Question About Rules and Security

[FrodoSwaggins]

1) What are the rules? Obviously any content that could contribute to the harm of a minor is out. But how about realistic step by step guides to removing the contents of a casino vault? How about talk about ghost guns? Where's the limit?

2) I have no confidence that what's posted here is private, but what are you logging? How is it secured? How visible is all this to search engines and law enforcement?

[gorzek]

1) guides to committing crimes are not allowed. and no hate speech or endorsement of fascism. other than that, if it's obviously illegal it's obviously not allowed.

2) I block Google's crawler but nothing else, currently. I have a number of security measures in the works but I'll take suggestions on priorities.

[FrodoSwaggins]

So first off, I vote that people who are not logged in should not be able to read all content on the site. Rather, I understand that having crawlable content is a way that forums get new users, and so many there's a scenario where 90% of the content is crawlable. But when users want to discuss the current administration and sensitive topics related to that? It's going to have a chilling effect if we know big brother is watching. (Obviously big brother is always watching unless you're accessing this site through a heavily encrypted and anonymized VPN, but still.)

Secondly, I think it's surpassingly difficult to determine what amounts to a "guide to committing crimes" these days. So if I post gu|de to d0xxing, then that flavor certainly looks like ban-bait. But if I post: How to Do Real Estate Investment Research, with a lot of the same content, it passes muster? I mean, this is not a new problem. I'm just saying, if we talk politics, someone is gonna say we should do this or we should do that or the other thing and you end up in a gray area before you know it.

[gorzek]

i figure i could leave the "general" section option while locking down the rest.

as far as "where is the line," it's where i say it is, honestly. i don't want to preemptively bar people from saying anything. if i think something is skating the line (or clearly over it) i will intervene. generally i'll assume good faith with people here until i'm given a reason not to. things can be a little looser with the forums locked down but there's nothing keeping a determined bad actor from reading what we post, so i guess keep that in mind.

all that's to say, if you wanna get real spicy, keep it on Signal or something. one thing i will add to my todo list is a warrant/subpoena canary.