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.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 13 hours 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 12 hours 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 6 hours 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 5 hours ago (1 children)

So how does UK law handle federation?

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

No clue. Online Safety Act is a bin fire

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours 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 15 hours ago (2 children)

Has BlueSky implemented federation yet?

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 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 12 hours ago

Yeah, if.

[–] iesha_256@lemmy.ml 2 points 12 hours ago

wdym they not have federation yet, there are independent servers for every service (e.g. pds, relay, appview, moderation) except for PLC

[–] iesha_256@lemmy.ml 0 points 12 hours ago

yes