• cosmic_slate@dmv.social
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    1 year ago

    I nominate this thread for “sketchiest question on Lemmy”.

    In all seriousness, at the end of the day, the legal side of this hasn’t been thoroughly tested. I would personally err on the side of caution and abide by the stricter of the laws between your country and your instance’s country. If either prohibit criticism of government, you may run into issues depending on the combination of countries. It’s safe to assume instance owners don’t have a gigantic legal fund either, so they may be more easily forced to give up access logs which could be used to trace you.

    There’s also the forever unsaid “don’t be a dick” clause. If a country prohibits some form of speech, don’t intentionally try to get instance owners in that country in trouble.

    • treadful@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      In all seriousness, at the end of the day, the legal side of this hasn’t been thoroughly tested.

      Sure it has. There’s nothing overly novel going on here with Lemmy or ActivityPub. There are servers that host instances which host content. If they exist within the jurisdiction of country N, then said laws and government have some level of influence on it. Unless it’s hosted in like Sealand or some lawless place with terrible Internet connection, which is super unlikely.

      If your instance is hosted in the US, the federal government can still get subpoena access under the PATRIOT ACT and put the owner under gag and we’d never know.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If your instance is hosted in the US, the federal government can still get subpoena access under the PATRIOT ACT and put the owner under gag and we’d never know.

        Which is why all instance owners need to implement some form of digital canary.