It feels like this is how social media and the Internet should have been all along. Truly run for the interest and good of humanity, and out of the hands of corporate control and profiteering. People, out of their own generosity and goodwill, host their own instances and let others use it for free. It's such an awesome example of humans helping each other and working to create abundance for everyone to enjoy.
I believe that everyone putting their time, money, and effort into building up the Fediverse - the developers, server owners, mods, and everyone else who keeps it alive and interesting - is helping to make the Internet (and by extension, the world) a better place. You all are awesome. Keep up the amazing work.
Also hi, I'm new here. I found out about Lemmy today, and I was so intrigued that I spent all day learning about it lol.
depends on where you are, if you are in the US you are still generally protected from prosecution (check your laws or talk to a lawyer). You do need to have a process for removing bad content (just deleting it) and be prepared to ban and purge content if you receive any legal notices.
also something to note, your server does not copy everything on the fediverse, just what users on your instance have subscribed to. Im looking forward to being able to block communities as an admin rather than simply defederating.
re: moderation load. I like topical servers, I run one around AI. I've always felt specific topic verticals are easier to moderate as its usually more expected to just shutdown anything not related to the core topic. You still deal with stuff from time to time but its never been a huge deal.
Running stuff here, my server is SFW so I have rarely seen anything terrible, I usually just ban and purge a user i see posting like that it only takes a couple seconds. If you are only subbing to safe, respectful communities its easy. If you want to walk lines, it can get hard.
What about your instance's users? Are you responsible for what they post on other servers? Even if they aren't posting anything illegal, but just spam? Or being very unpleasant? Is it likely that a popular instance could defederate from you if you have too many users like that? And what about someone making a bunch of bot accounts on your instance?
I'm perhaps a bit too paranoid, when I first got my own server and saw thousands of SSH login attempts in half an hour, and plenty of malicious HTTP requests in the apache logs... I've felt like it's a jungle out there. I've since changed to a different port for SSH, and disabled password login (only SSH keys). Every now and then though, it seems like my non default port is discovered, and I need to change it again, or my logs will be filled with failed login attempts[1]. Perhaps I'm unlucky for renting a server in an IP space that often gets compromised... it's just scary to me, since I've never even shared it with the general public (just a few friends).
[1]: I realize this isn't a big deal, but I'd like to avoid it if I can. Perhaps I should investigate some software that automatically bans abusive IPs.
thats up to you, there are no laws against spam and as long as they are posting within the bounds of the law you have no issues. HOWEVER if your user is being annoying, breaking rules, or posting content that other instances don't want to see it could get your server defederated.
really though, most of these are issuse if you want a big instance, if you keep it small and the rules clear, you are unlikely to deal with this and when you do it will usually be a matter of clicking Ban then Purge.
Thanks for all the info. Some day I'll definitely give it a shot.