Lemmy.zip admin
Contact me via hello@lemmy.zip
It’s totally wild how many people who don’t understand it are trying to weigh in with their incorrect opinion.
I know it’s a very specific point this centres around, being that the ToS doesn’t apply to you, but it needs debate and discussion so mistakes like this don’t happen in the future.
It absolutely is a signable agreement, you agreed to it when you signed up to lemmy.world 🤦♂️ you even have to specifically type that you agree these days, I believe.
And yes, by using the website you agree to it - except (as i and others have to keep pointing out) the user did not use lemmy.worlds website at any point. That isn’t how federation works. To suggest it does is just ignorance of the topic.
Yes, we agree that they can ban them for any reason they choose, that’s not up for debate, but they cannot apply a clause from their terms of service and specifically cite their terms of service, because it doesn’t apply to the remote user.
The largest lemmy instance should be held to account for their actions (as should any lemmy instance). The admin didn’t even have to state a reason for the ban, but by saying its the ToS they’ve invalidated their action. It’s not rocket science if you take two minutes to understand how federation and ToS works.
A terms of service is a legal agreement between a user and the host. The user in this case did not access lemmy.world and is not their user, so cannot be bound by the ToS. The same way you cannot be forced into an optional legal agreement that you haven’t read or seen.
There is no question that the lemmy.world admins can ban someone from their site if they wish to, but claiming its for a violation of ToS is completely incorrect. The lemmy.world admin in this case decided to arbitrarily ban someone because they say they’re under 18, even though there is no legal consideration for lemmy.world here.
Can they do this? Yes. It’s their site. But they are incorrect to refer to their ToS for this ban, because the user is not bound by this.
The action taken was outside of any stated lemmy.world policy on moderation.
I’ve let you drag me off track, that’s my own fault. I actually kind of get your point about a proxy service, but we’re obviously both looking at this in different ways. In your way, that would automatically mean that every post you make, even locally on lemmy.world, as it is sent to every single server that lemmy.world federates with, makes you subject to every single ToS for those servers. That’s just not true though. That’s not how it works.
Importantly, back to the key point, the ToS for lemmy.world say:
No one under 18 years of age or under the regulated minimum age defined by your local law (whichever is higher), is allowed to use or access the website.
They are not using nor are they accessing the “website”. Is their message being sent between servers? Sure, that’s federation. Did the user use or access the website? No.
If that’s the line lemmy.world wants to take, they need to update their ToS to reflect that federated users are also subject to that rule and it applies to federated traffic. At least they’d have a leg to stand on then.
As it stands, they’ve incorrectly interpreted their own ToS. Again, this is analogous to email. Sending an email does not automatically make you subject to an agreement with the receiving company, with a document you’ve not had sight of. They can still moderate that email as they see fit, but the receiving party isn’t providing a service.
Anyway I’ve said all there is to say. I’m sure we’ll continue to disagree.
Federation isn’t a proxy. You’re conflating two different things here. If you use a proxy to access a website, you yourself have still accessed that website.
If I access a lemmy community on a remote server, I am not accessing that remote community directly, I am still on my home instance, accessing a local copy. For example, I am still subscribed to [email protected]. I could go create a post there. But guess what. Feddit.de doesn’t exist anymore. The only place that post will go is lemmy.zip because feddit.de is not there to federate it out. Is feddit.de suddenly providing me a service? No! It doesn’t exist anymore! I am interacting with lemmy.zips local copy of that community.
It’s exactly the same for a live instance. I am not submitting anything directly to the other instance. Instead I am submitting it to my home server, which is letting the remote server know about it. The user has at no point interacted with, accessed, shared any information with, or directly in any way had anything to do with the remote server.
That is a simple fact about how federation works. Can you tell me at what point that user has interacted with lemmy.world’s website?
At what point did the user “access” lemmy.world? Did their device connect to lemmy.world at any point during them making their posts? No. It did not. That’s not how federation works.
It’s relevant because it shows that lemmy.world has no ownership or control over the original, which is where the barrier for a service would be. I’m not sure how i can make that any clearer.
Again, I have no idea what you’re on about with the dick sucking. Saying I have no idea of the law while spouting totally irrelevant arguments is a touch disingenuous.
Let me go over this again for you.
When you joined lemmy.world, you agreed to their ToS. I have not joined lemmy.world, therefore their ToS does not apply to me. They owe me nothing, and cannot delete my account nor any of my users from lemmy.zip. they can ban my users from lemmy.world, remove their posts etc, but they’re only doing that to their copies of the posts. The original copies are on lemmy.zip and lemmy.worlds actions do not affect any other instances that has a copy of the lemmy.zip original.
Therefore they do not provide my users with a service. If lemmy.world shut down tomorrow, lemmy.zip users would still have service while lemmy.world users would not.
Similarly a website i have never been to might have a ToS, but I have not agreed to that ToS, therefore it cannot apply to me. Said website is not providing me a service.
So we’ve established who is providing who a service in this scenario, which is lemm.ee providing a service to their user. That user isn’t using lemmy.world, therefore isn’t receiving a service and isn’t beholden to their ToS.
Lemmy.world have banned that user from their website because the user is saying their under 18. But they claim to have done this because in their ToS they say they don’t provide a service to under 18s. But that user has not agreed to the ToS.
While lemmy.world is entitled to do whatever they want imo, it’s their website, to say it’s because of their ToS is incorrectly applying it. They aren’t providing a service to the user. Lemm.ee is.
Again, they can do whatever they want, it’s their website, but its not how it applies to lemmy.zip. If I was to enact that policy, it would be under the code of conduct as that is what is applied to moderation of remote instances.
You’re getting it a bit backwards.
Here’s the simple answer - can I delete your account or prevent you from accessing your home server? No. Therefore I’m not offering nor providing YOU a service. I am providing a service to people who have signed up to lemmy.zip.
I own and run lemmy.zip. I state that only over 18s can sign up. I do this because lemmy as a software cannot prevent a person from seeing nsfw content if they’re under 18, which is a limitation of the software. However admins can turn off nsfw content entirely, such as feddit.uk does. Anything tagged nsfw their users cannot see.
The home instance is liable for their own policies. If they allow under 18s and have nsfw turned on, that’s their risk not mine.
A NSFW post on one server can federate to lemmy.zip and then federate to a server hosting a minor (i.e., the minor passively used the lemmy.zip website)
That’s not how it works and they’re not using lemmy.zip at any point during that anyway. Otherwise your argument would suggest that we are all subject to every websites ToS even if we’ve never been on that website, which isn’t the case.
I honestly don’t know what you’re on about at this point.
You’re confusing a code of conduct which is applied to everyone with a terms of service, which i can only apply to people I offer a service to. I don’t hold your data, I can’t delete your account or prevent you from accessing your home server. I am not providing you a service in any way. It’s really that simple.
Your email thing is wrong btw. Emails can be banned (conduct) by another server, but the account can’t be deleted by the other server (service). You’re confusing the two.
That’s irrelevant. The post wasn’t made via lemmy.zip. we have a copy of the post but the user didn’t interact at all with our website or our server. Their server did, not the user. Again, email. If I have an Outlook account and send an email to a Gmail account, I’m not suddenly subject to the Gmail ToS.
Otherwise I’d set up my own email and say anyone that emailed me had to pay me a million bananas as part of my ToS.
No, anyone that isn’t having a service from lemmy.zip isn’t beholden to our ToS. Our CoC on the other hand we do enforce as part of the site rules when interacting with lemmy.zip communities.
Just replied to another of your comments, but in summary no. They’re not one of my users and I don’t hold any data on them nor do they access lemmy.zip directly.
They’re not making use of the service, though. That’s a misunderstanding. They’re making use of their home servers copy of the other servers community. The user isn’t directly using the remote service.
It’d be like having two email companies, one only allowing over 18s to have an account. You wouldn’t say you’re making use of the other email service if you send an email to them. You’re not beholden to their ToS or CoC. Same applies here imo.
Not if they’re a federated user. They’re not my user to worry about. Even if they say they’re not 18 it doesn’t apply imo, they’re not interacting directly with lemmy.zip.
You have to agree that you’re over 18 to use lemmy.zip directly as per ToS
No, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how federation works.
The user is on lemm.ee. When they make a post, they’re posting to a local copy of the community, and never directly onto the server. Thats not how federation works and so your points are all totally invalid.
At no point does the user ever make contact themselves with that external server. They never physically touch lemmy.world in their actions, everything they do is on lemm.ee, and so lemm.ee’s Terms of Service is the one that applies to the user.
As has already been hashed out multiple times, Lemmy.world’s ToS is not relevant here and does not apply to an external user.
This is totally up for debate, and you don’t understand it. That’s fine, learn from people who do know and take it with some humility.
Oh and if you still don’t get why its important and how wrong you are - if you were right, then every single post you make is federated to thousands of different fedi servers. Suddenly, you would be legally in contract with all those thousands of servers and their ToS. Imagine if I put in mine that users have to pay a small sum of currency for every post that they make on my server. In your incorrect definition, you would be liable for that just like lemmy.world have applied their ToS against someone who isn’t one of their users.
What lemmy.world should do is update their moderation policies/code of conduct/whatever to specifically say that they will ban you if they suspect you are under 18. Its such an easy fix. This never had to be so wrong in the first place.