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.
I’m very conflicted about this. On one hand, it’s kind of bullshit to take this level of action on something that can be handled on a case-by-case basis, when the need arises.
On the other hand, I’d prefer to see Lemmy avoid the reputation that Mastodon has garnered with the activities that are vastly under moderated there. With the size that some instances are reaching obviously there needs to be a level of discretion towards the content you will allow.
It’s, however, a slippery slope from protecting the community to accepting bribes for exclusive access to your user base.
“Due to moral objections, we’ve decided to block this meme community. However here’s an alternative that will show you advertisements disguised as funny memes! They even have most of the same content as the old one! Enjoy!”
Don’t let that become reality.