There should be a full write up from a lawyer - or, better yet, an organization like the EFF. Because lemmy.world is such a prominent instance, it would probably garner some attention if the people who run it were to approach them.
People would still have to decide what their own risk tolerances are. Some might think that even if safe harbor applies, getting swatted or doxxed just isn’t worth the risk.
Others might look at it, weigh their rights under the current laws, and decide it’s important to be part of the project. A solid communication on the specific application of S230 to a host of a federated service would go a long way.
I worked as a sys admin for a while in college in the mid-90s, and it was a time when ISPs were trying to get considered common carriers. Common carrier covers phone companies from liability if people use their service to commit crimes. The key provision of common carrier status was that the company exercised no control whatsoever over what went across their wires.
In order to make the same argument, the systems I helped manage had a policy of no policing. You could remove a newsgroup from usenet, but you couldn’t any other kind of content oriented filtering. The argument went that as soon as you start moderating, you’re now responsible for moderating it all. True or not, that’s the argument made and policy adopted on multiple university networks and private ISPs. And to be clear, we’re not talking about a company like facebook or reddit which have full control over their content. We’re talking things like the web in general, such as it was, and usenet.
Usenet is probably the best example, and I knew some BBS operators who hosted usenet content. The only BBS owners that got arrested (as far as I know) were arrested for being the primary host of illegal material.
S230 or otherwise, someone should try to get a pro bono from a lawyer (or lawyers) who know the subject.
Edit: Looks like EFF already did a write up. With the amount of concerned people posting on this optic, this link should be in every official reply and as a post in the topic.
Yeah, my client crashed when I was trying to edit it. Thanks for the reminder!