How will Lemmy handle illegal content like drug dealing, child porn, snuff movies etc? On Reddit, the corporation is accountable so they will make an effort to ensure non of this exists on their platform. And they would face legal troubles if they failed to act.
But as Lemmy is decentralised this isn’t really possible. Sure the main instances can defederate from bad instances, but those instances could still operate and be accessible on the web. Especially if they’re hosted in countries outside of the western sphere of influence. Multiple bad instances could federate and duplicate the illegal content pretty easily, making it difficult for the authorities to keep it shut down. Has this been thought about already?
Illegal content… well it depends. Illegal informations and piracy tricks? Already happening. But beyond that… illegal medias need to be stored and at large somewhere. It’s still better to do illegal shit on WhatsApp or Telegram (as it still happens) because messages, unlike here, are end to end private. I don’t think this is so novel, it isn’t in fact, that authorities or admins don’t know what to do. Also illegal is too generic. Laws vary from country to country as well. I don’t see Lemmy becoming any sort of terrorist hub anytime soon.
What’s illegal information?
ask the warthunder forums, lol
spoiler
they repeatedly leaked classified military documentation to win arguments
Stolen data. Credit cards, phone numbers, etc. Illegal procedures (e.g. h0w to buiId a b#mb). Stolen accounts and passwords.