I feel like this is going to become a problem with federation in the future. A Mastodon instance is hosting content outside of its control that may or may not comply with its internal policies or local law. Is that instance protected legally? Likely not.

It would likely be treated the same way as auto forwarding an email would be treated.

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

AT proto's PDS architecture does solve that 👀

Edit: I do want to say that after reading this blog post I have become a bit more lenient on ATProto. It seemed rather neutral and objective and found several upsides that I think are worth taking a look at.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Has BlueSky implemented federation yet?

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

No, but if it did you could control where your data lived, because people do host their own PDS iirc for bluesky.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah, if.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't know. You may be generally already protected to some degrees by existing laws for users interacting with your site. This time it's just users interacting with your site via another server. If you defederate from bad instances and have a good DMCA system, you might be okay.

Although, this type of thing could be one of those things that'll take a court case or updated legislation to solve.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

IANAL, but most law that I've heard of regarding third party content requires the site hosting the content to conform to takedown notices issued. So, having a good DCMA system requires you to be able to take down content from instances that may not be bad, but governed differently.

As for the law "catching up with" federation sites, I don't see that happening unless Mastodon and Lemmy start creating massive lobbying arms.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As for the law "catching up with" federation sites, I don't see that happening unless Mastodon and Lemmy start creating massive lobbying arms.

Forgot that's how America worked.

In the UK, you could just keep making noise until a member of parliament gets interested and mentions it once

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So how does UK law handle federation?

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

No clue. Online Safety Act is a bin fire

[–] 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 1 points 2 days ago

OSA means the instances that are federated are required to remove it, but also because they failed to remove it and/or failed to regulate ages and the day of the week and feed the cat they are guilty

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Maybe you should make some noise until an MP cleans up the issue.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago

I'm too lazy. My MP made a bluesky account but abandoned it. Sad!