Lemmy.world Admin Response to Defederation from Exploding Heads
Lemmy.world Admin Response to Defederation from Exploding Heads
We're closing this thread. Everything that could be said has been said. Thank you
Original Post:
Today, we want to inform everyone that we have decided to defederate from https://exploding-heads.com/. We understand that defederating should always be a last resort, and individuals can certainly block communities. However, blocking alone does not prevent potential harm to vulnerable communities.
After carefully reviewing the instance, reported posts, and multiple comments from the community, we have concluded that exploding-heads is not adhering to the Lemmy or Citizen Code of Conduct. Therefore, we cannot, in good faith, continue to federate with an instance that consistently promotes hate, racism, and bullying.
Examples:
https://lemmy.world/post/577526 - Community Moderator Harassment
https://exploding-heads.com/post/92194 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/90780 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/91488 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/93725 - Community Moderator Post
Again, deciding to defederate from an instance is not taken lightly. In the future, we will continue to review instances on a case-by-case bases.
As for our community, please refrain from posting or commenting with hateful words as well. Arguing back and calling people names is not the solution. The best course of action is to report the posts or comments violating our server rules.
Lemmy Code of Conduct
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
Citizen Code of Conduct https://github.com/stumpsyn/policies/blob/master/citizen_code_of_conduct.md
“We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.”
I'm no fan of defederating over minor disagreements but yeah, some types of people are just incompatible with building a welcoming space. Good choice.
I agree with you that it was a good choice and that it's necessary to foster a friendly online culture.
I haven't seen any calls for defederation over, "minor disagreements," though. I have seen lots of people saying that we should defederate from places like exploding heads so that we dont allow them to get bigger and then those people being told that they shouldn't call for defederation over minor disagreements.
I've seen a few around the place but they tend to get shut down pretty quick so I guess that means most of us are on the same page, which is nice.
Everybody crying about free speech because they got cut off from the nazis are very welcome to go sign up with the nazis and let the door hit you on the way out.
Exactly, instances are like countries. Alliances (federations) will be formed. It will be an organic process. Instances that promote Nazi content will form alliances with each other, and our instance Lemmy.world will form an alliance that has the same values of respect.
And it's not even always those extremes. Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world is fine, because they clearly want to keep things more tightly moderated than we do here. They've made it their objective to be a very safe place for LGBT folks. There's nothing wrong with that at all. We're going to see a few different universes start to form within the Fediverse and that's not a bad thing. Invariably there will likely be a largest, main one. I think lemmy.world is set up to be part of that. But if people want spaces that are more closely curated or more aligned with a certain ideology, they can have their own separate universes. It's not the end of the world to have different flavors of Lemmy.
Everyone over there crying about their free speech absolutism to call everyone retards and n*****s like they aren't going to speed ban anybody who comments that that's dumb. lol
100% this.
That seems like the right choice. Those seem to be some pretty vile people. They can have their free speech, but it doesn't mean we have to listen to it. Normally I'd not be in agreeance about defederating, but hate speech shouldn't have a safe haven among us. Thanks, for defederating from them.
Thank you for your diligence, transparency, and for being proactive about this. I, for one, am glad to see that racism, bigotry, and homophobia are not welcome on lemmy.world, and that the admin team takes that seriously.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. Good for everybody
I love the "freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend" crowd because like, of course it does, but don't be surprised when nobody likes you because you're being a dick to everyone.
I love that the underlying implication of "freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend" is that you presumably aren't free to respond to things that offend you by electing to not expose yourself to it any further. Like, you apparently aren't allowed to say "oh, that's really gross. I don't like that and am not going to voluntarily expose myself to it any further and when someone asks me my opinion I will indicate that I dislike it." You have to sit there and take it. Honestly, defederating is a great choice for lemmy instances. What's the alternative? Trying to convince whatever service a lemmy instance is hosted on to deplatform them like people did with Amazon and Parler? I think the posts linked here about exploding-heads are vile, but I don't want them or any other instance to be subject to the whims of some kind of internet police force, and especially not to whatever service or services are used to keep them up. Just leave them in the dust and be done with it, I say.
It also includes don't engaging with people that offend you. But when you do that they claim that you are the offender
One thing that bothers me is that "freedom of speech", at least from an American perspective, just protects someone from retaliation from the government. That means that you can't go spouting off garbage and expect people to not call and/or kick you out for being a turd.
Instead, the point was that you could be critical of the governing body without fear of being locked up. Good examples of this would be what's happening in Russia.
at least from an American perspective
In EU as well, freedom of speech means they can't arrest you for what you say, it's about the government, not private companies/entities.
Freedom of speech is not the first amendment. The first amendment is a protection of that right in the US legal system, limited in scope to actions of government agencies.
That does not mean private citizens or corporations (which are actually not the same in reality) cannot infringe of free speech with harmful consequences. It's just legal for them to do so. Corporate social media do it all the time.
So you have a system where speech is regulated not based on it's merits (or harm caused in case of hate speech) but on the whims of whoever owns major media, where the majority of discourse occurs in the modern world.
Arguments based on compelled speech infringing the social media's right to free speech or it's right to freedom of association make no sense. The law already provides them with protections for hosting users' illegal material (whether copyright infringements or far worse) precisely because it's not the social media itself that posts it.
With that said, I do not think defederation infringes on their right to free speech (the moral right, not a legal right). Their message is still online and frankly lemmy.world is not really the public space in the way things like facebook or twitter are. Thus they are not really affecting their ability to get their message to people.
I agree. If you are being a turd to people without committing any crimes the government should do nothing but other people can
There's a reason freedom of speech goes hand-in-hand with freedom of association. The freedom to not associate with someone because you don't like their speech is as strong as the freedom to say what you want.
Exactly
Some opinions shouldn't have consequences thoughts. Hate speech isn't freedom of speech too
Thank you. One of those dudes were over on sh.itjust.works when they defederated it, arguing that the exploding heads community was totally fine! As you can see... no, it was not: https://lemmy.world/comment/577634
You can expand the rest comment section for context but the screenshot in the link speaks for itself.
Edit: here come the downvotes! The exploding heads guys really hate that I screenshotted & exposed the cesspit they call home. Lol
Yikes. Good riddance.
Thank you for your transparency! As always, very appreciated.
Good! The older I get the more I realize that free speech at all cost is bullshit. Every idea or thought does not deserve a platform.
It's called the paradox of tolerance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
In Spain we have an old saying (maybe it's international, but I just heard it in Spain): My freedom ends where yours begin. Meaning that you're free to do what you want, but not when others are affected in a negative way (your noise disturb others, your hostility affect others, etc). When I see some people in the US behaving like assholes claiming that's their freedom I realise they don't actually understand what freedom means.
In the US (at least where I'm from) we have a similar saying that goes:
Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my face begins
Same essential meaning but some people here just don't get it.
We use it in Greece too
Freedom of speech should only ever mean that a government cannot retaliate against or stifile someone's view on politics. It should never equate to freedom from consequences for hate speech, by anyone.
Free speech does not mean every idea or thought deserves a platform. It's a doctrine of being able to express one's idea without fear of retaliation or censorship from the government. And it is also a very indivisible idea, either you have free speech for everyone or for no one. There is no middle ground because as soon as you introduce the idea that some ideas should censored you lay the groundwork for all ideas to be censored.
Free speech at all costs is not bullshit but also, defederation is not censorship.
Not necessarily advocating for giving everyone a platform but an interesting thought here is how we should treat the concept of free speech in an era where so many important things are under the jurisdiction of private entities. If 90% of public squares were owned by companies who restricted what you can wear, say, and who you can talk to on that public square, that would technically not run afoul of free speech but definitely would practically heavily restrict people's ability to freely express themselves. Meanwhile, this exact scenario is the case on the internet with private corporations owning most of it and are free to remove whatever content they want at a whim.
I’m familiar with the argument I just think it’s outdated.
Free speech is fine. The interpretation of "free access to anyone's eyes and ears at any time" is bullshit.
Voat is an excellent example of this. Unmoderated speech -> Nazi infiltration -> removed from app stores and shut down.
Come to think of it, are there any libertarian "no rules, block users if you can't handle it" social networks that haven't catastrophically collapsed into toxic hellholes? ....like are there ANY examples of this idea even working?
The thing free speech absolutists never understand is people have tried their plan PLENTY of times, in fact it has been tried over and over again in an exhausting cycle of amnesia. It never works, running a community fundamentally requires choices and moderation.
It’s a curve, you think you are getting wiser while it’s the exact opposite
Or you can build a better argument and debate the idea. If its not a call to violence, its just words and ideas battling it out.
COVID-19 proves that rational debate doesn't work. Heck, even the results of recent US and UK elections prove that people are so brainwashed and incapable of rational thought that they'll support their side like a local football team, no matter how badly their policies screw them over.
Arguing with a right-winger is like playing a game of chess with a rooster. No matter what you say or do, the rooster will knock over the pieces, shit all over the board and strut around triumphantly.
Good riddance
Good call! Thanks for creating a welcoming atmosphere for all!
It's weird to say that as they defederate from a community. I don't know anything about "explodingheads", but I always prefer to choose what I do and do not see.
I have no doubt that the "explodingheads" community is shitty, but I don't like the precedent of protecting me from the world on my behalf.
You are free to still join exploding heads and their instance if you want. That's the beauty of lemmy. It's also other instances choice to join with them or not. This one chose not.
It means when choosing between allowing people who are minorities, or people who want to harass minorities, the admins here prefer the minorities.
You can have one or the other. I know which I prefer.
Also, horrible politically incorrect jokes are fun, however, the last few years have led to people genuinenly believing in them instead of making fun of them, so things are a bit more uptight generally in the world.
The thing is.... it isn't to protect you if you don't feel you need protection. But this is a community, not a monolith. Consider that you always have the option to join a second community rather than forcing two communities to stay together for your convenience.
And in an online space that's federated, there is a really strong incentive for the admins and mods to keep us *informed when defederation is happening because the community on the other side are extremely likely to notice and let us know either way. So at least you can keep track of how censored these communities are is in some fashion.
You're able to launch your own Instance and it will federate with everyone and you can do what you have stated.
And what's stopping you from checking out exploding heads? The site runners have said that exploding heads stuff isn't appearing on their property. They don't, last I checked, have any control over what sites you visit using your property.
See how that works? Freedom of speech means the shitheads at exploding heads can say what they like, but it doesn't mean other people have to listen. You want to read shitfuckery, they're right over there. Head on over!
This instance smells like Spez, good luck not getting cancelled here
And this right here is what separates Lemmy from voat: active community moderation that works to limit the reach of hateful bigots. While I’m a big proponent of free speech myself, I do agree that many kinds of ‘speech’ aren’t the most conductive thing for building a welcoming platform; especially one that caters to many vulnerable groups.
This move also highlights the core strength of a decentralized platform, by the way: while people who no longer want to engage with this content can stay safe, nobody was deplatformed! We achieved a clean break without banning or ‘silencing’ anybody.
So, good job on responsibly using the defed hammer!
Free speech includes my right to not listen to you.
Agreed! A country with free speech is a free country, which means people have the freedom to ignore speech as well.
Fantastic. I don't want to have to block all transphobic shithole communities since that requires me looking at them. If hateful people could just group together in their 4chan bubbles which are defederated from sane people, that'd be awesome.
The worst part is that they kind of do. From my past experience from using imageboards, a good chunk of the moronic beliefs that you see these people posting outside of 4chan/8chan/Whatever are saner than some of the absolute crackpot shit they will say when they are under the complete guise of anonymity.
I just wish blocking here actually worked
It doesn't? What does it do then?
It looks like you just want your own echo chamber and are not even willing to stand up for yourself, not surprised
I don't feel like having to explain why trans people should have human rights day after day. I'm fine with reasonable discourse, not people that are so far gone I can't even see them over the horizon.
Damn those sysadmin posts are dire.
I'm hoping that eventually a free speech Lemmy instance pops up that has admins that are less cringe
While almost everyone tends to agree with the principles of freedom of expression, whenever someone says, "This space is an absolute free speech zone" or similar, you can almost always assume they're just fascists who got told https://xkcd.com/1357/
Feel free to create one, just don't get upset when other instances want nothing to do with the toxic community this inevitably creates and everyone de-federates you..
Sure, in principle, as long as “free speech” isn’t just cover to spew toxic bullshit all over the place. No one has to put up with that and you better believe it’ll be defederated by most instances.
Sure, in principle, as long as “free speech” isn’t just cover to spew toxic bullshit all over the place. No one has to put up with that and you better believe it’ll be defederated by most instances.
Me too. But exploding heads will probably be bigger in the long run anyway.
I'm happy you guys announced it and posted visual proof of why you decided to defederate from them.
Trasparence in the management will shine a bright way ahead!
Thank you, admins!
This is one thing you're getting right that Reddit never got right. They let shit like the_donald fester for years.
I believe spez endorsed those views himself. Makes sense too, he’s a doomsday prepper and an Elon Musk fanboy.
"Valuable discussion"
I'm not a fan of de federation except in extreme circumstances... but this is a good choice. Its not a couple mods being slow to respond to reports, but real nasty speach from admins.
Thank you.
A site being turned into a Nazi-bar qualifies as a sufficiently extreme circumstance as to justify defederation.
thanks for this. Feels good to be on an instance that takes it seriously!
In case it hasn't been suggested before, it might be a good idea to give users the ability to block a whole instance, rather than one magazine at a time
To those whinging about the decision to defederate Exploding Heads, think about it this way.
Mastodon once got a massive influx of users because Gab attempted to expand their influence as a far-right Twitter competitor by joining their fediverse. The various other instances responded in kind by collectively defederating Gab because they didn't want their platforms to be flooded by the racist and bigoted gruel that Gab's clientele were spewing out.
And here lies the beauty of free speech and the fediverse. People are free to create an instance with their own rules, but others are also free to disassociate from them.
One way to think of it, anybody has a right to selfhost an instance of fediverse software and say whatever toxic trash they want, but being part of the broader fediverse is a privilege (not a right) predicated on not using the platform that comes with that privilege to hurt others.
Any time you limit the MAGA maggots it is a win for everyone.
I just love how we are reminded to observe the simple rules here. That's great. ;)
Originally reddit was very observant on what they called rediquette. But I honestly don't recall seeing it mentioned for the past 5 years.
As things degraded and rediquette was more and more needed, instead of reminding each other of it, it seems to have disappeared.
Enforcing Reddiquette would mean less trolling, which is bad for Reddit because anger fuels engagement.
Reddiquette and the disclosing of how much server time was paid for by Reddit gold. Both previously disclosed to the users and now missing.
Good. I was getting sick of blocking them every time one of their new communities popped up that wasn't blocked yet. I have yet to see a single thread from that instance that didn't immediately make me block the user and community.
Good riddance.
Thanks, a sensible action to take.
I hadn't been exposed to it, but it sounds like something I don't want to see.
I looked over there and you don’t lol
I am trying to create a tolerant NSFW community on lemmy, it's the first time I hear about this "Citizen Code of Conduct". While I am totally opposed to Doxxing and general harassment, there is this part which concerns me:
- Unacceptable Behavior
The following behaviors are considered harassment and are unacceptable within our community:
- [...]
- Posting or displaying sexually explicit [...] material.
Where does this apply? In lemmy code contribution? or in the communities? If this applies to the community, this is quite worrisome.
Looks like this "Citizen Code of Conduct" is only a template for creating rules, but is good to follow these rules on the whole internet (and in real world too).
Talking about the rule you mencionated, that rule is only for non-NSFW communities. You can make your community only if you mark the NSFW flag in it and all posts flagged with it as well.
If you do not understand something feel free to ask and sorry for my bad english :-)
I would assume as they have a clearly marked NSFW option, that means in the SFW area.
If I had to guess, that rule doesn't really apply to instances that are NSFW friendly in their description. Probably gets enforced on instances and communities that are not going for an explicit thing.
Good move. We don't need to tolerate nazis. Though the code of conduct is admittedly progressive and this in itself will exclude people who are conservative. I am OK with seedy underbellies, or areas with people I don't agree with and I think we should avoid being moral police where possible, but the rhetoric on exploding heads is too much. They aren't actually conservatives they are just insane people, literal crazies that belong on 4chan or voat, or maybe truth social if that's still a thing.
Went over to their site. I found it ironic that their ten level reply thread complaining about the defederation made me realize that the different level reply colors form a rainbow. Hopefully that isn't for just June, it is very helpful when trying to figure out who is responding to who.
My favourite comments are the ones calling people sensitive while they proceed to cry about not being listened to. Bunch of soft cunts lmao
I found that amusing too. They are mad we aren't forced to hang out with them
I support this move after a quick glance at their site. Thank you team!
Agreed, all types of discrimination should be destroyed quickly. Lemmy needs to be aware of the paradox of tolerance - the only thing we can never, ever tolerate is intolerance.
Too bad you are defining intolerance as whatever you want
This is great. Free speech and edgy jokes are one thing, but this is literally just random crazy racist sexist bullshit with a classic case of Biden derangement syndrome. Why even bother federating with these boggarts
I’m not usually a fan of defederation, but I'm actually glad to see it in this case. It's beneficial to have healthy disagreements in opinion and interactions with people who don’t share your views. However, I haven't witnessed anything positive resulting from these interactions so far.
I really appreciate your transparency and responsiveness to the community.
This is how you do it. The Code of Conduct is established. Habitually violating the Code leads to defederation. It's simple, and need not be dramatic.
I don't want an echo chamber, but excluding bad actors is not the same thing as excluding differing views and perspectives.
I think it should be dramatic - it's a very serious choice, and it shouldn't be made lightly or quietly. Especially when it's because of social rather than technical reasons
It should be a big deal, and admins should feel the need to answer to the community when they make that choice. It needs to be dramatic, or it'll become too easy
Damn, this is a good take here.
Most of us just came from a site where admin overreach is ruining everything. While I don't think the admins here are going to pull the same thing, there's something to be learned there about how the community deserves a say in the operations.
Good riddance. You want your free speech? Fine. You're not owed my free ear, though. Take your insufferable twaddle elsewhere.
Good. I'm glad to see active moderation nip these in the bud, unlike Reddit several years ago.
Thank you
It's crazy to me that people find those types of racist and distasteful posts funny. Does anyone here know if kbin has already defederated with exploding-heads? And yes I have already blocked the domain. This type of shit doesn't belong on the fediverse.
I'm on kbin.social and I've never seen an exploding heads post.
They may be getting drowned out by the huge lemmy instances. I've only seen a bare handful of content from them, but the quality of every one made me refresh my memory on blocking instances. I really never thought I'd be advocating defederation so quickly, but we already have a 4chan and it's not kbin
I don't think they've targeted kbin in the same way exploding-heads seem to have targeted other Lemmy instances, but when I checked a day or so ago we were still federated. I blocked the whole instance ...but I can't now remember how that was done. Somehow you can make an instance appear like a magazine from kbin, then you can follow or block it in much the same way too.
Edit:
From the comments below, head to https://kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com
Then at the bottom of the page, or from the kbin menu, choose the no-entry (i.e. block) symbol which is next to the subscribe button.I saw one once but I cannot remember if it was kbin.social or lemmy.world because I have tried both.
I saw them from kbin a few days ago.
Ernest commented on the situation, but I think he had a fair bit on his plate at the time.
Yeah I'm not urging him to do anything, he shall taketh as much time as he needs. Was just asking, but meanwhile blocking the domain individually suffices I'm pretty sure.
Do they find it funny or are they just shit people that like being cunts?
At this point, I’m past caring. I just take them at face value and move on.
Good, and thank you. No need to tolerate hate and I would be happy if we had a low bar for instances that encourage hateful conduct.
How hard is it to defederate and re-federate an instance? I'd like if the admins had the ability to remove instances if they weren't properly moderated, and then add them back if things improved.
I heartily approve. Thank you.
I disagree that defederation shouldn't be taken lightly, if it looks at all like a nazi instances, scalp & move on.
Good work, no notes.
To all who don’t like this decision, that’s fine. This isn’t the only Lemmy instance, that’s the whole point of a federated system. Go to another instance that aligns with your values.
Do you have any thoughts on beehaw blocking lemmy.world? Are you working with them to resolve the issues?
It seems like a rather large hit to communities as a large number of subreddits have landed there to help lemmy grow as a whole
I don't think the beehaw block of lemmy.world is a permanent one necessarily, it is based on much different circumstances than the block of exploding heads (differences in growth philosophy vs hatespeech/nazis). At some point in the future lemmy.world and beehaw may federate again.
I moved to Lemmy.world because Beehaw defederated from everybody else.
If I wanted a walled garden that only allows intelligent debate, I'd just go over to Tildes, especially since Deimos is an ex-Reddit admin who actually knows what he's doing from a tech and community moderation standpoint.
Thanks! The admin over there doesn't even follow their own posted guidelines.
Good call. I think within my first day or two here some idiot from exploding heads was commenting on here about being banned by beehaw and just acting like a complete tool. We’re better off without them.
Thanks
I'm sure there are a lot of nuances here I'm not familiar with--but, in general, I'm always in favor of insisting on ('enforcing'?) "adult behavior". I have a zero tolerance policy where I solo-mod. If you can't talk/disagree politely with someone, then you need to go somewhere else...
This is a relief. Thank you.
Great communication, I think this is a smart move.
great news everyone!
Thank you, I'm all for open communication but there is a limit. Good decision.
bye Felicia
This was definitely the right move, and one of the big selling points to me. Like reddit would ban subs, but the users were still there. So all the bigots still got to post everywhere and just create a new sub. Now they can keep their area and be over there.
To be fair, this was usually answered by banning them
Subreddits that didn't want to deal with it would have automod use the minimum karma rule, which was usually lax enough that new people got in soon, and people who were clearly problematic would usually just constantly end up with karma too low to actually post in those subreddits, and eventually banned again anyway.
People got in sometimes but it wasn't particularly common.
It also won't stop exploding-heads users from just creating users on Lemmy-World, just they can be banned if they're problematic, and makes it a bit harder.
Is there a definitive list of defederated instances? Since this would be a dynamic list I would hope each instance has this linked on the main page, (ideally with justification on who the said instance was defedarated and why).
Check the "instances" link at the bottom of the site. It shows both the federated and blocked instances.
I expect to see a decent surge in Nazi instances for a good while, but it'll die down once the initial wave is pushed back. Keep at it, and good work.
Absolutely justified
Nothing of value was lost.
Yikes, good call admin.
Wonderful decision!
I understand the decision.
Thank you for this!
What about the situation with Beehaw?
Do you really think a shitty site like Beehaw with power tripping admins that have to review your registration is going to get to any reasonable size?
I agree with this decision.
I would really love the ability to further delineate how severe a block we create. Ex we might want to block their content, or their users, or both. We might still want to allow them to view our content but not comment, or we might want them to be able to participate in a limited set of communities.
It would give federations a way to "keep the lines open" and allow a way for a possible future where we refederate.
I think that would be useful in general but perhaps more for the Beehaw type scenario. I took a look at the front page of exploding-heads and I support a complete disconnect in this case. I don't want that kind of content showing up on any site that I interact with. The wonderful thing about free speech is that I am also not obligated to listen. Let them have their echo chamber somewhere else.
This. I really don't get why people worry so much about defederating. Yes it shouldn't be taken lightly, but I personally want there to be multiple 'spheres' or networks of lemmy instances. Why would I want every lemmy instance to follow the same rules. Isn't that just the same problem as reddit?
Let there be a group of free-speech absolutist instances and another group of hyper curated instances and a middle group of more broad appeal. If I want to access any of these, all I have to do is create an account. Those defederated instances aren't lost. I can go there and make an account. No one is 'censoring' you.
Not a huge surprise, the communitties are diametrically opposed
I think Lemmy needs something like filter instead of cut off or not. Similar to search engines save, medium, no filter. Before cutting everyone appart completely.
I feel like we need a shared community space between several associated instances where carded ambassadors that they select can work out what they want to share with us.
Remember shit that works always wins, even if it looks like shit.
Block them if you are in kbin https://kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com
Just checked it out. Yup.
What in the world happened over there that is bad enough to get defederated?
Mods posting a bunch of racist memes. This post has a full explanation in it, including links to offending content.
defederating shouldnt be allowed honestly. too much collateral damage. You wanted a decentralized system? great. now deal with it.
There was an effort to defederate from an instance that has maybe 1000 users?
I'm not sure I agree with the decision but I'm not against it either. I would much prefer a recommended block list that can be default on upon signup, but that is not currently an option. I liked the email analogy of lemmy, it would be strange for gmail to full on block any communication to another email provider. Yes, spam filter all of it, but cut it off completely, I'd have to see something violent or dangerous coming from the admins.
I don't like the email analogy. I think of instances as countries. Instances that are federated mean they have the same values and there's an alliance between them to share information.
But if an instance has a completely opposite set of values to other countries (like North Korea), then relations with that instance will be cut, which means defederation and therefore no relations with that instance, which means no sharing of information.
I don't like this. It might be ok in this example but ... generally, defederation should be a democratic decision, voted by the users of an instance. Defederation blocks access to all communities on this instance. Its like my ISP blocking the country of France because he don't like their leader. Users should decide for them selves which community to block. We have the tools for this. Yes one can create a second account on another instance but constant switching instances is no solution.
Its like my ISP blocking the country of France because he don’t like their leader.
The main difference is users can, generally speaking, easily choose which instance to be a user on. All those French people in France can't, in your example, be expected to casually emigrate somewhere because their leader is disliked, but it's as simple to choose one Fediverse instance as it is another and moving between them is trivial.
Every user on the defederated instance can easily choose to use (and abide by the rules of) any other Lemmy instance which follows the Lemmy Code of Conduct better than this blocked instance did.
No, it's more like Country A instituting a temporary travel ban on people coming from Country B while there's a sudden outbreak, and then Country A's judicial and legal system reviewing that decision to see whether it should be permanent or not.
I disagree. If an instance wants to consistently violate community rules, and is run by mods and admins who approve of said violations, they have no business being federated with a mainstream instance.
If you don't like this decision, you are welcome to join an instance that never defederates anyone and then you can see absolutely everything. No need for account switching, you can see all the communities from such an account.
After all, the main thing you select when you choose an instance is you admin and mod team, so find an instance that alligns with your purviews.
Defederation doesn't have to be permanent.
I'm actually a big fan of lemmy.world pre-emptively making this decision and communicating about it openly, because in the short term it keeps lemmy.world safe and welcoming.
I'd be in favor of admins making the call and then polling users on whether the decision should be permanent.
But you do vote. With your feet. If an instance owner (note: the instance is the owner's property not your property) is too quick with the banhammer for your tastes, or defederates from sites you think they shouldn't, feel free to move on. If enough people do that, the instance has been voted into oblivion.
It's remarkably arrogant to say "I should have a say in how you use your property".
Sure you can vote by leaving, but this schould be the last resort. I don't say how the owner must deal with this issue, I mearly expressed my concern. Im not convinced its arrogance....the fact that I express my opinion (if it be right or wrong) shows that I care and try to engage in the discussion. The beauty of the fediverse is it doesn't realy matter (and shouldn't matter) on which instance you are registered. The beauty of social networks is that you can engage in discussions and exchange opinions and not just consume media. If all folks think the same you are in an echo chamber and there is nothing new to learn.
Clown world indeed
Liberal ideology is incompatible with modern society.
EDIT: Downvoters have forgotten GOP's interests align with homophobia, racism and many other forms of discrimination.
lmao Redditland 2.0
While I agree that EH contains some hateful material I would have preferred if the lemmy.world community was some how included in the decision beforehand.
I'm sure in this case the result would still have been federation. But it would feel less like someone else needs to protect me from some idiots trying to be edgy.
I run a mastodon instance and I wouldn’t ask my users for feedback regarding defederating anything. I wrote the rules for the instance and it’s my decision whether or not another instance (be it the instance itself or its users) is breaking the rules. Users can migrate elsewhere if they have a problem with that. There’s some shit that I will never allow anywhere near my instance, full stop.
Community input is great for a lot of things, but defederation isn't one of them imo. That’s an admin decision.
Yep, at the end of the day it's your instance, so it's your responsibility and if people don't like it they can choose another instance with different rules or pay for their own. At most, maybe the people who actually donate via open collective or the patreon should have a hand in the decision because they do actually keep the lights on, but ultimately if you're donating you have a level of trust in the people who run the instance(s) to make the right calls.
Great if it works for you and your community on mastodon. I still feel different about how to handle this but it's not a deal breaker for me.
I believe it can be reasonable to defederate without including the community beforehand, as long as it communicated as transparent as it has been done here, and allows discussion of the decision afterwards. If the content is as harmful as the examples make it out to be, the faster the instance is defederated, the better. It seems to me that if the decision was wrong or the community against it, it could just as fast be re-federated.
It's okay if you agree with the admins way of handling this. As long as I don't get the feeling the admins defederate from everything that voices opinion opposing theirs, I won't leave lemmy.world over this.
Genuinely curious, whats wrong this post: https://exploding-heads.com/post/90780? Seems like they are making fun of the actress, and even then thats a edited picture. All the other ones make sense in violating the rules, but not sure why this was flagged as inappropriate?
I'm not an instance admin, so I don't speak for them.
From my perspective, I don't want to see that kind of meme in my feed, but I also don't think that alone is enough to defederate. That meme along side all of the rest, though, shows that this particular admin enjoys posting troll content, rage bait, and hateful material.
Now, go take a look at the rest of the content on the instance. It isn't all bad but there is a high ratio of hateful content there relative to other instances.
So, while that one particular post may not have been the worst thing in the world, it could be seen as falling under "harassment" in the Citizen Code of Conduct and shows the general mindset of the instance admins. When taken together with the admin's other posts and the prevalence of hateful material on their instance, it indicates that the instance is unlikely to be a welcoming place and will likely continue to violate the Lemmy Code of Conduct and the Citizen Code of Conduct.
I'm happy that lemmy.world has defederated from exploding heads and might have moved to a different instance if they hadn't.
Ah got it, was really looking for place in the code of conducts here that I missed. Thank you for the explanation!
Seems like they are making fun of the actress
Yeah, based on her physical appearance.. Lemmy.world does not even allow namecalling, so it shouldn't be hard to understand that "making fun of people" based on their looks (some would call that bullying) is not in the spirit of this community and lemmy overall..
And we also should keep in mind that this post was made by an admin, not by a random troll in their community. This clearly shows that the admin has no interest in creating a community that is compatible with lemmy's values.
Thanks for the straightforward answer, was really trying to get more context and you provided that.
Fine, I'll assume good faith and answer this: They are clearly making fun of that actress (in that role) specifically because she's black, and in a way that makes fun of her appearance because to them black means primitive or unsophisticated or something.
They are clearly making fun of that actress (in that role) specifically because she’s black
Even if we assume for a moment that they don't have a racist bone in their bodies and were making fun of a white person in the exact same meme, it would still be making fun of a person based on their physical appearance, which goes against lemmy's, lemmy.world's and officially even against their own spirit..
And you can argue that this is taking it too far or being too sensitive, and if that was the only meme posted here, I would probably agree with you. But all the memes together show a clear trend and show that when it comes to this admin at least, there is no interest in creating a healthy community. When you have rules like:
"Be authentic. Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. No threats or personal insults No discrimination"
and then have admins who, at the very least, bend those rules and post provocating and controversial content only to then go "oh no, we are not edgelords, we actually care about our community very very much and want everyone to be friendly", it does not signal responsibility at all.
And the most important part with this post is that it wasn't posted by a random immature internet troll, it was posted by one of the site admins.. If they can't even moderate their own admin's actions according to their own stated rules, they are either incredibly incompetent, they are not committed to actually creating a non-toxic community or they aren't really interested in following their rules in the first place..
“We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.”
Oh really? Then please explain why you guys let this slip.
I actually love how they have taken a level headed approach to this whole saga and have not let themselves get swept up in whatever the community at large is doing. They're looking at the issue with their own eyes and evaluate whether or not it is prevailent enough to take the big decision to defederate. If we start defederating from every instance for every infraction a single user on it makes, we will isolate ourselves into an echo chamber worse than most corporate social media. So bravo to the admins for looking into it as much as they have.
With the level of control and how power hungry the mods are, trying to stifle the discussion in the exact same way reddit does, this place will just become a smaller reddit with somewhat more intelligble posts.
Can you elaborate on the discussions in the example posts that the admins found in their case-by-case investigation of this Instance's administrator? What discussions are the admins choosing to stifle, precisely?
Are we going to defederate from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml too? Or is blatant tankie spam OK? I have a feeling that this community just wants to censor anything that’s right of center. Which sounds pretty fascist to me if I’m being honest.
Why? Being a communist is not inherently discriminating, and AFAIK we haven't had any problems from them.
If you can show the instance is endorsing discrimination, or discrimination is prevalent, that would make it another matter. But you can't, and you are probably just trying to make a whataboutist argument.
Which sounds pretty fascist to me if I’m being honest.
Another attempt at whataboutism. I hope you still have time to learn.
No, they want to defederate from aggression and hate. It's not really about politics, it's about insults and threats.
I am not too familiar with the instance. But I fail to see how are the linked posts harasment? Only the screenshot of the private message is bad. Sure they are dumb and bad memes, but not enough to defederate.
These posts are not any worse than what everyone is posting about u/spez these days.
Those were posts from the people running exploding heads. If the bigotry in their instance is at the top, then it's not worth continuing to federated with them.
I was hoping Lemmy could be the reddit replacement I was looking for, but obviously not. This type of idiotic bullshit "by design" is precisely why none of these federated sites stand a chance of replacing something like reddit.
I've only been here a week and there's already been a bunch of defederations. I wonder how long it will take for all instances to defederate from each other?
You are free to either move your account or make a second account with exploding heads. With reddit, if /r/trump got banned, that's it. The community is inaccessible. Here censorship is only a minor inconvenience.
Like I said, this federated shit isn't for me and no, I will not be making an account with explodingheads at all, I'm as left wing as they come, the hint to that is in my name.
The problem with this federated censorship is that minority owners call all the shots, and refuse to put these decisions to a democratic vote. I'm leaving reddit to get away from that shit. Some Kum ba yah circlejerk where everyone defederates from everybody over the slightest offense is the last thing I'm looking for.
Please don't defederate just like that. Defederation tells your users that we are not smart enough to make our decisions, and that we need the admins to make the decisions for us. I assure you that is not the case. We can block users or communities that we see problems with.
Disagree. Defederation is an important tool to be used. I applaud their stance against hate speech. Any instance that supports violence against anyone for that matter should be treated the same.
I don't want to be exposed to shitheads in the first place. I want admins to shut them up before I have to go through the trouble of blocking them. I don't want to play whack-a-mole.
Really? An Exploding heads admin openly admit they allow racism:
https://exploding-heads.com/post/159228?scrollToComments=true
@Wigglehard: (admin)
certain levels of racism and offensive material is allowed
That's actually illegal in most countries.
Huh. Those posts actually don't seem too bad. I actually am a user over there, and seen some actual racism there from time to time.
I'm always not happy whenever a free speech instance gets blocked, but as was the case with Poast, I can't be too mad about it if the users are participating in racism.
I was hoping to change the culture over there but I'm just too busy IRL to change the overall tenor of that instance on my own.
This may not be true in your particular case, but A LOT of assholes think that “free speech” is a license to be deliberately ignorant and hateful, while facing zero consequences.
By trying to rebrand hate speech as “free speech”, they’re ignoring other fundamental principles of society. The US Constitution, most religions, and numerous laws can be boiled down to one guideline: don’t be a dick.
Dropping n-bombs with impunity is NOT what free speech was intended to be used for. It was meant to protect those who criticized the government or needed religious freedom, and is supposed to prevent the government from retaliating against them. In short, free speech was intended to make people more tolerant, not less.
Don’t put up with closed-minded assholes because they “don’t seem too bad”. Racism is NOT something you want to desensitize yourself to. Ditch them and don’t go back.
https://exploding-heads.com/post/159228?scrollToComments=true
Kapow: (moderator)
a tyrannical minority are trying to stamp out anything that does not align with their views.
This being lemmy.world not accepting things like bigotry, transphobia, racism and sexism.
@Wigglehard: (admin)
certain levels of racism and offensive material is allowed
posting so called offensive material is ok in these rooms
They are not talking about not liking girl bands, when they say offensive, they are talking about exactly the bigotry, transphobia, racism and sexism.
Nough said, and this was just from the first post first 2 comments on their front page!
Glad I chose kbin over lemmy at this point. I'm hoping @ernest to be more levelheaded and not wield the defederation hammer as lightly.
I'd prefer being able to see as much of the fediverse from one instance as possible.
see hate speech!
Meanwhile; the things I've seen:
It's really not being wielded lightly in this case. This instance is defederated from many instances at this point. They're not providing valuable content, and seem to be constantly invoking the Nazi Bar analogy.
And I honestly expect Kbin will probably do something regarding it at some point. As someone else noted Ernest is very overwhelmed atm. There was a post yesterday where he responded saying he's working on more moderation tools.
What you might call "censorship" is also called curation, and yes, people flock to instances where content is well-curated. An instance owner likely goes to a lot of trouble to create and moderate some communities where people can have fun discussions about cool things. They bring forward cool stuff, and they remove shitty stuff.
Popular communities back on Reddit had mods that didn't just act as the bouncer at the door, but also did things like setting up AMAs with guests, or getting the community to post pics of John Oliver.
Cope
Ernest has already said it’s on his radar and he will get to it when he has the chance.
I agree. I'm an adult. I'd like to be in control of what I see. I really don't want my instance administrator to make that call for me. I can easily block users and communities I don't like.
Blocking is a good tool for users of an instance.
The point that a lot of people seem to miss is that those who admin an instance are responsible for the federated content from other instances.
It's a matter of time before their content crosses legal boundaries if it hasn't already. At the very least, the federated content can be considered indicative of your own content.
If you want to be an adult that hosts this shit on your instance, that's great. I wouldn't.
This. We are all adults, or should be. It's ok to not find their memes 'funny' in any fucking way, but for the admins to choose defederations, its a bit too much, since we can at user level, block specific instances.
The community largely doesn’t want to see it. Look at the upvote/downvote ratio of any comment critical of this move.
Eh, if you see racists and nazis on the street you would also try to avoid interacting with them.
This is the Lemmy equivalent of "enjoy your cesspool of vile and hatred, but please keep it confined to the dumpster you call an instance."
More than warranted in this case, as outlined by some posts of even the admins and mods.
More directly: ANY instance that claims that explicitly allows "some" racism should be defederated immediately.