otherwise IMO) who will drop you like a hot potatoe (i.e. blackhole your server in the best case, terminate your account in the worst) if they recieve multiple DMCA notices (or abuse notices in general) for your IP / Server / VPS. It does not always matter if those are actually legit if they look credible enough and thus, if someone hates you very much, it can be used as a weapon to kill your instance. This can be somewhat remedied by hiding your hoster via something like e.g. Cloudflare, if having a middle men is acceptable.