Looking to maybe self host my own instance, I’m still learning about the fediverse. If a different instance that I federate with hosts something illegal are there risks to me? Is anything from other instances hosted on my server like a copy of it? Or would I only end up hosting things my users post? I’m paranoid and sorry if this is a silly question.
Text is copied to your instance’s database, but any images are hosted on the other instances and simply linked to. Worst case scenario, you get told to delete something that’s illegal in the country in which you host the instance, you comply, and everything’s peachy.
Edit: That being said, I’m currently hosting an instance for myself and a few friends, and it’s been smooth-sailing. Just make sure to require email verification or admin approval for new sign-ups (or disable them entirely) if you don’t want to be overrun with bots.
Yes I’d only be allowing people I know personally to create accounts. No other registration would be allowed. The last thing I’d want to be is another one of those bot filled instances that have been popping up.
That isn’t entirely true. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve definitely seen image posts made to remote communities that are hosted on my instance.
I’ve seen image posts I make on other instances, but the image is hosted on my own instance and just linked to the other instance.
That may explain it… point being, content for remote communities isn’t entirely “remote”. I’d like to understand what goes where a lot better. I’ve not found it explained anywhere, and I’m not a coder so can’t just “read the code yourself”.
I’m not familiar with lemmy, but I did pick up on the lotide code a bit recently (a similar project)
As I understand it, the text or html of the post end up in a sort of mailbox, then your server goes out to pick up the latest posts from there. It gets brought over to your instance, and then it lives there. Whatever happens, the posts your server collected are on your server, that’s how they’re displayed.
Then when you go to write a post, it’s stored locally and if it’s on a local community then it’s stored there and a copy is sent to the mailbox for others, and if it’s a remote community your server will reach out to the other server and drop the post there.
My lotide instance has some older posts from servers that stopped existing a long time ago because although it can’t get in touch with the remote community, the posts it did receive are still there.
Yeah post content I understand. Linked or posted images though are not consistently handled, so I’m not sure what circumstances lead to my instance pulling the image from a remote community.
I don’t think lemmy typically does. I’m often on networks that block a lot of the Internet, and even thumbnails on posts from other instances or their community images get blocked when I can’t communicate with them.
Right now, your profile pic for example is coming from aussie.zone, and the community pic is coming from lemmy.world, but I’m on fbxl lemmy a completely different instance from either of them.
Yeah profile pics are fine. I’m specifically talking about image posts. Next time I spot one I’ll see if the post came from a user on my instance. If not, I have no idea why the post image would be on my instance.
If you right click on the image, then click inspect, then you can see the url for the image. Often it’s coming from somewhere else.
Incidentally, my soapbox instance is different then lemmy – it acts as a proxy, so it soaks up all the images and then hosts them from my one server.