this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023

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How easily can Lemmy be censored? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Owell1984@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Being an old grandpa not that adept at tech, I don't know how Lemmy works. I mean, I know it's decentralized and it's supposed to be better than reddit, but still, how vulnerable is this platform from censors looking to block anything in here?

Are we invincible like those thepiratebay.org instances which jump up the more you try to censor them or are we basically like reddit. In other words, can I reliably access lemmy in China?

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[–] UnanimousStargazer@feddit.nl 15 points 1 year ago

A close cousin of Lemmy is Mastodon. If you consider Lemmy a federated version of Reddit, then Mastodon is a federated version of Twitter.

The largest Mastodon server is probably Truth Social, on which former president Trump posts his messages after being banned from Twitter.

Truth Social uses the same protocol as Mastodon of Lemmy: ActivityPub. The difference: the Truth Social administrators blocked the Truth Social server from sending out messages to or receiving messages from other servers. So it's a private Mastodon.

Bottom line: if you run your own Lemmy server you can block whatever server you want or none at all. And others can block your server if they want. If you create ab account at somebody else's Lemmy server, the administrator can decide to block other Lemmy servers.

If you use a Mastodon account, it's very easy to migrate to another server including your followers. Lemmy accounts do not appear to offer that functionality (yet?), but I expect a migration tool will be created in the future. So if an administrator decides to block another Lemmy server, but you don't like that, you might easily move to another server. As of yet, you can't however and need to create an account on another Lemmy server.

[–] trachemys@iusearchlinux.fyi 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

lemmygrad.ml might actually be China. But each instance gives a list of the instances it federates with, so it should be easy for China to block them all. Lemmy has no features specifically for evading state censorship.

[–] boredtortoise@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Some governmental agency/agencies & psyops definitely at play there. And not only there.

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

do you think lemmy would be able to evade state censorship? If we wanted to that is. I really like those piratebay instances, trying to censor them is really difficult, even for the state (They can but it's difficult to censor each and everyone one of them)

[–] DrJenkem@lemmy.blugatch.tube 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

can I reliably access lemmy in China?

Not really, you would only be able to access instances that China hasn't blocked.

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are you sure? There are multiple sites where you can check if a site is blocked in china. I've put a few lemmy instances in the first 3 sites i found and they all claim they're accessible.

[–] DrJenkem@lemmy.blugatch.tube 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah I guess my point is that China could block Lemmy instances.

[–] NotSteve_ 2 points 1 year ago

I think at this point Lemmy is just kind of flying under the radar there. If Lemmy gets huge like reddit, I'm sure they'll start blocking instances (or Lemmy as a whole)

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many instances are there? I can if I need to create my own instance right? So, it's just like pirate bay I suppose, you close one instance another will take it's place or am I mistaken?

[–] DrJenkem@lemmy.blugatch.tube 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah true. It would require some additional work if you wanted to federate with blocked instances though. Same goes for if you wanted to migrate the federated data in the event the instance gets blocked.

[–] fox@vlemmy.net 7 points 1 year ago

there is a page about this on the lemmy docs: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/05-censorship-resistance.html

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think lemmy is made to circumvent censorships. There are other platforms for that. This is okay because sometimes this and being easy to use contradict each other.

However. I think it's doing a decent job. But admins of the individual instances will probably censor things that are against the law, because they are liable for that.

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

pretty nice answer. You are right, many times that's pretty contradictory.

[–] iso@lemmy.com.tr 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To block a specific content from an instance, they have to block all instances because your instance is going to get that content from other instance instead of you. You are not even going to connect to that instance.

But if they want to completely block the federation, they can.

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