I don’t know the specifics behind why the communities were (re-)removed but the reasons given in the modlog seem vague enough to apply to anyone linking to Google or YouTube as they reference or indirectly link to piracy:

Removed Community CrackWatch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
reason: facilitating piracy, referencing websites used for the distribution of copyright infringing material in images

Removed Community Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
reason: facilitating piracy, indirectly linking to websites used for the distribution of copyright infringing material

From the initial removal announcement post:

The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.


EDITED multiple times due to confusion over origins of the ban.

    • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah. They’re liars.

      Everyone should jump ship sooner rather than later.

      There are clear bad actors on the admin team. There is no hope for lemmy.world.

      • lorkano@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        There are no ships, it’s not reddit. You download one app to sync your instances, and you fucking join few to have access to everything you want. Or you just create your own instance, grant access to everything and use it by yourself. No lawyers will call you because they won’t even know. Lemmy instance admin can do whatever the hell they want, they could close Lemmy world tomorrow and I wouldn’t care, because there are hundreds instances in it’s place. Stop pretending that you matter to any of the instance owners.You are not a client here like on reddit, you are just a guest that costs them money.

  • solrize@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I didn’t notice it was gone. Most of what I remember from it was links to torrentfreak articles, which were completely above board. So yeah the silent removal is lame.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Without taking any stance on what the rules should be, I’ll re-quote this for emphasis:

    we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future

    Instead, we have communities banned without a public post or opportunity for community members to engage with the admins making the decision. I joined lemmy.world before it was the biggest instance or anybody’s idea of the default because I was aware of mastodon.world and had the impression it was well-managed. I’m starting to lose that impression here, and I don’t like it.

  • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Awful decision, but I just moved to lemmy.ca because of it.

    Censorship is a bad thing. Let users control what they want to see instead of corporate overlords and their useful idiots.

    I encourage everyone to get off of lemmy.world as quickly as possible.

    • Dremor@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Problem is, with an instance as huge as LW, it has some moderation obligations in many countries that may have opened them to be litigated for multiple millions €, considering its size. It is more a question of survival, not because of some power-hungry admin.

      I can understand your point of view, but the TOS is clear about piracy and piracy discutions (see : https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#41-piracy), and thus they are required to remove those communities if they break those terms (they are legally binding).

      Anyone who doesn’t want to comply with those TOS can, as you pointed out, move to another instance. It is one of the beauty of the Fediverse. In this case, the one who will be responsible in the case of a litigation is lemmy.ca, and not lemmy.world anymore.