What are the risks associated with this? With image uploading capabilities and the like I’m thinking there might be an issue with people posting highly illegal content. I used to run some smaller forums 15 years ago and that went fine, but it feels like the risks are higher today… I’m both thinking about one’s own personal mental health in needing to moderate such content, and also whether it’ll be a legal liability to run an instance if people post illegal content.
This is why I decided not to host an instance in the end. Where I live, the laws are such that the hoster is responsible for the content hosted on their servers So if some shitbag posts CP that gets synced to my server and the authorities somehow find out, it would seriously fuck up my life.
Not only do people avoid creating instances for this reason, but several previously existing instances shut down as a result, like DMV.social.