• PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    515·
    2 days ago

    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 boardgames@feddit.de. 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.

    You’re literally just describing submitting content by proxy. Like, it cannot get any simpler. The only way this would not be submitting content by proxy would be if the home server you were submitting to had no connection to .world whatsoever, and the transfer of content to .world was done without the posting user’s knowledge.

    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?

    The moment they submitted content to a comm whose instance is Lemmy.world. “It went through their home instance first” is literally arguing that submitting content by proxy excuses one from ToS, which…

    Fuck man, really, consult a lawyer. Or articles on Mastodon legal issues for instance hosts.

    • Demigodrick@lemmy.zip
      153·
      2 days ago

      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.