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.
In the country I live I can literally go to jail if I voice opinions other than “unprovoked Russian aggressive attack”. Presumably the more timid local Lemmy instance owners would fear liability.
What country is that?
The same country where lemmy.world is hosted, but there are multiple countries in the EU on track to implement 1984 down to the letter.
I still don’t know what country you are talking about.
I’ve spent a bit of time googling and I haven’t found much information on what you’re saying.
Lemmy.world is hosted at Hetzner in Germany.
It’s not illegal to push pro-Russia propaganda in Germany so I’m not sure why you say you’ll go to jail if you do.
It is illegal in Germany to voice a nonmainstream opinion. See https://linkezeitung.de/2022/06/16/meinungsfreiheit-deutsche-staatsanwaltschaft-ermittelt-gegen-alina-lipp/ for a case citing the relevant laws. Other countries like Czechia and some Baltic countries have similar legislation. It is not yet illegal to bypass blocks of censored mass media like e.g. RT, Sputnik News or any Russian TV channel.
Has Alina Lipp been charged, convicted or jailed?
Her parents have been harassed. She herself will not return to Germany for fear of persecution.
I recall several other cases in the press where people were persecuted and fined.
To recap, there is recently introduced very broad legislation which can be enforced selectively and is being used to harass and silence dissenting opinions. As lemmy.world operators are censoring a piracy community for fear of liability and hence are likely to do the same for political communities I will be moving on from this instance to a more permissive one. EOT.