The creator of Newgrounds has considered adding ActivityPub support to join the fediverse but is worried it would make their hosting fees untenable by “serving files to millions of people on third party apps“. Can anyone with more knowledge on how this works help them?
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1537550/3#bbspost27933331_post_text
Having Newgrounds on the Fediverse would be incredible. Newgrounds has a huge art community, many features not available on any platform and has been around the longest (1999)
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Probably arrange it such that not one person/server knows what the stored bytes are. There can be a server where the bytes/blocks get reconstructed where one can check for the bad stuff.
I’m not sure if that makes it better. “I’m sorry officer, I have set up this elaborate cryptographic system to make sure I can’t see the files I host on my website” probably doesn’t violate any laws, but you’d better learn the phone number of a lawyer before you set it up.
Standard encrypted-at-rest data is probably a better solution. You probably don’t want to go look for illegal content until you’ve read up on the laws of the country you’re hosting in and your own so you know what to do, and what is or isn’t illegal.
That doesn’t solve the cost problem. Now all the traffic is going through that intermediate server, and someone has to pay for that.
The had moved on to legal liability for csam, not hosting costs
Still, hosting costs were the reason for discussing legal liability. Such a server also increases centralization which isn’t ideal.