Can no longer access my old instance (lemmings.world) because I'm from the UK. I made several communities there. Is there any way I can mod them again or do I move them to this instance?
Use a VPN. Even if the current environment of aggressive puritan censorship weren’t happening, everyone should use one.
Here are two of the best.
Mullvad is the best.
+1 for Mullvad.
Just mentioning that Mozilla VPN uses Mullvad, and with their Firefox extension you can exclude individual websites from VPN protection or set preferred server locations for specific sites. So you can stay on a UK server for UK banking sites but switch to a different country server for a social site.
Only works on Windows for now. But maybe useful given this situation.
Will need an alternative if you need to port forward, but for general use you can't fault them
windscribe $1/month.
just get a vpn: https://mullvad.net/
https://www.torproject.org/download/
Probably a good idea for things other than Lemmy, too, the way that things are going.
thx!
What happened? Is it the instances fault or UK's?
UK is implementing law for age verification on nsfw content, that's the jist of it.
Some services are choosing to simply not serve the UK rather than deal with the faff and/or the privacy concerns. lemmy.zip where I am from is one of them.
Blame lies squarely with the UK gov & Online Safety Act. It's a shit law made to pander to the 'think of the children' types that are incapable of parenting, also coming with the bonus of grift and doxxing concerns by companies that move in to provide the service.
I don't blame any site operator that chooses to simply not play. VPN goes on, normal service resumes.
“It's a shit law made to pander to the 'think of the children' types that are incapable of parenting”
This.
It's also several hundred pages long. Fair few web forums are closing because of it if they are UK hosted too.
It would be interesting to get a legal opinion on what about it actually impacts lemmy instances tbh. Obviously one option is to go "lol fuck off" if the UK complain and you are not in the UK.
The EU is also adopting similar regulations.
The UK enacted age verification, the instance said fuck that. So, more or less, the UK's fault.
UK, this is hitting basically all websites. Any site hosting adult content has to verify user ages for anyone in the UK, and instead of doing that many smaller sites are just geoblocking the UK. Easy to get around with a VPN, still absurd it’s happening.
I don't think they should geoblock UK instances, though. As the instances are responsible for their users.
There is a lot more to it than just age verification for porn too. I do wonder what this will look like after several months and if they will push it or if the law just gets ignored in the end.
Theoretically if you would host your own Lemmy/PieFed server then you would be able to access everything (as long as you host it outside of the UK I guess). And then you could keep being moderator on those communities with your new account on your own instance.
That only helps you out though, if the communities were UK specific ones and other people from the UK meet to participate then there is no other way than moving them to a UK friendly instance.
Tunnelbear has a free 2GB a month one - not enough for a lot of use probably, but an easy to test if a paid VPN will do what you need.
Windscribe also has 2Gb free or 10Gb free per month if you provide and email and let them spam you.
There are some moderation actions you can do from a different instance, I'm not sure which ones don't work or if they've all been fixed
You should create an account on a different instance and appoint yourself as moderator, at least for times when you don't want to get on VPN, like using an app on your phone
Done, thanks!!