There are quite a few instances out there run with different focuses: https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon#serverscommunities

Unless you specifically pay for the rights transfer (and it’s not cheap), the photographer owns the copyright.

https://www.rocketlawyer.com/business-and-contracts/intellectual-property/copyrights/legal-guide/wedding-photos-does-your-photographer-legally-own-them

Under federal law, if there is no agreement to the contrary, your wedding photographer, or any photographer for that matter, owns the pictures that they take. This means that they have the sole right to copy and distribute the photos, including potentially the right to sell the photos, to publish the photos in any form, and to reproduce the photos either electronically or in a printed hardcopy version. And even more importantly, copyrighted material cannot be reproduced or copied without permission from the photographer.

…

Generally, photographers do not like to offer their services to clients through a Work for Hire Agreement. This may be partly related to their desire to require clients to purchase prints and books directly from them. Many photographers, however, do not want to completely relinquish their rights because they may be trying to build or protect their reputation.

Granted, this a US take and may vary by country…

https://www.thecoffeetablebook.com.au/what-do-a-bride-and-groom-need-to-know-about-copyright-when-booking-a-wedding-photographer/

If you are a couple getting married in Australia, the copyright law automatically assigns copyright to you and not the photographer. However, most professional photographers will have their clients sign a contract that reassigns the copyright to the photographer. Now let’s be very clear, this is not the photographer being shady or deceptive in anyway. It’s simply to protect their work, the photographs in this case, that they created.

https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-06-17_-_Update_from_Lemmy_after_the_Reddit_blackout

For the past three years dessalines and I have been funded to work on Lemmy full-time by generous support from the NLnet foundation. These donations are paid out when we implement certain new features. But now we are busy answering questions, reviewing pull requests and urgently fixing problems. That means we are unable to work on the milestones agreed with NLnet, and won’t receive payments from them. We are increasingly reliant on user donations to pay our bills. These donations currently add up to 1500 Euros per month, which is not even enough to pay minimum wage for the two of us. Hopefully more users can consider donating, so that we can put our full attention to making Lemmy better for everyone, and possibly add more developers to our worker co-op in the future.

https://lemmy.ml/comment/479066 (posted June 8th)

When our open source grant from NLNet runs out at the end of this year, we will have to switch to full community funding, probably via yearly funding drives. Currently we only have two full-time devs, @[email protected] and I, but could potentially add more to our little worker coop as we grow.

Reddit didn’t try make it. It’s a free service from services such as Cloudflare and Google (Reddit uses the google one).

Child Sexual Abuse Material

The Cloudflare tool https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/ and blog post https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-csam-scanning-tool/

The tool that Reddit and several others use from Google: https://protectingchildren.google

NCMEC is very different than reporting to your local PD office.

I would also suggest a read of https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer

Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)

Service providers are required to report any CSAM on their servers to the CyberTipline operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a private, nonprofit organization established by the U.S. Congress, and can be criminally prosecuted for knowingly facilitating its distribution. NCMEC shares those reports with law enforcement. However, you are not required to affirmatively monitor your instance for CSAM.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

(a) Duty To Report.—
(1) In general.—
(A) Duty.—In order to reduce the proliferation of online child sexual exploitation and to prevent the online sexual exploitation of children, a provider—
(i) shall, as soon as reasonably possible after obtaining actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2)(A), take the actions described in subparagraph (B); and
(ii) may, after obtaining actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2)(B), take the actions described in subparagraph (B).
(B) Actions described.—The actions described in this subparagraph are—
(i) providing to the CyberTipline of NCMEC, or any successor to the CyberTipline operated by NCMEC, the mailing address, telephone number, facsimile number, electronic mailing address of, and individual point of contact for, such provider; and
(ii) making a report of such facts or circumstances to the CyberTipline, or any successor to the CyberTipline operated by NCMEC.

…

(e) Failure To Report.—A provider that knowingly and willfully fails to make a report required under subsection (a)(1) shall be fined—
(1) in the case of an initial knowing and willful failure to make a report, not more than $150,000; and
(2) in the case of any second or subsequent knowing and willful failure to make a report, not more than $300,000.

Check with a lawyer if blocking an upload that your server has access to because of suspected CSAM constitutes “actual knowledge or any facts or circumstances”.

2- positive supply-chain validation. Not important for the majority of people, but for those who require a little more security, they can be a little more sure that their device isn’t compromised from illegitimate parts. I imagine this to be a fringe benefit for executives and the like

Anecdotally, many years ago I had a Mac laptop that was fairly new but I ran it as what amounted to a portable desktop. It was plugged in 99% of the time. A few months after I got it I had an issue with one of the fans. Instead of taking it to the Apple Store that was 90 miles away (I was living and working in a small town then), I took it to the local computer repair… and they fixed it it.

Afterwards, while I didn’t use batteries much, it seemed off.

Another two years and I had moved to a larger city and took my laptop into the local Apple Store for them to replace a fan that was not operating strongly enough. The repair tech commented that I had a sub par third party and while it should be replaced as its battery health was very low, it wouldn’t be covered under warranty because it clearly wasn’t an OEM Apple part.

I strongly suspect that the repair shop had swapped my new battery out for an old one and hoped I wouldn’t notice because I didn’t use it in that capacity. I can’t prove anything and the shop had gone out of business.

This is anecdotal and batteries for laptops don’t get pairing the same way phones do… but this sort of thing happens.

It’s not outputting ionizing radiation… nor is it outputting radio near the limits that are causing it to get removed from the market except under laboratory conditions where its being forced to operate at maximum power that the transmitter is allowed to (by the software) for extended times… which could get fixed by software… and is 10x under the limits that would theoretically be a problem under the levels that it was observed at… which is being tested at a much closer distance (inverse square getting in there) compared to other accredited laboratories in the EU (EU is up to 25mm, FCC is 15mm, France is doing 0-5mm) without changing the absorption levels to compensate ( https://www.anses.fr/en/content/exposure-mobile-telephones-carried-close-body )

And France has been pushing a “beware of excessive cell phone use” for a long time. https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/01/france-beware-excessive-cell-phone-usedespite-lack-of-data/

I was just citing the sources in France that was showing that this was taken a bit to the extreme. When you consider all the rest of it, it feels rather silly and Apple is likely doing a “whatever” and pulling a 3 year old phone from the French market.

You don’t need iodine, this isn’t going to give you radiation sickness, but it is a little surprising.

From a WaPo article:

France’s digital minister said the iPhone 12’s radiation levels are still much lower than those that scientific studies say could harm users, and that a software update could solve the compliance issue. The ANFR itself acknowledges that its tests don’t reflect typical phone use.

Which links to:

https://twitter.com/jnbarrot/status/1701848091689693576 (translated)

The @anfr found that the iPhone 12 was emitting a level of waves slightly higher than the authorized threshold.
This level is more than 10 times lower than the level at which there could be a health risk.
But the rule is the rule: Apple must comply.

https://twitter.com/jnbarrot/status/1701852521247965686 (translated)

The wave levels that smartphones emit can vary during a software update. It is undoubtedly because of an update after its release that the iPhone 12 exceeded the authorized threshold. And it’s a simple update that will bring it back into compliance.

https://www.anfr.fr/maitriser/equipements-radioelectriques/le-debit-dabsorption-specifique-das/das-reel-/-das-mesure-maximal (translated)

The classic conditions of use: the real DAS

Laboratory measurements do not reflect what happens during the usual use of the device. Indeed:

• for voice communication, the phone statistically emits only about 50% of the time, the phone does not emit when listening; in addition, the average duration of a communication is less than 3 minutes;
• for data-oriented use (internet or video), the durations of use are certainly longer; but the phone, which generally receives more information (videos, emails…) than it sends, rarely emits more than 10% of the time during the session;
• the value of the DAS displayed in the points of sale corresponds to a precise frequency (e.g. 800 MHz) and technology (e.g. 4G) for which the maximum has been detected; but, in reality, the phone does not work permanently under these conditions: it often changes frequency or technology;
• Finally, for all uses, the phone rarely emits at its maximum power, due to constant interactions with the network to best adapt to its conditions.

The real SAR therefore does not often coincide with the maximum SAR.

As the DAS is proportional to the power emitted by the telephone, it is possible to evaluate the actual DAS by measuring the power put into play by the terminal. This can be evaluated thanks to professional software installed on consumer phones

Another thought is the two parts of locking it down.

How much local configuration would it take to make it so that Lemmy doesn’t show any posts to someone not logged in (since you know that if its on the web even under a really funky hard to type name… someone will find it)? Do you want your vacation planning available to everyone (“I won’t be home from September 15th through the 23rd, so Cousin Dave is going to stop by each day to walk the dog…”)

The other part is specifically against fediverse (which would be the reason for Lemmy rather than some other system) for such a private community. It again gets hard to lock down… not so much a “what gets out” but also a “what gets in”. … oh, Aunt Jane and Uncle John have subscribed to swingers that’s hosted on a nswf instance and that’s not about playground equipment. Meanwhile Aunt Dorthy wants you to do something to prevent Cousin Charlie from seeing all that “stuff” in /all before Carlie accidentally calls him Uncle Long John at a family gathering. … and now you’re going through pics and finding pictures of your aunt and uncle that you really didn’t want to see (and you’re going to be going vegan before you want to think about that turkey baster next Thanksgiving).

And while these are solvable problems… it’s a question of do you want to solve them?

Simpler solutions will work better that you expand into other things as the need arises.

I’m going from:

I saw this post on another instance and tried to reply this exact message but got an error saying I couldn’t.

And suspect they were doing something like browsing Lemmy.ml / all while not logged in and saw it but couldn’t interact with it until they came back to lemmy.world where it was easy to find and interact with.

There is some friction of finding posts from federated content on your own instance, but you will note that I am posting from (and see this on) programming.dev rather than lemmy.world (where this community is hosted).

You need to be logged into your instance, search for the post on your instance, browse it via search, and then you can interact with it there. You don’t need to create an account on the other instance to interact with it.

And yes, that list of steps mentioned above is a lot of friction.

Links are also slightly awkward needing the full path in order to navigate to it on the instance you are signed into… and the editor appears to do it wrong when you let it. The link [email protected] should let you navigate there, join, comment and vote on a community hosted on another instance.

Lemmy Star Trek server

That would be https://startrek.website

• [email protected] – Memes
• [email protected] – General trek discussion
• [email protected] – Trek adjacent discussion
• [email protected] – In-depth trek discussion
• [email protected] – Startrek Online - the game.

Private slack channels work, but the reduced access to archives now makes that less useful. Spinning up a Zulip instance for family and then using that is quite tempting.

For most non-tech type people, the active asynchronous chat is an easier thing to work with than threaded discussions. And sharing images tends to be something more ephemeral / point in time. You could have a thread in zulip for “Smith Family vacation photos - summer 2023” and then follow that… but the "do you really want to be digging through those a year or two later? They’re still there, but how do you want them?

The other part is the… reduced moderation. Having worked with Stack Overflow Teams, the college intern thinking it’s funny to down vote everyone’s posts… well, that’s not funny. Cousin Charlie doing the same on a family Lemmy can create much more drama than you’d want to administer… and Aunt Jane thinks that it’s just boys being boys and doesn’t see anything wrong with it. Family drama is the worst drama.

This is why the least feature rich system that you need would work best. It’s just chat. No votes, no reporting and minimal administration and moderation because you really don’t want to deal with that.

It was from a simpler time ( reddit post / archived blog post) … “reddit is vast. Unfathomably, mindbogglingly vast. There were over 71 million unique visitors last month. Yesterday, there were 5,487 active subreddits.”

On old reddit, if you had the left sidebar enabled, they showed up there. I’ve got quite a few private ones that I set up there that group my interests. https://old.reddit.com/r/multihub/

On new reddit, with the left sidebar showing, there’s “custom feeds” where you can do similar things, however its discoverability is much reduced. It’s only really visible if you favorite it so it shows up near the top of some lists / drop downs. If you still have a reddit account, and create a custom feed, you can create one, adds subs to it, make it public.

However, the difficulty with this is two part… discoverability (again) and the single ownership. The French subreddit that is a directory of other French subs is shared ownership. You’ll note with the multireddit its one person who maintains it… and that leads to abandonment.

A way to solve that (on reddit… yea, I know, talking about the other place here) is to have the shared ownership of the directory subreddit then drive scripts that update a bot account that publishes the public multireddit. You can see similar efforts with shared ownership and scripts https://hub.docker.com/u/redditopenttd (it doesn’t update a multi, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t).

Similar problems would need to be solved on Lemmy (including discovery and ownership) for the “how would you do an aggregation of multiple /c/ across multiple instances into one “bundle” and how / who maintains or curates it?”

Without the “Local” view, Lemmy would just feel like another Reddit clone to me, where French communities would just be flooded by English-speaking communities. On Reddit, the French community actually had to create a subreddit dedicated to listing all French subreddits, just because the discoverability of non-English-speaking subreddits is just awful by default on Reddit.

That’s where multiredits (which are poorly advertised) come in (and are a wish list item here for aggregating multiple communities).

For example https://www.reddit.com/user/chiarastellata/m/french/ (notice the ‘m’ in there rather than ‘r’ or ‘u’) is a combination of several different French speaking subreddits that are aggregated into one feed.

Do you need the persistence? threading? federation? Or would spinning up an instance of Zulip ( https://zulip.com ) with only your family as provisioned accounts on it work better?

Most recently lemmyloves.art. Exploding heads shut down. waveform.social was DDOS’ed and decided to shut down. And then there’s the vlemmy.net disappearance. I’m sure there are many others.

If the total user count is based off the users on the instances, instances shutting down would reduce the total number of users.

On https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy one of the charts is total instances. It recorded 1312 instances in July and 1249 in August.

It seems like a lot of communities dropped off a cliff about a week ago.

Having to deal with CSAM isn’t something that most volunteers want to do or deal with the consequences of hosting such content - even accidentally.