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.
If you’re in the US, The Communications Decency Act Section 230 has a couple powers.
It removes liability to service providers for user generated content when active moderation is practiced, and
It removes liability to service providers for any moderation actions taken to to moderate to reasonable community standards.
Prior to CDA230, the jurisprudence centered around 2 different cases. In one, an actively moderated system had illegal content and didn’t remove it in time, and in another case, a non-actively moderated system had illegal content and didn’t remove it in time. At that time, the actively moderated system was held to be liable for the illegal content, whereas the non-actively moderated system was held not to be liable for not removing the illegal content.
One caveat to that would be the DMCA, where liability protection as a service provider I think is contingent on there being a DMCA process available so infringing content can be removed.
I don’t know enough about how that all works with the fediverse, however.
The fediverse is still a relatively small thing, even with all the popularity it’s been getting.
So dmcas are yet to happen