[Discussion] Should we defederate exploding-heads.com? (Closing arguments)

Defederate them. Tolerance has limits and we have the right and, in my opinion, obligation to not tolerate the intolerant. In the words of the crustpunk bartender, "you have to nip it in the bud immediately."

Here's the story taken from a series of tweets.

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

That's litterally what he tried to do here. This is the admin trying to seem "decent" and saying that he is being "harassed" by people who want to defederate just because he is "right wing". Saying that exploding-heads.com only has 2 communities where "actual free speech" is allowed. But the problem is a lot deeper than that.

There's a few steps between right wingers, racists and nazis but he is giving a platform to the absolute worst and I call him out on that. And I will continue to do so.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/571413

And if you haven't read it, OP posted the Lemmy World admin response to the defederation with some more examples of what they are like.
- Just wanted to say that I've been enjoying your interventions at Wigglehard's expense. To reuse the wording of a legendary game: "Yobama will make exploding-heads their bitch".
  
  By the way, did the wiggly lad really send you a picture of his junk? A comment of yours to a now deleted one of his implies that.
The problem with the Nazi Bar analogy in relation to de-federation is that we're not running their bar. They're running their own bar and we're just another bar on the same planet. Nothing we can do will cause their bar to shut down, nothing we can do will cause users to not be able to enter their bar.

The de-federation argument is more akin to asking to build a wall outside so that we can't see the nazi bar from here. They'll still be there, the wall doesn't change anything. Any users with accounts here can also create accounts there.

You're not required to go to the Nazi bar this idea that we can de-federate our way to a solution doesn't make any sense. Is the endgame to have everyone build a wall around the Nazis so that they can't pollute the rest of us with their unclean ideas? To place them in some sort of ideological ghetto because we deem them unfit to interact with society?

Trapping people in echo chambers and denying them the opportunity to hear any dissenting opinions is how you create more extremism, not less.
- Bad analogy, it's not one planet, this is like Super Mario Galaxy. We have a planet with little bars (communities), they have a planet with their shitty racist bars. It's not building a wall, it's cutting them out of our orbit.
- "hey lets ban those nazis from the nazi bar from coming into our non-nazi bar" easy
- I think it’s more akin to deciding to tear down the flyers for their bar events posted in our bar bathroom.
  
  Also you’re kind of undermining your own argument by saying we’re trapping people in echo chambers while simultaneously claiming nothing we do will prevent users from going to their bar.
- We're under no obligation to federate with anyone that we don't want to. They're not just a Nazi bar, which I now believe is a good enough reason to build our wall, as you say, but they're also a Nazi bar with Nazi robots.
- If the people from the nazi instance wants to join other instances, there's nothing preventing them from that. This isn't oppression, this is just content moderation, people acting like it's some sort of crime against the idea of free speech are blowing it way out of proportion.
  
  To place them in some sort of ideological ghetto because we deem them unfit to interact with society?
  
  Also, using ghettos as a metaphor when talking about nazis just seems intentionally distasteful. Being pro-nazi and anti-nazi aren't equivalent positions, one is defending discrimination and genocide and the other is saying that discrimination and genocide are bad things.
- Thank you kind stranger for the reasonability.
People use nazi only because it's an easy label to hate and doesn't require any further thought.

Say that bartender said "communist" instead of nazi or some other ideology they don't agree with.

Also the bartender assumed the guy was a nazi. I used to work security in a very progressive US town and you would be surprised how many people go "some one just said there's is a nazi in my store get them out of here" I would walk over to find it's actually an antifa shirt with a swatica that is crossed out. the customer never took the time to actually read the guy's shirt and decided they were going to sleep better tonight because they told on them.

Being an idiot with a knee jerk reaction to someone that is different from you isn't an antidote to live by. Some people quick to judge would even call it nazi like behavior.
- I don't use Nazi lightly. I only use it because self proclaimed Nazis support the extremist right ideologies. They're full of hate, and they're anti-education, and want to make it so that the queer community goes back in the closet. This isn't about some knee jerk reaction to people I disagree with. If the people on the right actually practiced the principles they so loudly preach like liberty and freedom for all, then yes, I'd be open to having legitimate discussions and debate with them. But they don't. They foamed at the mouth when asked to do the bare minimum and wear a mask to help protect their more vulnerable countrymen during a pandemic. But apparently that was too much. In their minds, that was fascism. However, they can wave their Nazi flags at protests while wearing masks. But but but I thought they couldn't breathe with them on. 😭 They only pretend to stand for freedom and family values and caring about children. They target gays, minorities, trans people, and obstruct any efforts to provide services that would actually help children and families. One example is all the Republican state legislatures wanting to end free and reduced school lunches. I'm sick and tired of decent people kowtowing to these extremists and I'm done.
- For me personally, I don't care about the label. Is it nazist? Is it not? Don't care.
  
  What matters is that attacks against discriminated minorities on that instance, including celebration of violence, are completely normalized and I don't want to associate with or give a platform to those that propagate this.

I vote defederate. This isn't a question of putting up with a little fascist rhetoric on an otherwise acceptable instance. Exploding heads is exclusively fascist rhetoric, bad faith users, and spam bots.

We have nothing to gain from listening to them.

Exactly. It's not just a few communities on there... it's all of it. There is nothing good that would come from federating.

Defederate them. There’s no room for Nazis and fascists anywhere, ever.

I continue to vote for defederation.

Having looked at the instance in question myself and participated in the various conversations regarding defederation for them, I can see no valuable reason to keep federation at this point.

As late as yesterday I came across (and blocked) in my feed an account with a name from exploding-heads of ihate(trans_slur) that made its anti-trans purpose on their server clear. I would be glad to privately provide the screenshot of the account in question on request as I do not want to boost visibility or post hateful content myself.

There will always be ideas I personally do not agree with, that's fine. But it seems that this conversation around this one single instance has caused much trolling, many bad faith arguments, and has been at general odds at what I perceive the server is trying to accomplish.

The new information regarding botswarming is something I was not aware of until this post. I was monitoring the general posts regarding that type of content and supporting removal of bot instances, and that does add another layer to why defederation should be considered for this instance.

This is the kind of input I like to see 👍
Thank you for this write up. I'm also in favor of defederating.
I'm fairly sure I saw the user you're talking about and I actually blocked them pretty quickly too. Diversity of opinion is one thing, but bad-faith trolling is another. Pretty clear what their intentions are.
- Most likely.
  
  I would like to think an account like that would violate our server rules and face a ban.
  
  But the content is being pushed in my feeds, they are making posts (from what I can see) to our community (including a recent one about options for not defederating, iirc), and we have obvious examples in this thread of bad faith behavior.
  
  I've clocked at least one new sh.itjust.works account with only only activity in this post, which makes it suspect to me.
  
  This thread is going much like the others the longer it goes on.

I'd like to share with you two of the latest posts from their admin:

These posts link to news articles (and here's what mediabiasfactcheck has to say about both sources: Breitbart, and Daily Sceptic), but that's not the most important thing here: notice the diatribes in the posts, the rhetoric, this hatred sprinkled with an unhealthy amount of populism... This is disinformation directly endorsed and spouted by their admin; it reflects the kind of people welcomed to your instance if it remains federated with theirs.

I'm favorable to foster a diversity of opinions, of course including those I disagree with. However, a lie is not an opinion. And hatred, if you happen to consider it as an opinion, is certainly not a nurturing one, be it for an individual or a community.

Their clear support of trans hate is an absolute nonstarter and should be clear grounds for defederation. Hard stop.

On the other link, I saw the anti-vax article when it first popped up while sorting by new. It's a clearly an inflammatory story from an extremely biased and non-credible source, with the sole purpose of deceiving users and spreading dissent.

My gut instinct was to give the instance the benefit of the doubt that they just hadn't caught it yet, and just report to let their mods know. Then I saw it was posted by their admin.

I'm all for debates of differing opinions based on interpretations of objective facts - I think it is in fact a valuable part of a healthy community. That said, debates simply become toxic arguments when one party enters the discussion in bad faith.

This instance needs to clearly outline policies on defederation of instances that violate some set of norms (and refederation if instances are able to regulate their content). I for one think it should be pretty straightforward to put a policy in place to defederate hate speech, CSAM, and scientific disinformation.

For me this is an easy aye. We already defederate from Lemmygrad for tankyism. I don't see an issue with that, as that often comes with denying genocide and generally being apologetic of leaders of the past who have legislated against and killed minorities.

I don't see how a right-wing instance obsessed with Donald "very fine people on both sides" trump is any better. It simply stands to reason that if Lemmygrad is to remain defederated (and I don't see why not) then so should EH.

it seems ridiculous to defederate from lemmygrad but not these tools

any 'personal convictions' that rule out tankies but not fascists are a serious red flag

Lemmy grad was more established when this instance was spun up. Since that time a community controlled system has been implemented here. That's all.

After a read through a few of their communities it's clear to me the instance favors the expression of right wing extremism under the claim of free speech.

So while I'm not usually against defederation as a rule, keeping the fediverse clean unfortunately means that hateful opinions must be shut down. And in that case the admin makes it clear in his recent post they want to keep hateful posts going on.

So defederation it is.

"keeping the fediverse clean unfortunately means that hateful opinions must be shut down"

If you replace 'hateful' with 'opposing' then your statement is quite alarming.

Is not the difference between 'hateful' and 'opposing', just a matter of perspective? I'm sure MAGA supporters don't see themselves as hateful any more than we see ourselves as hateful. Yet, we're more than happy to hate MAGA supporters.

Blocking 'hate' (aka: opposition) in the name of 'keeping the fediverse clean' is a sure fire way to turn this society into another Reddit.

I say, leave it up to the individual users. If a user really doesn't want to see any posts from an instance, let them block it on an individual basis.
- No.
  
  Hate in this context is an attitude that presents an active risk of harm to a group of humans. It typically results in rejecting their basic humanity, leading to mass repression and violence. This isn't exactly a novel concept.
  
  You can oppose something without acting in hatred, or creating an environment that supports or bolsters hatred. You do this by respecting the basic humanity of the group your concern involves and their attendant right to exist. You want to debate, for example, the age appropriateness of certain topics of sexuality and gender in schools, that's fine. It is something that requires discussion and reasoning. But any discussion about that needs to be couched in the fact that gay and trans people exist, are fellow humans, and that needs to be addressed.
  
  Unfortunately, for every well intentioned and humanistic MAGA-esque person who does not act with hate, there are many more who do. They stymie productive discourse with a baseline of shared humanity, to the detriment of their fellow humans. As such, it is not only justified, but necessary to exclude them from the table.
- Yeah and if you replace "opinions" with "babies" then "shut down" with "murder" then suddenly you're talking about murdering babies!! Oh man. This is a real slippery slope.
- Is not the difference between ‘hateful’ and ‘opposing’, just a matter of perspective?
  
  Haha, no. There are many views different from mine. I enjoy discussing opposing views. Luckily, only a very slim minority could be labelled as hateful.
  
  Maybe the two seem indistinguishable if a political identity is built on hate.
- if you replace 'opinions' with 'minorities' it becomes quite alarming too
  
  or if you replace 'so defederation it is' with 'so terrorism it is'
  
  i mean, it doesnt say those things at all, but it would be very alarming if it did

I initially was against defederation. I went over there today and I've changed my mind. It's a trash heap of right wing extremist links. Dailymail, dailycaller, blaze, brietbart. It's every bit as ideologically motivated in the extreme right wing direction as lemmygrad is in the extreme left wing direction.

They are also calling for people to make alts and vote over here, so be aware. May want to check activity of posters when this vote finally goes down and check for low effort accounts that only voted and commented since today.

__

In the longer term, I'd like to see rules that define when we will defederate an instance so that we don't have to discuss it on an instance by instance basis. Or maybe we will want to have a grey area for discussion, and a red line that results in instant-defederation. Either way it'd be nice to have that info posted publicly.

FWIW it seems like exploding heads has plenty of content that would break rules, is generating more all the time, and their admin has no interest in moderating it

If I were to write such a standing policy for defederation, I think it would read something like this:

Admins of sh.itjust.works shall defederate with another instance immediately when that instance:

is operated for the purpose of hosting bot accounts for the purposes of spam, scams, denial-of-service attacks, or other traffic generally unwelcome or disruptive to the Fediverse.

is operated for the purpose of posting commercial advertisements to other instances.

is operated primarily for the purpose of illegal or harmful acts, such as sharing child pornography, human trafficking, inciting/facilitating acts of violence or terrorism, etc.

is operated primarily for the purpose of political extremism/radicalization to include rampant bigotry, racism, sexism, calls to violence.

is generally operated in good faith but some temporary issue such as a credential theft has deprived the genuine admins of control of the instance and problematic posts/communities/members are being created. The admins may defederate or refederate as needed to meet this condition.

Admins or members of sh.itjust.works may call a member vote in the Agora on the matter of defederating when another instance when that instance:

was historically operated in good faith but has more recently entered a state of low moderation; illegal/immoral/spam traffic is posted against the intsance's own rules with no attempt to moderate.

is a very small instance operated by one or a few individuals to circumvent a ban if ban-worthy behavior continues.

A non-emergency technical issue arises, for example an instance starts sending garbled posts which fill feeds with nonsense, members may request temporary defederation until the glitch is resolved.
- I'm not sure how much value a "me too" has over just upvoting, but I broadly agree with the thrust of this proposal.
  
  I particularly support the "just do it" approach for the blatant transgressors, otherwise we'll end up in a spiral of constant debate and empower those who will seek to delay it to prevent consquences for unethical activities.
- This is way outside the scope of the current discussion, but I really hope you save this for later. With a few very minor tweaks, I would wholeheartedly shout it from the rooftops. In its current form, I would heartily endorse it.
- I'm from another instance but interested in the topic.
  
  Appreciate your proposal! Just because it is a proposal. It's much easier to talk about things with concrete examples.
  
  Now to my question: Why the "primarily for the purpose"? If the acts/crimes layed out in #2 and #3 were 'just' secondary purposes, would that make it any better?
  
  Similarly, I wonder about #1 and #2 if "operated for the purpose" really catches your intention. Say the instance is operated for the purpose of sharing cat pics, as layed out in the instance description, but the admin just looks the other way when bot accounts take over and ads are posted to other instances.
  
  I guess my line of reasoning is, the intention or purpose does not matter much. Specifically, the declared intention and purpose does not matter much. If it acts like a bad actor, treat it like a bad actor.
- Sounds understandable...
- Hear, hear!
- for the purpose of political extremism/radicalization
  
  How do you define that?
  
  Many people consider their opponents to be political extremists. Many on the right wing would argue that BLM protesters were political extremists. They had confrontations with police, there was some destruction of property at BLM protests. Or, what about the protests / riots in France over pensions? Or the convoy protests in Ottawa, Canada?
  
  In my mind there's a definite difference between BLM protests and say the Jan 6 insurrection, but it would be really hard to find an objective definition that included the "good" radical protests and excluded the "bad" ones.
They are also calling for people to make alts and vote over here, so be aware. May want to check activity of posters when this vote finally goes down and check for low effort accounts that only voted and commented since today.

I am keeping an eye on that. I banned @safeword because it was a clear example of that. Please notify us if you see any others.
I felt the same way. Generally I'm quite against defederation, but took a look as well. At best they aren't contributing anything of value, at worst they're just incredibly toxic.
a red line that results in instant-defederation

For me personally, that would be repeated calls to violence or general hatred of a group of people without moderator or admin action within a reasonable period of time.

Outside of the scope of this discussion of course, but that's where I stand.
- I've reported multiple users multiple times from exploding-heads for such behavior (against trans people). The admin of exploding heads has been documented as saying that's fine (though I'd have to go find that thread again). That instance is not moderated to a standard of decency, and its active users have developed a reputation for raiding
Perhaps a special place like a garden community where ambassadors can visit and discuss stuff would work...

I was also initially against defederation. I believe that to combat bigotry and hate, we need to show that those things aren't tolerated, and also why the those things are wrong. And I still believe this, however I don't believe it's the right response to EH anymore.

They are coming on to other instances and making posts like this, this, this, and this. Each one an innocuous post, but each one containing a link back to their instance.

It appears they are recruiting for their instance in the time tested way of slow exposure to radicalization.

Time to stop their spread and defederate them. And when their users come over because they like our communities, then we can combat their bigotry and hate, and ban those who won't change.

That's just how crossposting works in Lemmy, but yeah, that might have been intentional.
- You might be right but if you look at the third link, the one about Germany and the Holocaust, you'll see it was done differently than the others.
  
  I think, and maybe someone can correct me, that they created a new post and cross-posted the new post, and then linked the original post on EH in the body of the post. But I'm not familiar with how Lemmy does cross-posting, so I accept I could be wrong.

I think we should defederate from any alt-right or facist instance, do not give them a plataform.

How exactly are we giving them a platform by staying federated? They have their server, we have ours. Their posts only show up on this server's timeline if someone subscribes to their communities, and even then, their 100 active users still have to create enough traffic to not be pushed down by the over 2000 active users on this instance, not to mention all the other instances we are federated with, that have each way more traffic than exploding-heads does.

Seriously, even while the sorting was busted in 0.17.4, I have never seen a post from exploding-heads. And as long as they don't even come close to dictating what people on this instance see when they are looking at 'all', I don't see the need for defederation.
- It shows up when you browse the "all" feed. That's the main point of federation. It greatly increases discoverability and it's the main way newcomers (who do not yet have a lot of subscriptions) will interact with the Fediverse.
  
  Sadly, my client doesn't even let me block communities for myself. So right now I can't avoid seeing alt-right shit under "all". (I haven't yet tried via my instance's web site; hoping I can make a blocklist there.)

I vote defedederation. This is a clear instance of "nip it in the bud". Additionally, drafting a clear code of what the terms of defedederation will entail in the future will help both users and mods. We're still new in this whole fediverse learning experience, so it's understandable that there will be challenges like this, but I personally will feel most comfortable in instances which are willing to take strong stances against bigotry and hate speech.

Defederate nazis!

What Nazis? Stop devaluing real Nazism as a term for right wingers.
- The only difference between today's MAGA movement and the OG Nazis is the branding.
- They're chanting 'blood and soil' at alt-right marches. That's a do not pass go or collect $200 straight up nazi thing.

At first I was against defederating from them, since even though I do not agree with their viewpoints, I was of the opinion that we should not be so hasty to defederate with anyone. I thought that it was against the spirit of the Fediverse.

However, I have since changed my mind. There are three types of federation in Lemmy: allow list, block list, and open. We aren't under any obligation federate anyone that feels like spinning up an instance.

The people on that instance, including its mods and admins, are a hate group. They break the sh.itjust.works rules of being respectful and having no bigotry. The exploding-heads content has no business even reaching the sh.itjust.works server, in my opinion.

It would also be a very bad look for us for sh.itjust.works users to create an account here and begin posting on instances which break our rules.

There is also the argument that, since we federate with a Nazi instance, we are also a Nazi instance. We had the "The Donald" and "Conspiracy Theories" communities which also supported that argument. Whether you agree with it or not, this is why we have been defederated from Beehaw, one of the larger Lemmy instances.

In addition to all of the ideological arguments above, they have opened themselves up to a botswarm invasion, and I think that is itself a reason to defederate them. It's a simple security concern!

Finally, I am in disbelief we are even voting on this a second time. I would have expected the moderator team to honor the previous vote to defederate from them. Any further discussion and vote should have been to re-federate with them.

My vote: defederate.

Exploding-heads.com is full of disgusting, hateful, toxic shit.

Besides, it's not banning, it's defederating. If you have the bad taste to want to see that bigoted dumpster fire, you can always go over there. We don't need it over here.

But we all know that the chuds aren't happy staying in their little shitholes. They want to bring the shit here even though we've plainly said we don't want it.

They want to bully, and they want to recruit new chuds. Don't let them use sh.itjust.works for that.

Deplatforming works, and that's why all the fashies are having a screaming tantrum. Fascism can't spread if the rest of us don't let them use our spaces for that.

These babies are also more than welcome to just make accounts over there and spew hate to each other, and yet they're not happy just doing that? How strange.

edit: sarcasm, if that's not clear.

My vote remains to defederate. Their administration are among the worst of the bad actors; to me, that is the primary issue as the admins will determine the shape of the instance. I have already pretty much abandoned this instance though, so take of that what you will. There is, in my opinion, an excessive amount of hand wringing and foot dragging over what should be a pretty easy question. As a consequence we've been flooded with very obvious apologist accounts and their bad faith arguments to protect their friends. I'd like to keep this account active but I'm deeply unimpressed with how this has all been handled and I no longer have much faith that sh.itjust.works is able to prevent itself from becoming a nazi bar.

In general I think instances this large are a mistake.

There is, in my opinion, an excessive amount of hand wringing and foot dragging over what should be a pretty easy question. As a consequence we've been flooded with very obvious apologist accounts and their bad faith arguments to protect their friends

Completely agree.

I was initially hesitant. It seemed a bit rushed. I was wrong. I do like this instance, and I do like the possibilities, however we run a very real risk of looking like a safe space for bigotry as long as it's got a veneer of civility.
Very well, I understand your perspective. You are obviously a valuable user and I will be sad to see you go if this vote doesn't go your way.

Nonetheless, I must also be faithful to my own convictions, and I cannot agree that this is an easy decision. The main caveat to your argument is that we outnumber them 25 to 1, and many of us are currently already blocking them, or blocked by them. If they had as much influence on this server as you imply, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

In general I think instances this large are a mistake.

I would like to discuss this topic at a later date, just out of intellectual curiosity.
- Understand, it's not that I think exploding heads in specific is the root of all evil. The nazi bar effect isn't the result of one bad actor turning everything bad. It's that sh.itjust.works has demonstrated that it takes well over a week to respond to what appears to be pretty blatant alt-right stuff and a public vote to disavow it, with pretty much admin silence over that week. Where were they? Why choose not to act? More importantly, why not say anything about the choice? This makes it look like a prime place for anyone sympathetic to come around and start astroturfing, and that's what they've done.
  
  I'd feel much differently if there'd been any kind of explanation of why the first vote on agora was just summarily ignored despite the topic cropping up multiple times per day before and since, but aside from "we need some time to think" buried into comments, I'm not aware of anything. The admins were thinking something, and that is fine, but we weren't given the option to decide if we agreed or disagreed with the reasons for delaying and now rre-voting. I'd call that a bad look any day, but it's a much worse look immediately on the heels of big talk about making the server democratic.
  
  I'd be happy to talk about why I think large servers are a mistake any time. The explanation is even partly couched in these answers, because I know some of the reasons things are slow is because of the size of the server.
obvious apologist accounts and their bad faith arguments to protect their friends

Ignoring the whole defederation debate this just seem like anti intellectual rhetoric designed to shut down debate because you feel the users aren't valid?

but I’m deeply unimpressed with how this has all been handled

You do know that in this instance we vote so stuff so you are just unimpressed with the users not siding with you?
- Not every dissenting opinion is an obvious apologist account. If it were, you wouldn't see me through this thread all over the place having what I consider productive discussion with other people who have differing opinions.
  
  Within the post you just quoted, I explained why I am unimpressed. In the replies, I explained it far more. I find it a little hard to believe you could read what I wrote even in that one post and come up with that reply in good faith, but if you'd like to hear what I mean in more detail, try reading the copious explanation I've added in this very thread over the last six hours.
  
  Frankly, I think the evidence thus far suggests that users do side with me, so your hostility is both unwarranted and kind of nonsensical.

There is no way to debate these people who have no concept of reality. They do not argue in good faith, so all they do is spread misinformation about vaccines, covid, and free elections, and hate for minorities. I think we should defederate from them.

Yes. Deport them. They're not sending their best people. They're sending their rapists and murderers.

I would defederate.

I see no tangible benefit to associating with them. I don't see an esoteric benefit either.

If they want to be awful, but in an amplified and coordinated way, then I want no part of it.

Cancer doesn't need friends or allies.

I vote for defederation.

I'm in favour of sharing and experiencing diverse opinions but not where those opinions involve hatred and gross personal attacks on certain groups. People like this cannot be educated, cannot be persuaded, and their rhetoric causes a great deal of harm.

"People like this cannot be educated, cannot be persuaded, and their rhetoric causes a great deal of harm."

I'm sorry, but that sounds like a gross personal attack on a certain group.

Look, I hear where you're coming from. I can't stand the MAGA movement. But the fact is the planet is full of disagreements and people who feel wronged. Sometimes it is important to hear these voices, both for our understanding and theirs.

By blocking instances we disagree with, we not only become a groupthink echo chamber, but we create another echo chamber in the banned community.

As a group, we can't put our hands over our ears and shout "lalalalalala..." every time we hear something we disagree with. We are a society. Don't be so precious.

Having said all that, I am in favor of individual users having the ability to block messages from an whole instance. It should be entirely up to the individual.
- The point at which your Venn cloud reaches a point of criticality is always going to be a largely individual decision. For communities that's going to wind up being an aggregate of individual decisions.
  
  I'm more sympathetic to left-wing arguments, however I have little tolerance for tankies and thugs who can't differentiate nuance. That's also not to say that I have any love for equivocating neoliberals, and as for conservative, capitalist and maga style viewpoints.. well, to me they're so infrared and IMO averse to life in general that they're not even on the visible light spectrum.
  
  As I'm getting older, I also find I have less tolerance for re-hashing arguments I've had many times over.
  
  It's boring.
  
  I don't want to die of heatstroke in the middle of a powercut in an overpriced rental, starving because a bunch of rent-seeking chucklefucks couldn't see past the end of their own noses, and spent their resources trying to keep a doomed gravytrain running instead of doing what needed to be done to keep us alive.
- My thoughts exactly.

I see nothing to be gained from remaining federated. Exploding heads doesn't offer a "diversity of opinion" or engage in good-faith debate any more than lemmygrad, and remaining federated will do nothing but fill our feeds with their low-effort hate trolling and sully our instance's reputation.

A community becomes much less diverse when it banishes entire groups of people just because some of their members hold views you disagree with. The community becomes an echo chamber of yes-men.

I'm not taking a stance on politics here, I just disagree with this tendency to defederate groups on the drop of a hat.
- Have you looked at the content over there? It's not about opinions. It's mostly just low quality hate, trolling and nonsense conspiracies.

I literally just joined, and I'm still wrapping my head around how all of this works, but I'd like to say this:

No matter which way this vote goes, I really appreciate how this is being handled: An open, honest and respectful debate amongst the users is by far the best way I've seen a "social network" try to handle content moderation.

Well done people.

Note that since Lemmy is new, if I invite someone to this server and they say extremely racist content, they're never going to give this platform another try.

I think you mean "see" not "say". Changes your entire comment.
I think people are more forgiving than that.
- Eh, this one simple comment immediately brought in a troll posting racist images that resulted in deletion and a ban. It didn't stay up for long thanks to swift action, but it lets you know the kind of people that are waiting to take advantage of any opening to be unpleasant people.
- I'm not sure. Reddit alternatives kind of have a reputation as for a long time only those banned from reddit would consider them.
  
  This has since changed though but anyone who remembers voat might be more cautious.

You can watch my opinion evolve https://sh.itjust.works/comment/468378

It is no longer "like two people or something lol".

The difference between posts and comments is large as others pointed out (way more posts) and to me this indicates they are looking more for "you need MY content in your feed (because I said so)" more than "let's discuss this content". I prefer the latter.

I am now in favor of defederating exploding heads.

If you want that content in your feed, there are plenty of ways to get it. I don't.

I vote for defederation.

Just looked at them, and to be honest, it is pathetic. Their uhh... interesting interpretations of the Bible, and that they dismiss the arguments of people who have the opposite political viewpoints. This, in my view, is unacceptable. They (the alt-right, which seems to be the primary users of the instance) really only want to humiliate left-of-centre people. And when humilitation is the goal, that is not an opinion, that is hate.

sh.itjust.works should not federate with (show content of) instances that is completely dismissive and hateful of a group of people.

I also think that defederation should only be used against extreme cases of botswarming, which is something that looks to be happening: 6727 total users against 108 active in the last month, and 139 in the past half-year.

They also have a community called "pedophilia" which is ostensibly against it but at the same time naming and hosting a community that is really weird.
- that kinda made me uncomfortable ngl
- Are they filling it with posts about LGBTQ "groomers"?
  
  Haven't taken a look but based on recent right/alt-right rhetoric, that's the sort of nonsense I would expect.
  
  Who wants to play risky community content gamble?

Just a heads up to those walking in to this thread now: this is not a vote.

Please read the arguments for and against. Please upvote the arguments you find convincing so that they're pushed to the top. Please write a comment if you see a line of argumentation hasn't been explored or hasn't been expressed well in your opinion. This is not the vote. That will come after.

EDIT: Also, probably should have mentioned: the final vote will be for users of this instance, but the discussion phase is very much open to anybody. Please, if you're from another instance, participate.

Defederate they are not even a free speech instance. I really don't want to see them talking and making memes about children's gentiles when I sort by new.

I vote that we should defederate. While users are able to block this content, new users seeing it will not want to stay here. If this instance does not allow hate speech, then we should not be federating with those that do.

I understand that they currently have a small amount of users, but as with all MAGA communities I am certain it will grow fast, especially if allowed to federate with larger instances where they can share their views. I fear continuing to federate with them will lead to sh.itjust.works becoming a nazi bar situation.

I do understand if this instance does not want to moderate in this way, but I believe that it will lead to many moving to a community with more strict guidelines on federation. I know I would, as no part of me wants to read hate speech when I browse all.

For what it's worth. I was looking at the server statistics on https://the-federation.info/platform/73 (linked from join-lemmy) and I noticed something. Almost all of the largest lemmy servers have far more comments than posts. The only two notable exceptions are lemmynsfw and exploding heads. They both have far more posts than comments. I'm not sure what it means, but it might be useful to someone in this discussion.

For example.

sh.itjust.works has 5966 posts to 32670 comments
exploding heads has 18406 posts to 5503 comments

exploding-heads is much older

I'm late to the discussion, but, I'd be a fan of temporary defederation until Lemmy supports users blocking entire instances. I'm not overly big on the idea of defederation in general, I feel like it hurts the fediverse overall. But I don't want to see those asshats either. I keep blocking the communities as they pop up. But it's not really my place to tell everyone else what kind of content they can and can't enjoy.

And I imagine that even on an instance that leans that way, there are probably still "normal" communities too. If the world's biggest and best "cute cat pictures" community somehow manages to spring up on an instance that also has a Nazi community, what then? If my only interaction with that instance and it's users are through cute cat pictures, and I don't ever know that the guy who posted the cat pic also happens to like swastikas and sucking camel dicks, why should I even care?

In the real world, unfortunately, the guys who like swastikas and sucking camel dicks also seem to really like telling everyone about it. So keeping them federated still gives them an ability to try to infect others. Because they definitely won't stay in their little box.

So anyways. It's hard. My preference is to leave it federated for those that want to see it, as long as there's an easy way to block it for those that don't. Since that doesn't exist just yet, I'd be for defederation for exactly as long as it takes for Lemmy to implement instance blocking at a user level. Then open it back up and everyone can make their own choice as they see fit.

I vote to defederate. The bot swarm by itself would be enough, but the inability of individual users to block instances means that those of us who do not want to see their garbage do not have another realistic option. If Lemmy ever gives user instance-blocking, then I would reserve defederation to botting and to illegal content and allow people to choose who to associate with on their own.

Just block problem users. It isn't hard unless you're a total crybaby who can't handle the slightest bit of dissent crossing your vision

+1 on defederation

I'm sick of blocking each sub and user individually as they show up on my feed

Get a developer to implement finer tools, not abuse the sledgehammer.
- No. Not everyone deserves a seat at the same table because some people just want to take a dump on the table and laugh.
  
  T_D was on Reddit a long time, what has been gained by that? Unabashed racism on the front page and nothing else. If that's the sort of thing you want to fight for, good, then I'm going to fight against that.

I vote to defederate. Like I said before, I was looking for an Oregon community and the only one that showed up in search results was the exploding heads one, which had a long history of posts denigrating trans and homeless people. In this case, I think no content is better than awful content. I wouldn't want some Lemmy newbie joining this server and misconstruing the Oregon community federated from them as our own.

I'll preface by saying I'm not a user of this instance. My opinion is that alt-right is synonymous with fascists. Giving fascists any platform will always result in their attempts to silence you and take your platform away. I think the ability to defederate with toxic communities is a blessing we shouldn't fear so much. If their ideas are acceptable, they'll find an audience. Either by being accepted by other instances, or others joining theirs. I just think it's important to be loud about the decision so that if others want to hear their beliefs, they can check them out.

+1 Defederate. Save us the effort from blocking each of their users and communities.

In a Mastodon instance there is unidirectional communication. I can mute someone. That seems like a function that would be useful here. Is there a way to mute their instance (nothing inbound from them to my server) but they can receive from me? Why would I ask this? The minute I treat someone as though they are irredeemable, there is no reason for them to try to achieve redemption. If what we do here, all of us, is honorable, they’ll be able to see that. To some degree this can cause… Let’s call it dissension in the ranks.

We block their noise inbound to our servers, yes. But let them see the difference between what their pundits tell them, and what actually is.

Or, I may be completely wrong. I’ve been labeled an edgelord for having this position.

That is not a feature available in either Lemmy or KBin yet. The primary directive, if you ask me, of online community building is you must not allow your users to come to mental harm. It would be nice to keep exploding-heads from becoming a nazi echo chamber by having realistic content appearing in their feed, but we shouldn't let that stop us from preventing their continued abuse of our rules
- The concern I have, is that the nuclear option doesn’t solve the problem. It just kicks the can down the road. Sure users at this moment in this context may not be coming to mental harm, but that’s pretty constrained. We end up in cyber warfare where eventually they decide to DoS systems and bot farm. I agree there is no reason to allow them to abuse us. I’m just of the opinion that the greater good is not served by creating two fediverses… I accept that people want to defederate. I’m not trying to stop that. I just think there are unintended consequences attached to that action.
It was brought up in the GitHub but it never got any traction #3255
- Fair enough I guess. Sounds like the only option people want is defederaton.
Is there a way to mute their instance (nothing inbound from them to my server) but they can receive from me?

Yes, in a very specifiic way. Assume A defederated B, but B is still federated with A. C is federated with both, and both are federated with C.

When users from A post or comment in communities hosted on C, that is visible to users from B. When B users reply to A users, A users won't see it.
No that's actually a really good point worth considering.
- Thank you. I hope smarter people than I come up with an adequate solution.
There is also this suggestion which just needs someone to tackle it and it will get accepted: Allow a user to block an instance #2397. That could be combined with an admin function to opt-out an instance by default.

I'm for defederation as well. If I could block an entire instance easily I would, but that isn't an option yet.

If anyone wants to view the content on that instance, make an account. It's easy and free. There is no limit to how many instances you can join if you want to.

Yeah, because doesn't everyone love needing to effectively have an account for every single instance just because some people are lazy asses who don't want to have to curate their own feeds
- By the way, pretty funny you're calling people lazy for not wanting to have to individually ban users and communities when you're too lazy to just create an account on another instance 👍
- Just join an instance that isn't defederated from any others and enjoy the shit show or create your own instance and enjoy whatever content you want to see.
- It doesn't have to be an either/or scenario. You can do both. Curate your feed AND make an additional account.
  
  If you need an individual account for each instance you might want to consider why none of your interesting instances want to federate with each other.

I think conversations about defederating instances being the top conversation day after day is going to be a major hindrance to growth.

While many love the fedeverse and the idea, a significant amount of people just want easy to find communities they can engage with, and this non stop internal politics will drive people off them.

Make a set of rules, stick to them. It shouldn't be a community vote or discussion every day.

That's what we are doing. We have to make the rules first though, they don't just pop into existence. We have to go through this process first. Once the vote is complete, that'll be the end of it. Any other solution simply delays the problem for the future.

This way, whenever anyone asks "why are we defederated/still federated", we can simply link this thread and the vote and that's the end of the discussion. Fighting through the drama now so that future newcomers don't have to deal with it.
- Yeah reddit had that also in the past (e.g. The donald), it's just an unfortunate necessity, to keep discussion civil and constructive in the future to also attract the right people...
- I gave my 2 cents already in this thread, but you all should have honored the previous vote. This discussion and vote should have been about re-federating them. He's not wrong that this is redundant and tiring.
- If the discussion was a generic one but it seems fairly political and specific to instances now so I'm not sure I see a clear set of rules coming from these discussions

This may be an incredibly stupid question, but don’t we, as individual users, have the option to block/mute instances we don’t want to see content from?

If so, I think that it should be left to the individual, rather than the instance.

I don’t like what I’ve seen from them, or from lemmygrad, so I tend to just ignore it.

Unfortunately we do not. We can block individual communities and users, but that also isn't perfect. I was getting pinged from a community I blocked a while ago because I left a post up there, and had to unblock the community to go delete the post in order to stop it, for example.
- Ahh crap. Well hopefully in the future, that option to block an instance will be an option for users. I like the idea of users having control over the content they see, rather than it being decided by others.
  
  But, since this isn’t an option available to us now, maybe defederating (if that’s what the majority wants) is the most viable option.
I always like when I see your face pop up. Very grounded takes.
- Thank you! I appreciate that! I was slightly hesitant about saying anything, because I certainly don’t want to appear as some apologist for bad behavior.
  
  I guess I’m just super laid back and, if it bothers me, I’ll unplug it lol.
Personally, if instance blocking at a user level becomes a thing, I'd be more than happy to block the NSFW ones to spare myself the trouble of having to block every new communities of theirs manually. However, in the case of a place like exploding-heads, I wouldn't want to put a folding screen in front of them and live in blissful ignorance; their lies and hatred shouldn't be let free to propagate.
- I tend to agree. I’m pretty torn between “leave it in the hands on the user” and “get this garbage out of here.”
  
  In the end, though, my desire for personal freedoms tends to override my need to correct what I view as wrong.
  
  Such a weird position to be in lol

I think I will start a larger thread in the main community about what free speech means in the context of a somewhat anonymous internet. My current view is that while I want to promote openness and free speech that can really only work in a context where the person exercising their speech feels some necessity to use it responsibly and in an honest way. On the internet that takes a lot of self control because the social norms of every day life don't always apply because a) no one knows who you are b) there is not a human being right in front of you that you might feel empathy for c) there are no consequences to anything you say d) not all posts are even by humans. With all these taken together there is a compelling argument that speech may need to be more highly regulated on the internet than in face to face interactions. With the present instance we are discussing they may fit the mold as they have bots ( which don't have any right to free speech ) and posts which seem to be more focused on attacking people in bad faith rather than having honest discussion. I think the point I do want to make though is it's not the speech itself that I find that is the problem it's the methods of the speech : bots, and trollish attack posts; that I take issue with. I think that speech where the person is just mistaken, wrong, or I disagree with them should be allowed. I might change my mind on that in the future but that is my current stance.

I hate fascists like any sane person, but won't defederating will not only make them creating their own space? Just a thought.

Anyway, if they do, we can bomb them later. It's a "Aye" from me.

They already have their own space. Defederating just removes their loudspeaker, as we should.
- They have their house. We have ours. All we're discussing today is “Should we stop letting them into our house when they come over?”
- Defederating also helps reduce their recruiting pipeline.

So... Every bit of content I've seen from there is awful, the people seem pretty shitty and for what it's worth, I'm subscribed through lemmy.world so my opinion really shouldn't matter.

... But I don't think you should deferate them. Lemmy is new, the fediverse is new, and setting the precedent that lots of instances are willing to deferate instances basically because of political and ideological difference isn't healthy.

It sets the expectation that if you want a forum where you can speak reasonably freely, you'd better sign up somewhere where the mods and all the users share your opinions. I came to Lemmy hoping to have more personal control over how much of an echo chamber I live in, not less.

Thank you for your input, you may not be able to vote but it's certainly okay to share your opinion.
- I'm also from another instance but I totally agree. Defederation is only reasonable if there is a concrete threat that runs a risk of undermining the basic functions of an instance.
  
  Echo chambers are really dangerous but in different ways, so defederating should only be a last resort.

Yeah maybe another vote, people seem very passionate about this now maybe the result will be different. I'm not pro defederating instances but I don't feel that much positive feelings over the dogswill that gets posted in exploding heads. They literally just recreated /pol/ which happens to be the dumbest board on 4chan that most people outside /pol/ hate.

@[email protected] Question for you tangentially related to this: our prior vote on Agora voting being sh.it.heads* only - do we have an official stance on this right now? Seemed like that was the case but it was a pre-mod vote that is not listed in the results record.

Does have some bearing on how tomorrow will go down.

*("Sh.itheads" - pfft, splitters. Can't wait until we get this and the defederation policy out of the way so we can vote on the important stuff, like the term sh.it.heads being obviously superior :p)

Allowing users from other instances to vote is patently absurd, so it's not allowed.

Moderation should be accomplished with an iron fist for now, growth before anything. I vote yes.

38 minute old account posting only here.

Just FYI, try reading the post first. It's not a vote thread.
- yeah, i should've written I "would" vote yes technically, and it's my first comment ever!!! Still getting the hang on how everything works XD

I just went there, front page of their local is all the usual suspects

breitbart
townhall
truthsocial
thegatewaypundit
newsmax
dailycaller

It's as if /r/the_donald put up it's own lemmy instance.

I don't know, it was pretty fun on Reddit to go to subs like globalskepticism (a sincere flat earth sub) and argue with crazies for a bit. I had a mildly interesting argument with someone anti trans on that instance. If we stay federated, we can continue to downvote hate things into oblivion so it doesn't turn into a complete echo chamber.

You can always just make an account over there to do that, without expanding their platform.

Hate groups rely very heavily on people sharing their shitposts around and amplifying their messages under the "look how dumb these dummies are" flag. That's what got Trump elected and why I have been forced despite every protest to know who fuckin Gr**n and B****rt are in the alt right. They thrive on the shadenfreude shares.
- I don't share things, just post refutation comments. For example, I just posted to explain what the aid in Ukrane is doing to a meme that it was going down the drain. I might make a separate account for that specifically, but that makes it more difficult for people to refute them directly.
I also kind of agree with this. Watching them flip between enjoying the downvotes to claiming people are making bots to downvote them, as if it's impossible ten people could disagree with them, has been entertaining.

But is it worth it?
- I guess probably not. I can just make a separate account to mock and debunk them. And it won't be as interesting if they turn off downvotes as they've said they'd like to.

It's honestly pretty pathetic that there even needs to be a dialogue around this. Defederate or knowingly allow the cancer of hate and poorly masked dishonesty to spread. It's a very obvious decision that does not require deliberation. Nip it and mock every attempt they make to seem reasonable.

I vote not to defederate.

I agree with the Chinese Bot Troll on this one. I like open stuff. For me, personally, we've already defederated too much. I don't care enough about EH that it'd matter to me too much, but if it were up to me we wouldn't defederate anything that wasn't either a bot instance or a scam instance. As long as we have enough moderators to keep policy violators away, and we continue to observe, I don't see a reason to defederate. Then again, we've already defederated too much so I'm not too invested in this.

Nay, but only slightly. like 51-49

I like challenging them, and if sh.itjust.works defederates from them, I won't be able to! :(

Just because you enjoy the conflict doesn't mean we should subject marginalized user to their vitriol.

If you want to debate them (which is futile because they always argue in bad faith) you could always do it on their instance.

By remaining federated their content shows up here and their behavior is effectively condoned by this instance. New users of this instance will see that and could end up moving elsewhere because they don't understand federation yet.

They also use benign instances to link back to theirs as a recruiting tool which can further radicalize people who may not have known about the community in the first place. Real harm is done when we give fascists an outlet under the guise of free speech.

The only way for a tolerant society to remain tolerant is to be intolerant of intolerance.
- I assume you also raise these concerns with lemmy.ml allowing lemmygrad, the much larger hateful community?
  
  The only way for a tolerant society to remain tolerant is to be intolerant of intolerance.
  
  And as always, the rest of the quote:
  
  I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
  
  How can you apply the paradox of intolerance while you deny public opinion by calling to defederate from extremists? As it stands now, EH doesn't ban dissent; I've challenged them multiple times.

Even though I don't agree with what seems to be the general sentiment there, I still say Nay.

Lemmy is pretty fresh for the most of us still, and is in an incredible growing phase that could amplify in two days when the Reddit API goes down for third party apps.
Still, too many posts these days are about defederating left and right. All communities here are fresh and trying to find their footing, ours included. If we shut the door on all instances that have issues this fast, we're sabotaging the potential growth of this platform, in my opinion.

I'm not saying that anything should go, but let's not allow a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

If they keep allowing the horseshit to flow, I am very open to changing my vote.

let’s not allow a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

That's the saying though. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. That's why you remove the bad apples. That's literally what that saying is about.
- The bunch is the instance.
  You want to throw the whole bowl out with the good apples in it.
  
  I'm saying let's not shut the door at the first sign of trouble. Let's investigate the trouble and give the people in the room a chance to fix it first.
  We're still learning and this eagernes to ban could be hurtful in the long run.
Their admins are bad apples, though. Are you hoping they will ban themselves from the instance? Have you even looked at their instance and see who is saying what?
- Yes I have and I still don't support collective punishment at the first sign of trouble.
- Cam you actually back up your claim that their admins are bad apples, or are you just crying that dissent is automatically dishonest

I disagree with defederation. It shouldn't be used simply for blocking disputable instances like exploding-heads or lemmygrad. All this does is give them more arguments about censorship and remove possibility of discussions where you could argue about some information, making those people there believe what they see just on their tiny community more and more, because that's all they'll see.
I do support defederation in 2 cases:

The instance is filled with spammers/bots invading other instances.
The instance includes illegal and unethical content. (With no intention of its removal)

I would argue encouraging violence towards marginalized people is unethical. Also there is no room for civilized discussion when one side believes the other doesn't deserve basic human rights. The marginalized people on our server should not have to argue for their own existence.
Doesn't the OP say that exploding-heads is filled with bots, though? That they are a disreputable instance is just a distraction now, I think.

I think federation should be used as a tool for combatting spam (brigading included) and dealing with instances that allow illegal content or that promote actual violence.

De-federating is not the tool to use because you don't like seeing the content in your feed, you can block the communities. De-federating isn't the tool to enforce this instances moderation rules on other instance's communities.

Brigading is certainly a concern and if their users were doing that we would need to reach out to their admin to attempt to resolve the issue. As a last resort we could de-federate to mitigate the problem.

I'm not at all defending the ideas on EH or the user's posts or comments. There are some truly disgusting opinions being represented there. I just haven't seen them cross the line into allowing violence to be planned, or allowing CSAM or spamming.

It is very important to understand that de-federation is just a global block list that is enforced on every user on this instance. It is convenient for the users to have spam instances automatically blocked and for the users to not have to worry about CSAM in their feed. Beyond that, if a user wants to read alt-right content then it isn't up to me to tell them that they cannot.

If you want to block content that is 100% up to you, nobody can tell you who you can block. In exactly the same way you should not attempt to exercise any control over another user's block list.

De-federation is just a block list. Curate your own block list otherwise let the admins remove spam and obviously illegal stuff. De-federation isn't a super downvote button an we should not use it as such.

Promote violent content

Does posting a meme saying "Half of trans parents commit suicide. We're halfway there!" count, for example? How violent does it need to be for your barometer?
- It's the difference between
  
  "I'm glad that person died" and;
  
  "I'm going to kill that person"
  
  Both are hideous ideas but only one is actively dangerous and illegal.
A counter-aegument to your point is that EH users are using other instances to recruit and radicalize for alt-right by linking back to their instance. By not defederating, we are complicit and condone this recruitment and radicalization. These groups do advocate for violence on the regular even if not every single post does. They use dog whistles and hide behind plausible deniability and "edgy" memes to do it.

The only to help stop their growth is to block their content.

They are analogous to pedophiles in that an isolated pedophile who is constantly reminded how wrong their desires are is much less likely to act on them. But given the opportunity to find others like them, they will group up and conspire to commit horrible atrocities.

The only way for a tolerant society to remain tolerant is to be intolerant of intolerance.
- I sort.. of see your point, but I can also say if you put me in a room of pedophiles, no amount of time spent in that room will turn me into a pedophile. I think the idea some people here are trying to express is that (and I'm going to change the analogy from pedo to antihomo) if you're in a room of people who are against homosexuality, at the very least the ones who are such for superficial reasons outside of their own resolve can be snapped out of it. The ones who truly believe that their reasoning is sound will continue to be alone in that thought.
  
  The very notion of having a popular platform be censored from bigotry is laughable. It will become corrupted, always. Maintaining free speech with productive conversation is no easy task, it actually requires a lot of hard work and a lot of maturity within the userbase, and because it's so difficult to have some of these conversations, people want to completely chop it off. It's understandable, but I just don't like seeing people pretending to take the high ground here. Also, the fact that we cannot leave it to users to self-defederate is concerning and disrespectful to the userbase. Where does a community get the idea that it should choose what to redact from individual users, as though the users are too stupid to make that choice for themselves?
- They are analogous to pedophiles in that an isolated pedophile who is constantly reminded how wrong their desires are is much less likely to act on them. But given the opportunity to find others like them, they will group up and conspire to commit horrible atrocities.
  
  That doesn't really work in this instance.
  
  De-federation doesn't remove them from their instance, it doesn't remove their instance from the Fediverse, they are free to sit and talk to other people who share their ideas and, since they're de-federated, they're cut off from anybody who could possibly tell them that they have the wrong ideas.
  
  There is nothing that you can do to make, for example, the EH instance not exist. De-federation doesn't make them go away, it doesn't prevent people from joining their instance, it simply blocks everyone on this instance from interacting with them. They're still posting every day, still having bad ideas, still sharing bad content.
  
  De-federation is just a block list that is enforced on everyone on the same instance. By asking for de-federation you're not asking for your ability to block them (you already have that ability), you're asking for the ability to force other people to block them.
  
  You curate your own block list, and I'll curate my own block list. De-federation doesn't exist for you to apply your idea of a good filter to everybody else that shares an instance with you.
I don't know, you don't want your instance to slowly "degrade" to a nazi-instance (to put it harshly) while repulsing potential users that would provide constructive content. It's a balance one has to moderate, as the Internet is unfortunately not a happy place...

You also have to view it from the point of admins (as it could be quite some work blocking individually)

For all the users that were on this instances that provide actual constructive content, no one keeps them bound to these instances, they can just sign up on a different one...
Please don't be naive. We've already seen where this goes. January 6 has already happened. The Club Q shooting has already happened. These are not isolated incidents. This brand of hatred is not nonviolent anymore. We should not remain passive in this case. If someone from our instance wants to read and post alt-right stuff, let them create a new account on their instance.

No to defederation. As long as their instance is not significatly impacting this instance, I'm against it.

Seriously, I have seen neither a thread nor one of their users on this instance.

“ Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.”

This seems like a great compromise.

If you feel so strongly that you’d like to continue to interact with everyone here, and you don’t want to see stuff from another particular instance, then this is a great option.

I vote no action is needed here on this instance.

I believe in freedom of speech and that everyone should allow or block something he/she doesn't like, so I'm against defederating.

The problem is that the whole instance is mostly just toxic shit. And on lemmy you can only block communities but not instances...
If instances could be blocked at the user level I'd agree but I don't blame people for not wanting to prune communities individually as they appear.

I'm sick and tired of all the complaining.

That's why I waited all week to post this thread. One day of arguing and then we can finally get the vote over with. This is a slog but there are better days ahead.
- Is it though?
  
  If Lemmy keeps growing as it does now, there will be new instances up for a vote every single day.
  Hell I've only been here a few weeks and am already tired of the constant complaining.
  
  When did we start letting idiots affect us this much?
  Why can't we just ignore the shit and spread some love?

No, do not participate and block the communites if you want to. This should be a platform for free speech. Just because you don't like it does not mean it should be defederated.

I absolutely do not support what they say or do, but I think anyone should be able to discuss anything, not just stuff I support. That's what free speech is, and I am 100% against ANY form of censorship.

I haven't seen anything from them and I don't go looking for it. But if every instance defederated something they don't like, Lemmy will absolutely fail. No one wants to use 87 different instances so they have a complete experience. Every instance will be a special place for their snowflakes

"Free speech" is not compatible with social media, in my opinion. We have the "no bigotry" and "be respectful" rules, which already disqualifies us from being a free speech platform. Lemmy instances, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit; none of them are public squares.
I completely agree!

There are some valid arguments to be made, and a vote shall be based on the greater good; here is what i consider, in order of significance:

The moral argument: What would closing myself off from others make out of me? Would building a wall toward people who are hateful not be a hateful act the same? After all, these are the type of people who want to build walls on borders to their neighbouring countries ... these are also the types who want to ban specific literature which they hate from schools, so would i be any better if i were to ban their scribblings now?
Then there's the rightful argument that intolerance can not be tolerated. I think this is often misunderstood, as "the intolerant" (people) must be banned, not the intolerance itself. Did i witness them doing unbearable acts of intolerance or harrassment outside of their home space? -- Not that i'm aware of.
Is nurturing the cultural schism that is dividing the global population actually giving me a good future perspective for human civilisation? -- No it isn't. I can do better. It's actually hurting my intelligence if i just shut the door on someone, just because i don't like what they are doing in their own space.
It should also be mentioned here, that people who have grown such a mindset may be psychologically challenged. Abused children who lost contact with part of their souls. It's counter-productive to deny them access to what i believe to be a more sane society.
1 point for not defederating. The moral argument alone would actually suffice but let's also see the others.
The legal argument: Does exploding-heads have any content that must not be replacated on this server because it would create a legal liability in Canada? -- I don't know that, so i'll have to pass this question on.
The actual purpose of the tool: Defederation is mainly a method to protect the network and servers from malicious actors, alongside legal reasons. So, did the inhabitants of exploding-heads attempt disruption of the network or in communities in a significant amount that would warrant denying all of them access to this server? -- Not that i am aware of. If it wasn't for a handful of campaigners pulling my attention to that server, i would perhaps not even be aware of it's existance. Of course, i do not especially track those people, so if there are examples of nasty behaviour i would kindly ask to bring forward direct links to posts and comments they made on this server.
In the case of "they are becoming a bot farm", the right way to take would be to first ask them to do something about it, and only if there is no sufficient reaction, defederate.
+1 for not defederating.
Would defederating solve anything? -- Well, there's the argument that "i don't want to help them spread their message by replicating it". That might seem valid until we notice that their server is doing the same with our content. And we have far more content than what they produce.
To the contrary i would argue, because if someone from exploding-heads would seriously want to troll this server, then it would become harder to recognise them if they needed to make another account somewhere else.
Further, defederating from one right-wing server would create a precedent which would call up the same discussion every time a new community of that kind would come along. We wouldn't be able to stop it. And what would we do when finally a per-user instance ban became available, would we revert?
Adding to that, i see this more or less as a symptom of the USA-internal kind of civil schism they have, that is democratic against antidemocratic. Coming from a country that has it's own share of extremists and also a history of fascism, walls and fences between countries and all -- i ask myself if i would want to react the same way if those people would turn up with their own instance: demanding from my Lemmy instance to defederate from them? ... Or similar things coming from any other country? How much support would that get, and why would i support the US-internal divisiveness?
+1 for not defederating.

So i think it's clear. Too much text. ...
As much as i find exploding heads despickable (alone the name makes me want to stay away) -- defederation is just not the way to go. We should better have clear guidelines for the use of that tool, so as to not turn it into a weapon, and so as to not have political campaigners draw too much attention. I'd also suggest to use the bounty program to incentivise developers to make better management tools available.

I disagree, federation should about joining things of value not about building a community with everyone at all cost except the most extreme ones. Every community should decide their level of participation in the world community, but it's every bit is as valid if this community wanted to close down and allow nothing but discussions about bunny themed sweaters. Would that make it a huge, popular instance where people wanting to expand their world-view want to part their attention every day? Probably not. Would it be infringing on the rights of alt-left-right-and-sideways groups? Not in the slightest.

The whole point of a federated network isn't that it's one big decentralized network where every node is identical but just harder to bring down, it's having a common link where you can join together however you like without the technical hurdle that exists for parking yourself on your device and checking twitter and facebook and reddit and mastadon and linkedin and a dozen disparate sites because all your friends siloed themselves in and you can't communicate. Here your knitting friends could be on one instance, your biker gang is on another one, your DnD group is on another and aside from your skin-head cousin who you can't see from 'this' instance because he's on a platform this instance didn't want to federate with, you can chat with them all. And if you want to chat with him too, you can find an instance that is wide open and join that one and decide if 'that' is the kind of experience you want to have. Or start your own instance and federate with 'everyone'.

You have great points on making communities more inviting, but the fact is that your argument has to convince each instance individually and that is the downside and the great part of federation. One central authority doesn't see your argument, decide you're right and then force all users of all instances that that's just the way it's going to be from now on. Every instance can embrace your view or tell you to bugger off. That's the freedom and benefit of the concept, not it's weak spot.

Do the right-wing people deserve a chance to be heard and understood. more or less YES. But that shouldn't force everyone and their dog to be the ones to give them that chance. There are people who have been abused by people like that their entire lives, there are people who would rather not listen to infantile profanity repeated in all caps filling up their front page. There are people who simply need a break from it or are just done with it. There's nothing wrong with one instance out of thousands deciding to cater to those people, just like there's nothing wrong with an alt-left site defederating with your sewing group because they think the content is boring and don't want it cluttering up their bandwidth.

There's room for everyone, while still giving people the right to choose where they site, and reserving the right for the people putting in their time and resources to chose who to defederate for any reason they like. If you or I don't like it, there's a nice list of alternatives.
- Funny how people downvote some unemotional reasoning, isn't it?
  
  There’s room for everyone, while still giving people the right to choose where they site, and reserving the right for the people putting in their time and resources to chose who to defederate for any reason they like. If you or I don’t like it, there’s a nice list of alternatives.
  
  While i don't really know if you answered to my comment or to some other, that last paragraph would could apply to anyone. And it's been said plenty of times, there are ways to go without abusing the defederation tool (which would lead to this same tiring debate being brought up over and again). People who don't want to see specific stuff can put it on their opt-out list, they could actually pay a programmer to implement an instance-blacklist asap, they can ask the admin of the offending instance to ban them, or they can choose a more safespace-oriented server as their home.
  This campaigning is just abuse. Let's campaign for common guidelines and better tools instead.

Don't defederate. Just ignore them. Users should have the option to block entire instances. I don't agree that instances should be defederated just because it offends people. Where does it stop? There's no end to it

I'm not sure where it stops, but I'm fine with it starting with nazi's
- I keep seeing this discussion framed as a "slippery slope in regards to defederation" but what about the "slippery slope of letting unchecked unacceptable behavior continue?" Why is that not a slippery slope concern?
Users should have the option to block entire instances.

I agree they should. But as of the current lemmy version this is not possible. Perhaps if it gets added then refederation could be up for debate.

Who here has concrete examples of content from exploding-heads that is objectionable and wasn't immediately downvoted, blocked, and/or banned? Terms like "Nazi bar" have been thrown around quite freely recently and it's giving me a bit of boy-who-cried-wolf vibes. Being conservative does not make you a Nazi. Being a troll does not make you a Nazi. Voting for Trump does not make you a Nazi. Perhaps some members of exploding-heads ARE Nazis, but calling any viewpoint you don't agree with as fascist or evil cheapens the term and prevents discourse.

I'm sure there is stuff on that instance that I won't want to see. But that's what the "block" option is for. When I first joined sh.itjust.works, nearly half of my /all was Hentai which I have no interest in seeing, and frankly found some of it disturbing. But I blocked those communities and now have an experience I enjoy.

Count me in the "defederation as a last resort when all else has failed" crowd. Over-fragmentation leads to less content, less engagement, and more echo chambers. If an army of Nazi bots suddenly floods us out, then we can take an appropriate action - but I have no evidence to suggest that is currently happening.

First link in parent post, original vote thread had lots of examples. Edit: the Lemmy.world posts also have examples.
- There is quite a lot in that thread that I find distasteful and wouldn't personally engage with. But I don't see anything that is a "Nazi bar" as you describe it. I see a lot of unfunny shitposts, some political bait of questionably authenticity, and some bad faith discussion of transgender issues that other users attempted to moderate. I don't see doxxing, inciting to violence, NSFL material, CP, or anything else heinous enough to warrant defederation. Just a lot of Fox News talking points which, like it or not, a large percentage of the US would agree with.
Spend an hour over there. That what I just did. It's a public website. Look at the front page. It's all alt-right, transphobic, antivax posts. All of it. I saw at least 8 posts celebrating the SCOTUS ruling to end to affirmative action in higher education. That's an interesting topic to discuss, but holy shit did they make it seem like a "white victory" party.

Notice I didn't say Nazi. People use that term colloquially to mean bigots and white nationalists. Don't get hung up on people calling other people Nazis.

I want to defederate them specifically because they are Trump-supporting, alt-right bigots. Not because they're "Nazis".

The admin married a black girl, and he had gay friends growing up, so he's clearly not a bigot, right? And yet when poked, he spat out an enormous list of the most tired Fox News talking points like blaming Biden for gas prices and anti-trans fearmongering. There were so many. Nonsense that's easily debunked. He's overly concerned with "sexual perversion", and he's just the kind of person I would never want to hang out with.

And he runs the whole place! What "concrete examples" do you need? Do you really think bigotry is going to get downvoted over there?

(For the record, I'm not a Biden supporter. I'm just pointing out you can't blame a US president for a global price increase.)
There's a lot of examples of EH content that's been reposted in other threads on this topic, I'd suggest looking through them.

The phrase "Nazi Bar" is a reference to a set of tweets that are fairly well known on the Internet. I try to link context when using the phrase but it doesn't already happen. It's less about the 'Nazi' part of it and more about these being nasty hateful people who want to be nasty and hateful and throwing them out before they get the chance to chase off all of the decent folks. There's also a fairly famous quote attributed to a German saying (that I can't actually verify if it's a German saying or not) "If 9 people sit down at a table with 1 Nazi without protest, there are 10 Nazis at the table." (I don't completely agree with that quote but the stance it takes on enabling intolerance is one I generally do agree with).

Also, while voting for Trump and being conservative don't make you a Nazi, when it turns into vilification and (sometimes indirect) calls for extermination of marginalized groups in combination with a support of fascist government actions harming those marginalized groups... EH isn't just about conservative politics, conservatives who aren't openly bigoted aren't being banned from other communities just for being conservative. Some conservatives are being banned for openly stating their hateful views, and that hatred of others is what EH is about because it's not allowed elsewhere.

Just for some historical context here, so everyone is on the same page, the Nazis also went after trans people. Transphobic people aren't all Nazis, but they do hate some of the same people. (And incidentally there's been actual Nazis show up in support of TERFs.)

Is EH a Nazi instance? I don't know, but if the Neo-Nazis had an instance it'd look like EH. Also, it frankly doesn't matter - their views are hateful and I think they should be shown the door.
- There's a lot to unpack here. For brevity I'll just say I've looked through a few of the linked threads and spent a few minutes on the EH home instance. I don't claim to be an expert or know the full back story. I have seen some horribly unfunny memes, several jokes in poor taste, and some problematic assertions with regard to LGBTQ issues. Not my crowd at all. But in my admittedly limited time it also hasn't been enough to induce the moral panic many users here are having. I mean really, "calls for extermination of marginalized groups in support of fascist government actions"? That's quite a leap from the childish shitposting I saw.
  
  At the end of the day, a majority of sh.itjust.works does not want to associate with exploding-heads, it will likely defederated, and life will go on. I just worry that when the first response is always to silence those we don't agree with, the future of Lemmy looks very fragmented and full of tiny echo chambers. As I said elsewhere, blocking and banning a few bad actors is a small price to pay for having a vibrant sustainable community.
"It's okay if I'm not nice to you, but it's not okay if you aren't nice to me."
People are too quick to call who don't agree them nazis. People lose level-headedness and rational thinking in situations like this.

Can't we soft defederate? Stop dividing lemmy in the same way we divided mastodon, please.

18 minute old account using the same language as used in the exploding-heads crosspost for "soft defederation". Not a good faith account, most likely.

FYI- you've lost any shred of credibility you had by deleting completely respectful comments that you disagree with. So much for open discussion.

You may as well defederate from every other instance right now, you can be master of your own bedroom.

Wholly against defederation for anything beyond procedural shit like bot instances. If someone doesn't want to see content, they can block it themselves. Why should everyone be inconvenienced because a handful of crybabies are too lazy to just curate their own feed

If you're asking that in good faith, then the answer is because even minimally curated content is worth searching out for some people. Sure I and a hundred thousand other users could all carefully curate our own content, but if there is an instance that allowed everything and I curate everything myself, and there is another instance who curates things down to a niche community who doesn't federate with anyone that allows swear words, and many, many dozens of reasonable popular communities in the middle somewhere, we can all settle into community where we feel comfortable with the curation. Just because this place isn't that for you doesn't mean it isn't that for several thousand other people, and 'your' comfort level is somewhere else.

Personally if there is a site that suddenly starts shoveling out CP or ads for nazi memorabilia I'd rather the site have a policy for dealing with that and I don't have to bother with it. If it turns out they're a little heavy handed with the defederation stick, I'd express my interest in them lightening up but at the same time I'd check in with accounts I have on other instance that are more lenient. The fact that you want this to be the place you park your butt and complain about any form of moderation is someone infringing on you or another sites 'rights' looks more like laziness than your accusation that others are giving up others rights in order to avoid the work of self-curation.

Your first sentence illustrates the point perfectly...'anything beyond procedural shit like bot instances' is your threshold, a thousand other people have a thousand other thresholds and insisting every instance everyone settles on should somehow magically bow to the threshold held by the loudest complainer is just ridiculous when a little shuffling can just put you in a better instance and you won't be inconvenienced. Or, like others have said, start your own and only defederate instance for 'procedural shit like bot instance' and see how easy that is to track, define, maintain, update and defend and see how long it take before you wish someone would do all that admin stuff for you, and maybe if you disagree with them a little, maybe it's not that big of a deal on that side of the fence.
- And I'm perfectly fine with there being instances that heavily moderate content/users on their instance. I may not agree with it, but it isn't that difficult to get around. To that extent, "just go somewhere else" is am easy solution.
  
  My problem with defederation is that it effectively bans my account from just going somewhere else to view content that wasn't here in the first place, such that I need a new account there, which means just having a multitude of accounts to cover a patchwork of instances that are and aren't federated. I currently have six separate accounts to deal with instances defederating with each other since they still have content I want to browse.
  
  And yeah, I genuinely fucking am considering just setting up my own personal instance so that I don't need to manage a whole stack of accounts to use the platform. But that's a pretty significant investment just for convienience, so I'd rather not if possible.
They are a bot instance, though. And a Nazi instance.

"Remember, every voice matters and your contribution can make a difference. We believe that through open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to discovery, we can foster a community that embodies the democratic spirit of the Agora in our modern world."

Closing off other instances is the exact opposite of the statement above.

Intelligent and brave people are willing to hear all sides to an argument. Only weak cowardly people run away from people with different views.

Here is something important that I learned about discussions/arguments/debates though.

If you are presented with (real, verifiable) facts that conflict with what you hold to be true, will you change your stance? Does your stance change and grow as new facts are acquired or does your view stay stagnant?

If the person you are speaking with will not or does not agree to this basic idea, then there is no amount of productive debate to be had and you are generally only wasting your time.

If someone comes in with scientific papers and the other with think tank articles, these two things are not the same.

It's chess with pigeons.
Nah that's just shitty bait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

It's that simple. These people aren't rational or looking to argue in good faith, they are hateful fools looking to destroy and undermine a tolerant society. This isn't about "all sides of the argument", that's just a shitty paeudoargument to give Nazis a voice they don't deserve.
I agree when it comes to whether or not their opinions are wrongthink. However, the fact that the place is a bot swarm is a good reason to temporarily defederate. Once they fix the bot issue, refederate IMO.

No, to make Lemmy successful you need as many people to join and produce content. Even if that's content you don't like. It still brings more people, makes Lemmy more popular. Just block communities you don't want to see but leave the connections up to support the network.

People can still sign up there if they choose.

No, we should respect people who have different opinions. The only thing that should be banned are illegal acts and spam.

Banning an instance just because you disagree with them only means you have weak arguments.

No, I have a great argument: let's not federate with people who promote bigotry and hate speech.
- Another way or saying: “I don’t like your opinion, so block them”

I suggest @TheDude @imaqtpie meet up with the exploding-heads admins. I'm sure they will work with you to make any needed changes. They are already calling for such a meeting.

https://exploding-heads.com/post/162074

Please be mindful that defederation hurts the entire fediverse. If you can workout with the admins I suggest that is a more helpful scenario.

There is currently an attack lemmygrad is carrying out against exploding-heads. Because they are bored or something. Also remember what I said before there are lots of people with multiple accounts here.

Thanks,

Black Conservative -

Will they actually start enforcing their "No ~~Bigotry~~ Dicrimination" rule? I can't talk for everyone, but that's the big one for me.

Edit: corrected the quote after double-checking their rules.

EDIT2: I would accept as proof of their sincerity the purging of all content linked in the OP links calling for the death of LGBTQ+ people.
- Please be mindful there are lemmygrad users there purposely posting inflammatory content. This is an opportunity for learning and behavioral changes. I suggest people use it for better communication. Perhaps the offending communities could be blocked and the admins could keep such content to those offending communities.

Wait... We're now de-federating because people have different political views? The way I see it, you shouldn't pick and choose who you want to talk to, to get answers. You need everyone's point of view for a balanced argument \ conversation.
To me this is just as bad as the Reddit corporates banning people for not fitting the narrative they want.

Lemmy to me, and for most people, is a way to communicate with free speech and little censorship. Otherwise, in the future, it will just be a bunch of people questioning and answering all agreeing with each-other. You need opposing sides for a balanced server.

That's not what this is about. It's about the normalization of hate speech. I may not agree with a right-wing perspective of the economy or society, but I'm happy to have that conversation.
I don't see a point in tolerating people who spit on others (or whole groups without a rational factual reason), if that is your view on free speech then please leave onto these instances.

I see it as you should voice your convern about all kinds of things as long as it's not hurting other people (in an irrational/immoral way).
For perspective, you joined two days ago and your only comments are on this post.