Are there any paid services for either Lemmy or Mastodon? Something where, given it is a subscription service, you would expect them to stick around long-term?
Are there any paid services for either Lemmy or Mastodon? Something where, given it is a subscription service, you would expect them to stick around long-term?
Second this. And other instances would still be accessible. Even more so since lemmy.world (along with probably some others) is starting censorship, which wouldn’t affect you, since you decide what you can see.
I’d love to self host one for everyone but not allow communities. The idea would be that I federate with everyone no matter what and leave a what the user wants to sub to up to them. No censorship at all.
Not having communities would mean I don’t have to worry about what I host and have other instances defederate with me. Plus, I have no interest in being mod, dealing with DCMA,user reports, etc.
Your instance will be mirroring (essentially storing a copy of) content from instances it federates with. Depending on your local laws you might be held liable for this.
Yeah, Thank you for this.
It sounds like I’ll also have to store any images my users upload. I’m all for free speech and being anonymous online so I’ll avoid logs and the like but I guess I’ll have to read Canadian law to see if I want to risk running an instance or not. I cant afford a lawyer, nor do I want to deal with anything that goes along with that.
The GDPR is also a whole other beast that could suckerpunch any instance at any point.
You can disable communities on your instance as an admin, but you would need to disable uploading.
Would that allow someone to still post/upload on other communities? Honestly haven’t looked into this at all. Was going to in a couple weeks when I have time to actually sit down and test
Yep. My instance just has me on it and posting elsewhere works without issue. Anything I upload goes to my instance and federates out. It’s really quite great not having to worry about the instance drama when big ones defederate from each other. I also turned off NSFW so I don’t have to worry about any of that content (legal or otherwise) even hitting my server.
Here’s an image of me making this comment via Sync for Lemmy
Edit: I have community creation locked down to admins, which everything disables them on my instance.
I did the same thing for the same reason. Admin approval for everything and I’m the only admin. Basically a personal instance for me and my friends if they’re too lazy to host but want to try Lemmy.
Exactly. I went one step further and decided not to use my admin account as my main. I don’t run around as root on servers so I try not to do that with apps. It’s easier with Lemmy because once it’s set up all the admin tasks hit my email.
I also wanted to avoid that vulnerability that hit Lemmy World a few weeks ago that was only possible because the server admin got their jwt stolen, which wouldn’t have been so impactful if they weren’t on the admin account.
I didn’t read the story about how exactly he lost the jwt, but is it still as big of an issue since 2fa was introduced?
I guess existing jwt hashes will bypass 2fa, but I’m not super worried since my instance has 3 users.
2fa was in at the time. IIRC the jwt was granted after 2fa so it didn’t matter.
You’ve got a point though, small instances aren’t gonna be nearly as useful as a giant one to threat actors. Assuming you don’t give them a reason to go after you specifically they wouldn’t have a reason to target such a tiny server.
Still though, I don’t need that shiny A next to my name so I’m good with how I have it set up.
I assume lemmy doesn’t clean up images after X days/years? it would be pointless if it does… I’m a datahoarder but paying storage costs to host this stuff doesn’t fit in the budget. I guess I have a lot of things to consider. Thanks!
Yeah I haven’t found anything for cleanup maintenance. Right now with just me my disk usage is increasing ~300MB per day. I’m debating purging stuff older than 30 days or something. The only stuff where my server is the source of truth is my profile and communities on my instance.
We’ll see though, this is just a fun little side thing I’m not taking too seriously.
If a user from your instance posts to a community and wants to upload a file, that file will be saved to your instance. Not the instance in which the community is. Keep that in mind.
Have you heard of what happened to Rammy? The admin went MIA, a bunch of trolls set up shop, and they (as expected) got defederated from the majority of the network for being unmoderated.
If you are going to host an instance open to public registrations you need moderation. Even if it’s just to keep the spammers and trolls at bay.
Yeah, good point. Lots of things to consider. Thanks for this!