When this instance first started, I don’t think it was fully anticipated how large it would get. The place where this instance was when I first stepped up as admin was wholly unsustainable long term. There was little direction as to what the instance’s intentions as a website were, and the specific intentions it seemed to lean towards (being a sort of reddit 2.0) is not something we have the ability to handle. Neither monetarily nor legally.

The expectations that this instance specifically would be replacing reddit nsfw content entirely is not realistic, and the expectations that have been had for what all of lemmy is capable of has been much higher than what the backend side of things is at right now. Rome was not built in a day, and the same is true for communities of this nature. We are utilizing a platform based on a philosophy that hasn’t been widely used outside of email since the early Internet, while now having to work the laws and limitations that the current Internet now presents as well. It’s an experiment, and just like all other communities we have made mistakes and are trying our best while figuring this out together. This is not a business, we are not shareholders, we are simply passionate volunteers.

Right now, our team has been paying attention to concerns and feedback that have been raised. We are currently actively engaged in a discussion of what the next steps are from here. My hasty implementation of the current restrictive content policy was not something to do long term but an attempt to reign in a community with what felt to have little restrictions and many issues popping up. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes of managing a community like this. The current policy as it stands right now, has been a band aid while we discuss further how to move forward. And we have been.

And thankfully we have a much bigger back-end team than before. What has helped the most to provide insight is that we have a back-end team member who has active experience in hosting adult websites within the legal span of the law. We also have backend team members who are helping to build mod tools not just for lemmyNSFW but with active collaboration with others across instances as well.

As we have discussed rule changes and throwing things at the wall, our biggest aspect has been determining if we are on the same page as a team. Unfortunately, a now previous back-end team member decided that he was not. And that’s ok. However last night, instead of moving forward and deciding that our ethos as a team moving forward isn’t for them there was a post that was made that compiled our original rough draft for new content guidelines and attempted to pass them off as that is going to be our full go to as a community. It isn’t. We are discussing things and hashing things out as a team still but have made significant progress moving beyond what was discussed. When changes occur, we will make a post clarifying such changes. We ask for patience, please.

  • @WendigoWitchEnglish
    34•1 year ago

    It seems to me (coming in very late to the situation) that what we have here is a case of very rapid decisions being made at an administrative level. This makes sense, y’all are fighting fires and dealing with issues you didn’t expect. This is understandable. Expected, even. It’s unreasonable to assume you will have a consistently perfect handling of individual issues. However, much like you are implementing solutions on the backend to shore up your instance, you need to be implementing solutions to your processes as administrators as well.

    To that end, let’s try to actually get some transparency out of a transparency post.

    1. If discussion on content policies is ongoing, when can we expect an update from the admin team, either on the current/ongoing status of the discussions or about changes to the policy?
    2. Are there specific items from the new content policy which are presently being discussed to a greater or lesser degree?
    3. Can the admin team commit that in the future they will announce these rules/policy changes prior to implementation in order to solicit community feedback, unless a legal/technical circumstance prohibits it?
    • @LimeeyMEnglish
      9•1 year ago
      1. “When” is kinda hard to say, we’re all having to become porn lawyers basically. But we’re honing in, I hope this weekend we will all be in agreement
      2. how to handle CSAM and uphold our legal responsibilities, and hentai (where is the loli line?) and NC/CNC
      3. Yes we will be involving communities and moderators more when we make drastic changes. Not everything is going to be well received but hopefully people understand that we’re not actually making rules based on the “porn we are into” and really it’s just that no one wants to go to jail over masturbating.
    • @FilthEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      and here is the thing. You can go create an instance and dedicated to whatever you want. It can be niche content. And either it’ll stand or be defederated. Thats how the system works. Long as its legal you should be good to go unless the host steps in.