I’m new to the Fediverse and I’m still trying to understand how this all works. While browsing the All/Federated home page, I saw some posts which seemed to be pornographic. It got me thinking about the rules of Lemmy instances. Lemmy.ca has a “no porn” rule. Hypothetically, if I were to use my Lemmy.ca account to post porn on an instance which allows that type of content, would I be in violation of Lemmy.ca’s rules?
I guess the question is related to my confusion about where federated content is stored. If I use my Lemmy.ca account to reply to a Lemmy.ml thread, which server does my comment “live” in? If I were to delete my Lemmy.ca account, would all my comments in Lemmy.ml disappear too?
Technically, if you post a picture from lemmy.ca to a different instance, the picture is stored on lemmy.ca’s server, so yes, that would be against the rules, as that is what i’m trying to avoid.
I would say a general rule of thumb (as a lot of instances have similar rules, but they’re probably enforced differently) that you try and follow the rules of both the instance you’re posting from and the one your posting to. the community itself can have it’s own set of rules too.
As to where the content itself is stored, technically, they’re stored in both places. if you delete your account, i believe it gives you can option to delete all your content as well, and those deletes will be federated as well.
That being said, if one instance goes down, or an owner takes it down, or whatever, any content that has already been federated to other instances are already there, ie, stuff should still work, for the most part, with probably the exception being any images stored locally on the instance that is down, since images themselves don’t federate across instances.
Also, a quick disclaimer, all of the above is all stuff that “i’m pretty sure on”, haha, just from my understanding of how things work around here. If i’m wrong on anything, feel free to correct me!
Interesting. I appreciate hearing your perspective as an admin!
Does federated content get stored on your server permanently or will it eventually “age out”? For example, if Lemmy.ml shuts down permanently tomorrow, will Lemmy.ca still have all that federated content a decade from now?
Back to the “no porn” rule, does it apply only to content that is uploaded to this server or are we also not allowed to link to off-site content? (For the record, I don’t plan on doing any NSFW stuff here. I’m just curious.)
federated content is stored permanently, i’m pretty sure.
i suppose it’s fine if you link to off-site content, because technically, porn content from other instances is essentially the same thing. this federation stuff is hard, haha.
So if I have a Lemmy.ca account and I look at content on let’s say booty.world, Lemmy.ca will cache ANYTHING I look at on booty.world?!?!
If this is true, Lemmy is doomed.
sorry, i should have been clearer. the posts/comments themselves are federated/stored on other servers. images are not, they are only stored on the instance they were posted from.
That’s very useful to know. So only text is federated.
Hi smorks, Thank you for lemmy.ca
I’m still a bit confused by your above comment.
To clarify:
So, if I’m logged into my lemmy.ca account and would create a post with a picture on a different instance, e.g. lemmy.ml or Lemmy.world , it would be against the rules of lemmy.ca?
And vice versa, if someone with an account on an instance that is known for banning criticism of certain governments, if they were to post such a post on lemmy.ca or lemmy.world , would still break the rules of their home instance and risk being banned there for something they’ve posted on a different instance that doesn’t have that rule?
Does that mean, I would need a second account on a different instance that doesn’t have this/these particular rules when posting such content?
Thank you 🙂
When you post to a community on a different instance, the post itself is still on lemmy.ca, you’re basically just ‘categorizing’ it as being intended for the other instance’s community. It’s similar to asking, “if I make a Mastodon post and I @ a group on another instance, do I have to follow the post rules for my server?”
Thank you for your explanation. This makes it much clearer for me :)
On a separate note, because, I just notice this in my comment:
Are there plans by you and lemmy.world to increase synchronization?
I’ve noticed just typing lemmy.ca and lemmy.ml turn into an automatic link, while typing lemmy.world doesn’t.
I’ve also noticed, the sync between these two instances (lemmy.ca and lemmy.world) is lagging or problematic when looking for communities on the other instance or trying to post from within one one instance to the other. Sometimes my lemmy.ca account doesn’t let me post or comment to lemmy.world and vice versa and I have to switch accounts.
… and every instance that may be brought online and ever federate that content?
Without a crystal ball, how can we know what the rules are for a server brought online in the last 10 minutes, and how our post would or would not be accepted? In a fediverse which potentially includes everything from Hedonism-bot to [email protected], and the vastly different acceptance/rejection criteria for photos, what specifically is the regs for unwitting intermediaries?
Signal-carrier Immunity? If wil gets a Lemmy instance running - totally possible - is there no chance for a [email protected] sub to exist?
He didn’t say you have to follow the rules of all the instances in existence, now and forever. He said you should follow the rules of your home server, and where you post, the two places your content is guaranteed to reside. All other instances will propagate based on their settings, and they can choose how they will deal with it, such as beehaw recently defederating from lemmy.world.
The obvious solution is, if you don’t like the rules that lemmy.ca has made, is to sign up somewhere where you agree with the rules.
You may have missed the transitive part, but that’s okay.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the transitive part” and I’m honestly not sure if I am not grasping your meaning or if you’re not grasping how entries propagate.
that’s why i said “try”. i know it’s not always easy or possible. and that’s just my recommendation based on running this instance. other admins/mods may work differently, i have no idea.
Hey, I get it – it’s very Canadian to consider the sensibilities of as many people as possible along the travel path and for the lifetime of the content we post or carry. Totally admirable.
But it’s not gonna be perfect, even if we get very, very close. The trick is to somehow know when we’re within epsilon of optimal and then forgiving ourselves over not pleasing absolutely everybody. Just don’t beat ourselves up over it. ;-)
well said! and I’ve come to realize that you’re never going to please everyone. especially on the internet.