Could Discuss.online become the go-to USA instance?

Hello everyone,

Following the recent discussions on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !lemmyworld@lemmy.world , it seems that people realize that Lemmy.world is subject to European laws, and not the US ones.

This is another event where US citizens seem to be looking for an instance that would adhere to their "legal culture", the previous one being the US elections, where the topic was discussed everywhere, before getting channeled into !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world

I don’t know anything about Dutch or Finnish laws, but I’ve seen many recent articles about people arrested in Germany for their social media posts that were considered hateful or violent (which is frankly a culture shock to me as an American), so I can see why some of the posts on Lemmy in the past week would be concerning.

https://lemmy.world/comment/13870047

So, the question is: could Discuss.online become that instance? And host US-focused communities like "AskUSA", "USPolitics", "USFinance", this kind of things?

I am mostly asking because there's no secret that the DO admins aren't the biggest Lemmy fans, so would you guys be okay if your instance would get promoted, potentially causing an influx of users and communities, some requiring moderation?

44 comments

Rather than reply in the deeply nested thread we are in, I'm going to make this a new comment.
I’m also going to say this again as a preface: I am not a lawyer. None of this should be considered legal advice. Seek your own legal counsel.
I think you might be misunderstanding what "free speech" means in the US. The First Amendment protects us from the government making laws restricting what we can and cannot say. For example, I can say "the President is a moron" and face no criminal consequences for doing so.
However, that freedom is not a blanket immunity—it does not protect us from the consequences of our words. Context is everything.
For instance, while no government agency can make a law preventing you from yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater, if you do so and someone gets injured or killed in the resulting panic, there will likely be legal consequences. You wouldn’t be charged with saying "fire" itself, but rather with knowingly causing a panic that any reasonable person would expect to lead to injuries. Victims or their families could also sue you in civil court.
The First Amendment doesn’t protect anyone not physically located inside the borders of the US or a US-controlled territory. For example, a US citizen vacationing in China wouldn’t be protected for speaking out against the Chinese government.
For those outside the US, it’s also important to note that hosting an instance in the US doesn’t shield you from your own country’s laws, which might differ significantly.
Interestingly, you might find that an instance in another country, such as Germany, would provide stronger data privacy protections. Given how little many US citizens seem to value privacy—continuing to allow our federal government to pass laws enabling warrantless surveillance—other countries may have an edge. (No, I’m not a tinfoil hat wearer. Besides, everyone knows tinfoil is reflective and would just make it easier for them to spot you from satellites.)
That’s my long-winded, sometimes whimsical but mostly serious way of saying: Please stop looking for the line that isn’t okay to cross. This instance exists to foster welcoming, friendly conversations. If you make an honest mistake, you’ll get a warning so you know where the line is.
If you want an instance where you can say whatever you want without any moderation, this isn’t the place.
With that, I’m going to lock this post from further replies because I don’t see how the conversation can continue constructively. If you believe the thread should be reopened, feel free to DM me, and I’ll consider it. Please note that this is for discussing whether to reopen the thread, not for continuing the debate in private.

I've been sick with the stomach flu for several days and haven't had a chance to catch up.
I'm not against being a home for any community that follows our rules. I don't feel a need to be officially considered the instance of the USA. All are welcome.
Edit: I should add that other languages make it difficult for me to moderate. I'm not against foreign languages on Discuss.Online; however, I do have concerns for moderation. I speak English and know some conversational French. My wife is fluent in French. That's just a little fyi.
- Thank you so much for yourself and lazyguru (not tagging since he indicated a desire not to be involved in the discussion anymore) offering to clarify your vision on your instance. It definitely makes it easier for us all:-).
  And I hope you feel better soon!
- Hello,
  Hope you are now feeling better!
  Thank you for your comment. As I pointed out in another comment DO's current only rules are the Lemmy Code of Conduct, which has been written by the Lemmy devs, and as you may know, Lemmy.ml isn't really hate speech free.
  As you are very well aware, the legal side of DO is limited to https://discuss.online/legal
  discuss.online is operated by Jason Grim, LLC., and is hosted on servers operated in United States of America. All content on this server is expected to be legal in all of these jurisdictions
  As we know, the legal framework of the USA allows free speech.
  If we compare with lemmy.zip, for instance (https://legal.lemmy.zip/docs/terms_of_service/#our-governing-laws)
  7.0: The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and the European Union.
  European laws are much stronger regarding hate speech, as several people have commented on the LW announce.
  I am not advocating for DO to become a free speech instance.
  I am suggesting to add rules, be it at the community or instance level, to prevent comments like the one I gave
  So if people say “CEOs of private healthcare companies who cause the deaths of thousands of citizens for profit should face the same fate as the United Healthcare CEO”, is it acceptable or no? Real question, I don’t think it’s that clear from the rules.
  I guess that does not solve the question of people wanting a place where they can talk about jury nullification of future crimes, but that's something they can solve on their own.
  
  The rules of DO are:
  No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
  No porn
  No Ads / Spamming.
  Follow the Lemmy Code of Conduct
  They're a bit more than you said. Be respectful could mean a lot to different people. So things are just more case by case.

FYI @jgrim@discuss.online and @lazyguru@discuss.online
- I won't speak for @jgrim@discuss.online (he's the primary admin, I just pretend to help out 😉), but I see no reason to be a "USA focused instance". We are open to anyone, anywhere as long as they are interested in open, respectful discourse staying within the code of conduct. Additionally, IMO having instances be "go to" instances kind of goes against a core concept of the fediverse. Anyone can run their own instance and get content from other instances (I don't recommend it though 😱). Themed instances are fine, but they don't advertise themselves as the "go to" for that theme, they just simply cater more to that style of communities. And with that description, Discuss.Online's only "theme" is that you discuss... things, online 😜
  
  Thank you for your comment!
  To be honest, the situation now feels like most of people on Lemmy are on LW, most of the communities are on LW, and that would probably stay this way if there is no incentive for people to look for other places.
  Your other comment touched upon the legal aspect, so I'm not going to talk about that here. There was another example of "US matters taking over the whole place" with the US elections. Some communities like !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world would have a majority of threads about that topic, overwhelming the community, especially members who were not US citizens.
  !asklemmy@lemmy.world took another approach: they forbid US politics questions. People then asked for a place to go, and it became !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
  The whole thread is here: https://feddit.org/post/4482552
  We are now seeing a similar situation with the recent LW decision. People are looking for other instances and communities that would follow the legal framework they are used to, and that's why I mentioned that DO could become that US specific instance.
  they don’t advertise themselves as the “go to” for that theme
  They kind of do, or at least they differentiate on one aspect. All the German and French communities are hosted on feddit.org and jlai.lu. When people wanted to consolidate the electric vehicle communities, they chose slrpnk.net (https://feddit.org/post/4569227). Beehaw is known for their very strict moderation policies. Lemm.ee is known to be the "non defederating instance which is not LW nor lemmy.ml or hexbear"
  If a generic instance does not have a differentiator, there's almost no incentive for anyone to use it compared to let's say LW, SJW and Lemm.ee
  
  Also, IANAL and neither is @jgrim@discuss.online. We are not about to say this instance allows you to comply with all legal obligations for your geographical location in the world - that's up to you as an individual.
  
  I agree.
- Thanks!

After today learning that Lemmy.World is European run and does not support American-style free speech in quite interested in finding a new, American instance. However I DO NOT want to move to hex or some other instance affiliated with pro-fascist, religious, or right-wing propaganda or similar. If such exists I'd love to know which one it is.
- If your chief goal is to get away from "tankies", then I would say Lemmy.cafe or dubvee.org (which uses the Tesseract alternative Lemmy UI), b/c they are the only ones in America (and then there's https://quokk.au/ in Australia being only the 3rd in the entire world iirc) that defederate from all of the big 3 tankie instances (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml).
  Note there is also PieFed, e.g. the flagship https://piefed.social/, which offers a number of features including the ability to as a non-admin user block all users from any instance of your choice. It also offers things like categories of communities, hashtag support, an embedded YouTube video playing, etc. Though its basic UI is crude and notifications are still wonky, so it's simultaneously more advanced than Lemmy in some ways while less so in others, and like Tesseract (or Lemmy for that matter:-D), not for everyone (although I do have an alt there and use it daily, so it is usable...mostly).
  Though there are a lot of communities on lemmy.ml that some people like, e.g. !firefox@lemmy.ml. Do as you wish ofc.
  Personally I have enjoyed Discuss.Online greatly over the past year, due to its fantastic admin support - i.e. superb uptime, quick updates, and especially extremely high reliability of the federation of posts & comments compared to other alts I have had in the same time-period. Its chief drawback - which almost caused me to quit Lemmy altogether early on - was that it federated with hexbear.net and that was getting too annoying to read those. But now that it has defederated from it, that is removed as a detraction.
  Read the sidebar text at https://discuss.online/ and see if it might be a good fit for you?
- Discuss.online just defederated from hexbear yesterday, if that can give you an indication: https://lemmy.world/post/22617301

@OpenStars@discuss.online you'll probably be interested
- For anyone wondering what this means, my own take is:
  Everyone can still read hexbear's content in read-only mode, it is now only the interactions that have been severed, due to too many bad-faith occurrences (many links given in this post, or rather in posts linked to from that post, offered as justification by the various instance admins for why they too defederated from HB) where the HB admins have not upheld their own promises regarding the shared codes of conduct nor their own instructions to their userbase (to constrain the trolling to only inside of communities hosted there, where it is more expected and unfortunately for everyone else even outright encouraged by the admin team).
  There are many many instances that still remain federated with HB for those that want that. Especially lemm.ee as the #3 Lemmy instance (after #1 which is Lemmy.World with ~80% of the entire Lemmy userbase, and #2 is lemmynsfw.com), or sh.itjust.works as the #4 instance, but also another USA-based one is lemmy.today - see https://lemmy.today/c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net. This defederation will help keep Discuss.Online true to its own motto of facilitating friendly discussions without that source of trolling spamming us constantly. Conversely, other USA-based instances that defederate not only from HB but also from lemmy.ml is lemmy.cafe and dubvee.org, and both of those are great options as well (though each quite a bit smaller than DO, and the latter has a significantly more narrow on-ramp to the Fediverse that is more akin to Beehaw that is heavily curated to avoid toxicity - which ofc some people will absolutely love, even as others absolutely will hate:-D).
  And before someone mentions midwest.social, there seems to be some controversy surrounding claims of abusive moderation practices on that one. It does have some cool communities such as !theonion@midwest.social and !lotrmemes@midwest.social but you don't need an account on that instance to interact with those.
  Anyway it is fantastic to have so many options available! In particular, while the worst excesses of HB are easily avoidable by those of us who are already aware, new users will not know, and many are turned away from the entire concept of the Fediverse to come here and see such, and then leave as a result rather than learn how to block them. i.e., HB having been "opt-out" rather than "opt-in" was hurting us, so I am glad to see that trend reversed. You can always find HB content - nobody has taken that away, though indeed you can no longer interact with it using a DO account, due to the limitations of the tools that we have been provided with.
  And this in turn makes the Fediverse friendly - again not so much for us who already knew about HB, but for new users who will not know, yet now have a greater chance of sticking around (rather than be intimidated out) in order to find out how great we are:-).
  I am excited to see what will come of this:-).
  
  I guess my question was more about "why we think a US-focused instance is needed", I wasn't even thinking that much about the HB defederation in this case

As someone who doesn't know too much about US politics, and haven't delved deep in the issue, it seems that the main issue is about "jury nullification for crimes that haven't happened yet", which LW considers "advocation to violence". Is that correct?
If yes, and you are looking for complete free speech, that can include things that can advocate violence (at least for some people), what would remain the difference between this and other instances like hexbear etc?
- Good question. I'm not an US law expert myself.
  @OpenStars@discuss.online , what do you think?
  
  Discuss.Online is nowhere close to a complete free speech instance, as I see it. It is about fostering nice, safe conversations about cute things like bunny rabbits.
  4chan is more where people are completely free to say whatever they want - and we know how that turns out.
  Generally I find that people discussing things entirely in good faith can do so almost anywhere and with anyone? But social media gets tricky bc it also invites people in who refuse to abide by those rules, and then we end up all having to play by the rules of the lowest common denominator.
  Actually Beehaw is an interesting place where they really do put in the effort to curate the precise experience that they wish. Yet there is no way they could keep up with tens of thousands of people all clamoring for attention, yet refusing to abide themselves by any rules.
  The practical reality of social media precludes such discussions as you seem to want to have. Someone is going to have to expend the effort to curate the stuff, or else it ends up being mostly uncurated. Lemmy.World has already stepped up to provide the rules by which they will offer to curate the stuff. If someone does not like that, they can spin up an instance and do better, or find an already existing one that is amenable.

44 comments