[freedomben]

In a world where big tech and governments are requiring user-facing things to do things (like age verification, etc) and be liable for what their users do with it, even the self-host becomes a problem unless you are your only user. There are plenty of people that are still doing it, but they're probably taking on liability they don't realize. For example if I stand up a self-hosted git forge and allow others to use it, and some user I don't know commits CSAM to their repo, to quote (paraphrased cause I don't remember exactly) Dijkstra from The Witcher: That's called being in the shit, and you're in the shit.

[taeric]

I mean, this is the case for a lot of things? Has always been the case.

If you host friends over for dinner at your house a lot, nobody will ever say you are subject to the same rules as a restaurant. You start letting other people host dinners at your house, and things could change. You start letting people solicit your place for paid dinners, similar outcome. Do it once, nobody will probably know or care. Continue to do it at scale, though, and I don't know why you would expect to not be subject to regulations.

[AnthonyMouse]

The problem is obviously that the government shouldn't be regulating private speech. They pass these rules by saying "look how big Facebook is, they need to be regulated" when the actual problem is that they need to be decentralized. But then the rules don't apply only to Facebook, and worse, are designed under the assumption of a centralized service so that they entrench the thing that should be eliminated.

[taeric]

But there is nothing obvious about this? For one, this is speech that can only be done using otherwise regulated means. You couldn't claim "free speech" and build a radio tower that transmits long distances, as an easy example. For that matter, you can't claim free speech to allow concerts at your house. You similarly could not claim free speech to rent or loan out rooms of your house for storage.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, if you want to take the effort to connect and verify the different parties that are going to communicate with your server, you are almost certainly going to remain free to do so.

Do I think there are probably some concerning ways those burdens can be placed on folks? Certainly. But we already require inspections and other similar activities for things that individuals can do at home without an inspection. See the food industry.

[AnthonyMouse]

> For one, this is speech that can only be done using otherwise regulated means.

This is the fraud every would-be censor perpetrates to establish their chokepoint. First, invent allegedly "neutral" rules that only large entities can comply with, causing only large entities to remain. Then lean on the large entities to censor whatever you want in exchange for political favors or lack of enforcement of other laws.

> You couldn't claim "free speech" and build a radio tower that transmits long distances, as an easy example.

Which is another great example of them doing the thing. The government couldn't spare a single frequency for unlicensed long-distance directional radio communications?

Moreover, the excuse for censoring the airwaves is that there is finite capacity in a broadcast medium, so how is that supposed to apply to a unicast service whose transfer capacity can be increased without bound by running more fiber?

> For that matter, you can't claim free speech to allow concerts at your house.

So if the government wants to declare that you meeting with two other people for the purpose of conveying information to them is a "concert" and prohibit it from any place that isn't a "concert hall" (which is prohibitively expensive for you to own), that seems fine to you?

> As has been pointed out elsewhere, if you want to take the effort to connect and verify the different parties that are going to communicate with your server, you are almost certainly going to remain free to do so.

All you have to do is the thing which is morally and economically unsound.

> But we already require inspections and other similar activities for things that individuals can do at home without an inspection.

Except that now you want to do it even when they are doing it at home.

[taeric]

Apologies, but this just reads as incoherent wish casting. Good luck.

[AnthonyMouse]

People have this tendency to want to do reasoning by analogy, but then if you look at the things they're analogizing to, a) they're often distinguishable in significant ways and b) they even more often don't actually address the criticism, they're just an example of the bad thing we should be trying to prevent already happening somewhere.

What am I supposed to do other than point that out?