Hello everyone,

Following the recent discussions on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !lemmyworld@lemmy.world , it seems that people realize that Lemmy.world is subject to European laws, and not the US ones.

This is another event where US citizens seem to be looking for an instance that would adhere to their “legal culture”, the previous one being the US elections, where the topic was discussed everywhere, before getting channeled into !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world

I don’t know anything about Dutch or Finnish laws, but I’ve seen many recent articles about people arrested in Germany for their social media posts that were considered hateful or violent (which is frankly a culture shock to me as an American), so I can see why some of the posts on Lemmy in the past week would be concerning.

https://lemmy.world/comment/13870047

So, the question is: could Discuss.online become that instance? And host US-focused communities like “AskUSA”, “USPolitics”, “USFinance”, this kind of things?

I am mostly asking because there’s no secret that the DO admins aren’t the biggest Lemmy fans, so would you guys be okay if your instance would get promoted, potentially causing an influx of users and communities, some requiring moderation?

  • jgrim of Sublinks@discuss.onlineM
    3·
    17 hours ago

    I’ve been sick with the stomach flu for several days and haven’t had a chance to catch up.

    I’m not against being a home for any community that follows our rules. I don’t feel a need to be officially considered the instance of the USA. All are welcome.

    Edit: I should add that other languages make it difficult for me to moderate. I’m not against foreign languages on Discuss.Online; however, I do have concerns for moderation. I speak English and know some conversational French. My wife is fluent in French. That’s just a little fyi.

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      2·
      14 hours ago

      Thank you so much for yourself and lazyguru (not tagging since he indicated a desire not to be involved in the discussion anymore) offering to clarify your vision on your instance. It definitely makes it easier for us all:-).

      And I hope you feel better soon!

    • Blaze (he/him)English
      1·
      17 hours ago

      Hello,

      Hope you are now feeling better!

      Thank you for your comment. As I pointed out in another comment DO’s current only rules are the Lemmy Code of Conduct, which has been written by the Lemmy devs, and as you may know, Lemmy.ml isn’t really hate speech free.

      As you are very well aware, the legal side of DO is limited to https://discuss.online/legal

      discuss.online is operated by Jason Grim, LLC., and is hosted on servers operated in United States of America. All content on this server is expected to be legal in all of these jurisdictions

      As we know, the legal framework of the USA allows free speech.

      If we compare with lemmy.zip, for instance (https://legal.lemmy.zip/docs/terms_of_service/#our-governing-laws)

      7.0: The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and the European Union.

      European laws are much stronger regarding hate speech, as several people have commented on the LW announce.

      I am not advocating for DO to become a free speech instance.

      I am suggesting to add rules, be it at the community or instance level, to prevent comments like the one I gave

      So if people say “CEOs of private healthcare companies who cause the deaths of thousands of citizens for profit should face the same fate as the United Healthcare CEO”, is it acceptable or no? Real question, I don’t think it’s that clear from the rules.

      I guess that does not solve the question of people wanting a place where they can talk about jury nullification of future crimes, but that’s something they can solve on their own.