which government? there are plenty of those.
The
Gubmint
They’ve been going around 🤒
deleted by creator
Most of the popular Lemmy servers are not located in India and probably difficult for the government of India to influence directly.
Lemmy is a massive collection of separate servers and communities run by people. Therefore no government has a hold on it. I’m a guy that pays money out of his own pocket monthly to run a Lemmy server. If the government is controlling it, that’s news to me, and my comment history is pretty damn anti-government.
The whole point of decentralization is to remove control from the corporations and governments, and put it back into the hands of the people.
That’s an awesome instance name btw
Thanks! I think it’s among my favorite things I’ve done this year lol. I tried to get “destroying.yachts” but it was taken. Felt a little too obvious too; I like the added humor of “enjoying” instead.
I LOVE IT.
Broke: Yacht destroyer
Bespoke: Yacht “enjoyer”
While governments can’t directly manipulate Lemmy, you should still operate on the assumption that nothing you do here is anonymous.
As with anything and everything on the Internet…
While governments can’t directly manipulate Lemmy
What the fuck are you smoking? Of course they can.
They could, but they won’t. The threat model is low because McCarthyism is over and done with. Your CIA agent however sees your posts and is very disappointed with you.
No you can’t threaten to harm public officials here and get away with it nor is that censorship.
I nominate this thread for “sketchiest question on Lemmy”.
In all seriousness, at the end of the day, the legal side of this hasn’t been thoroughly tested. I would personally err on the side of caution and abide by the stricter of the laws between your country and your instance’s country. If either prohibit criticism of government, you may run into issues depending on the combination of countries. It’s safe to assume instance owners don’t have a gigantic legal fund either, so they may be more easily forced to give up access logs which could be used to trace you.
There’s also the forever unsaid “don’t be a dick” clause. If a country prohibits some form of speech, don’t intentionally try to get instance owners in that country in trouble.
There’s a few concerning notes in the user’s post history too.
In all seriousness, at the end of the day, the legal side of this hasn’t been thoroughly tested.
Sure it has. There’s nothing overly novel going on here with Lemmy or ActivityPub. There are servers that host instances which host content. If they exist within the jurisdiction of country N, then said laws and government have some level of influence on it. Unless it’s hosted in like Sealand or some lawless place with terrible Internet connection, which is super unlikely.
If your instance is hosted in the US, the federal government can still get subpoena access under the PATRIOT ACT and put the owner under gag and we’d never know.
If your instance is hosted in the US, the federal government can still get subpoena access under the PATRIOT ACT and put the owner under gag and we’d never know.
Which is why all instance owners need to implement some form of digital canary.
“The government”? You’re going to need to be more specific, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of governments.
That said, each instance of Lemmy is run differently, some are more restricted than others but “the government” wouldn’t really have anything to do with administration unless it was hosting the instance or the person hosting it was acting on behalf of “the government”.
Nice try, FBI.
Is Lemmy also censored by the government?
Not directly. You would have to check with your instance owner if they’re reporting to your local government, as well as any instances you post to. Assume yes until confirmed otherwise.
Or can I just openly discuss anything against the government here?
This is a completely different question. Because Lemmy is a clearnet site, and frankly is more public by design than other social media sites, you probably shouldn’t discuss anything that could get you in trouble with your government if spoken anywhere else without using TOR or similar anonymizing software.
Everything you post here is going to be public, so be mindful if you fear that anything you say could be held against you. No censorship (except the usual moderation done by community moderators) but imagine the police browsing through your Lemmy profile, reading all your posts/comments, after you have been charged with an allegation. In my case, police officers will surely have more than one heartfelt laughs…
I would assume it would depend in which country the server is hosted in.
Self host it. Now it not censored
Depends on the government.
The internet is endlessly being scraped for data, especially by governments. Lemmy can be scraped just as easily as any other website.
Some governments are happy to let people more or less discuss whatever, because they know revolutionary steam is blown off by being allowed to talk about bad conditions. A loose grip has been shown to be more effective than a tight grip, when it comes to control.
Other governments are more strict, and it doesn’t matter where you’ve been critical of them. If they can figure out who you are, and find out you said something on Lemmy that they think they can prosecute. Oh, they will, they will.
No, the admins of communities and instances are the rulers here
On the internet, even if it’s a very nice open source platform, always operate under the assumption that nothing you say or do is anonymous. This is Internet usage 101, however, people seem to always ignore this. Do with this as you will :)
