This notice is also being sent by email to all users with a verified email on Pawb Social services. (Completed as of 02/13/2025)
UPDATE (02/13/2025)
ℹ️ If you received the “Important - Pawb.Social is re-structuring as an LLC!” email from us about an account you don’t recognize, or no longer wish to have, on our services and would like the account deleted:
Please email network@pawb.social from the SAME email address, and we’ll be able to lookup your accounts and remove them.
If your account has any content, we will issue a backup to the email on file and wait 7 days before deleting the account, unless you ask us to delete it immediately after we inform you that content exists.
Begin Original Post
As of Friday, February 14th, we will be transitioning the management and ownership of our instances to PawbSocial LLC, a new limited liability company (LLC) registered in the State of Colorado.
This change is primarily driven by the desire to ensure legal protection and mitigate liability concerns in light of the current political climate, but has been a task we would have eventually needed to face as Pawb Social grows.
What does this mean?
There will be no changes to the team running any of our instances, and PawbSocial LLC will continue to be owned and operated by Crashdoom.
Donations will now be made to PawbSocial LLC, though there should be no changes necessary to existing donations. PayPal donations via Ko-fi going forward (one-time or recurring) will show PawbSocial LLC instead of “Pawb.Social”.
Existing assets and hardware bought for Pawb.Social using donations will be transferred to PawbSocial LLC’s ownership.
Our contact information remains the same: You can contact the Network Admin team by email at network@pawb.social.
We felt it important to inform all of our users of this change despite there being no change in leadership or effective ownership as a show of good faith and transparency.
We appreciate your understanding and continued support as we take these steps to ensure the long-term stability and security of our community.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
Crashdoom
Owner / Network Admin, PawbSocial LLC
You must log in or register to comment.
Got anxious for a sec there reading the headline, but I’m glad you’re taking steps to ensure legal safety. I am not versed in how LLCs work at all, but I appreciate the transparency and continued fervor to hosting these services for us. Thank you as always, for being a part of this movement and hosting free software for so many others to enjoy.
Yeah, I have to admit, I spent a while trying to workshop how to make it sound less ominous and I’m really sorry I failed in that; Definitely something for me to work on in the future, and I apologize for it coming across rather legal and scary.
Try not to beat yourself up, it sounds like you gave it earnest thought and didn’t want to give any wrong impressions. For what it’s worth the post body was fine, the header just doesn’t give specifics of the ‘org change’, so it gave me that ominous feel. I know you can’t shove a whole post in a header, but I think there are avenues to add some cushion. Some ideas I have if you’re sending more posts en masse:
More specific
“We’re becoming an LLC for legal protections”
“To keep our servers legally safer, we’re becoming an LLC”
More vague
“Minor changes to keep our servers going in uncertain times”
“Recent server updates (transparency report)”
@crashdoom surprised you didn’t do it sooner tbh, a friend of mine opened up a llc for this very reason for his online projects
Yeah, it’s been on my plate for a while, and honestly I really should have
Nice! Good choice for the state!
Good plan, do what you have to do to legally protect yourself. And as always thank you for all the hard work you put into everything ❤️
@crashdoom Really good idea! Glad to see you incorporated in CO, too.
So out of interest, why would you need that layer of legal protection? Is it related to talk of the US banning porn?
Yes, several US states along with other nations have been considering porn ban laws, along with the rather blatant anti-LGBTQ stance of the currently elected US party.
Do you reckon they’d actually act on it? I guess it’s better to have the protection just in case.
(That said there have been some insanely stupid decisions made recently by the US president and his sycophants)
Honestly, like you said, I genuinely have no idea what the US will do; Currently things are being so shaken up that anything is plausible right now.
For outside the US, I don’t really know what reach other countries have. The UK’s Online Safety Act is the current one I’m watching for since that would require “highly effective age assurance” which… if the folks writing the law had been online like, ever, they’ll have realized is an utterly stupid statement unless they plan to enforce integrating ID Verification via a Credit Agency (Experian, Equifax) which does personal question-based verification (which imo is a huge breach of user privacy since while WE might not know who you are still, the credit agency does and where you signed up).
I’m in the UK and that bill has caused me so much stress and anxiety. ;_;
Hijacking! Is pixelfed instance still on the works, or has it been shelved?
In the works! We’re planning to have some info very soon, though we’re still building out an improvement for the NAS to allow us to expand the storage capacity for long term, high size file storage specifically for Pixelfed!
To add to this a bit: I am planning on using AutoTier from 45Drives to get tiered storage for pixelfed.
New stuff on high endurance SSDs, and old pics end up on spinning rust. This would end up being ~10TB of SSD and ~50TB of HDD
Only blocker is getting the time to really test it and make sure everyone’s data doesn’t get blackholed. Our home situation has been really challenging for the last ~6 months due to personal reasons.
@crashdoom What was the structure before?
Previously, we were just operating under myself as a sole proprietor. I hadn’t formalized things as I hadn’t expected the big growth, but we’re big enough to justify it to ensure the long-term security of all of our instances, as well as my own personal protection against the changing political climate.
