Blocking exploding-heads

For what it’s worth, Lemmy.world defederated with them a few days ago. I feel like it was a good move.

It looks like sh.itjust.works is going to as well

Edit: I am having issues with Jerboa, and don't seem to able to link the OP, Here is one of the comments (which should take you to the OP). Currently 314 comments about it.

Edit: we are voting on it, Here is an exploding.heads user voting against defederation
- This leads me to a Linux discussion about Wayland. I think this has happened before, at least in Jerboa. Wonder if the comment IDs time out and get assigned to a different one?
  
  Edit: Okay I opened it in the browser and now I can see what you meant to link.

I want to know too. It's time for this instance to establish some basic moral framework.

Open discussion and interaction for the purpose of exchanging ideas and learning from one another is essential, and that only happens in an environment where people feel encouraged and safe. (The word safe can be a trigger for some and is often misinterpreted, so let me narrow the definition to the sense that you feel in control over your own well-being so that you can push your comfort zone on your own terms and grow as a person without having your comfort zone invaded and vandalised).

If people are made to feel discouraged and unsafe by a foul atmosphere and repeated exposure to content/interactions that degrade their health in any way (directly or indirectly; short term or long term), they will not benefit from any supposed openness or freedoms.

Whether some content technically breaks any explicit rules or not is inconsequential to the impact it has on the well-being of a community, so I don't want to see this place moderated under some false pretence of impartiality. Just keep it tidy and healthy so that we can focus on what we're all here for. If someone wants to go swimming with the sharks they can very well do so on some free speech instance. We all know what those are like. And there is a reason they end up that way.

kbin.social and lemmy.world defederated from exploding-heads a few days ago. I went there once and the whole site looks like /r/the_donald before it was banned. Full of propaganda and lies, misinformation. anti-vax nonsense, election disinformation. Good riddance.

I'm not from your instance, but I share the following information regarding how other instances feel regarding EH.
https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=exploding-heads.com

when your instance defederated list becomes a reasonable map of the fediverse you know you fucked up
- Lmao they even have other Fediverse platform servers blocking them.

I prefer to deal with content in a case-by-case basis, and de-federation from an instance would be the very last-resort strategy. I want users to have the freedom to choose what they interact with. Today it's exploding-heads, soon it will be Meta, then some might want to defederate from lemmygrad, and after that something else.

My position is to resist de-federation. To defederate I would need to have seen that the users asking for defederation have made an effort not to engage with the content by blocking communities and reporting offending users/content who post to our communities, and the scale of the problem must be so significant that I can no longer deal with it manually. As of today, I have received zero reports of exploding-heads.

I have looked at the communities, and I can see that we have fetched content from the following communities:

[email protected]

It is only five communities, and my suggestion is to block them if you find their content offensive. I hope that users will soon be able to block instances themselves.

If this is a deal-breaker, defederating with problematic instances is a very common position in the fediverse, and it will be easy to find an instance that blocks them.

It may not be wise to wait and watch with this one. Part of the reason people are leaving Reddit like myself is we do not want to deal with this anymore. These do not argue in good faith. They will eventually brigade us with the next controversy. I suggest asking your users and listening on this one. This is not a safe place unless defended, that sometimes means being proactive. Consider this my report as well.
- It may not be wise to wait and watch with this one.
  
  Oh, it is probably not wise if it is my idea.
  
  I am sorry that we are not aligned in this - especially considering that you are literally the most active user here at the moment!
  
  Part of the reason people are leaving Reddit like myself is we do not want to deal with this anymore.
  
  Maybe it is in part our difference in experiences that give us different opinions. I am aware that people are mean online, but I have never been the target of an attack, nor have I experienced the meanness of the internet like others have. So I am definitely not be the best to administrate a vulnerable community.
  
  I left Reddit and other social media a while ago but for different reasons. I left because I do not think that centralized parties should have the authority of dictating how we communicate with each other, to establish what is true and what what isn't, they shouldn't be able to take advantage of our reliance on technology to apply social punishment, and I do not like that they hold our private information. I tell you this because it may provide some insight into why our vision and priorities are not aligned - not because I want to argue this.
  
  But all of these are important. The way I see it: I want to try out an experiment in which I am able to have a reasonably safe space without needing to cut off connections. And yes, maybe this is a naive view that assumes too good of the people, but I want to try.
  
  They will eventually brigade us with the next controversy. I suggest asking your users and listening on this one.
  
  But why is there no hope of stopping this? I feel like these issues can happen even within the instance, without need for federation, and that they can be dealt with in a few minutes. This is a very small instance, I've never dealt with something like this. I don't know that we ever will... To me these sound like hypothetical problems that may not be so hard to solve when it comes to it, and so I am not very deterred by those possibilities. I genuinely think that... we can handle this.
  
  This is not a safe place unless defended, that sometimes means being proactive.
  
  It is a balance, but it is clear to me now that for many people that balance lies strongly along the 'ensuring a safe-space' axis, and that people are willing to have an authority to sanitize the space if that means minimizing the risk. I am sorry if my choice of waiting until the waves hits the shore makes you feel unsafe here... While I am willing to change, it would take time. Towards the end of another comment[1] I extended an invitation to any user who would like to set up an science-based instance with more stringent federation moderation. I know you are good with technology, and I can already see that you would be a better community admin than I can, so if you would like to take on that offer I would be more than happy!
You are shifting responsibility of moderation onto users. What you should be doing for all of us, you are asking us to do ourselves. Each of us would have to moderate the same content, and with fewer tools to do it. Massive duplication of effort and needless exposure to harmful content (or perhaps you find value in that type of content?).

If this is your stance and you are done thinking about this, I mourn what this instance might have been.
I haven't reported because I don't even know how to. Consider this my report.

But this seems like a big inconsistence. Did you even see the posts? How's that for a case-by-case basis? What is a case bad enough? If this doesn't do it, I don't know what would.

It's a shame, it was such a nice instance for science topics. But the admin makes the instance. I will move elsewhere.
- just fyi there should be a report button under the post or comment when you click the 'more' menu (looks like 3 dots) and then the button that looks like a flag.
  
  This is on lemmy, might be slightly different on kbin
I echo the sentiment that we should not take a wait and see approach to bigotry and anti-science sentiment. We should defederate proactively.
Technical question: while the instance is federated, its users can post here, right? Do you have any moderating tools that allow you to monitor incoming comments from users from a "fishy" instance as they come in?

My fear is that they have not accumulated enough of a mass of users yet, and enough of an interest in a "small" platform like Lemmy yet, but that the crowd will come once Lemmy becomes an established platform, which will make real infiltration efforts worthwhile.

And then we'll have to deal with the usual tactics: brigades organized offsite (on discord, telegram..) to drop on anything trans/immigration/etc. related like a plague of locusts. Teams of users posturing as the "sane one" and "crazy one" allowing the "sane" actor to push far-right points that "make sense" next to pure extremism. Threats sent as PMs to individual users. Doxxing, online stalking. And, behind that, their host doing nothing to prevent- or facilitating - the behavior.

I'm fine with you not taking action for now, but would you be ready to drop the hammer if they become problematic and user-level blocking of instances is not yet a thing?
- Yeah, I'm with you on this. I will probably go back to lurking* if this is how it is because I do not want a target on my head as a proactive poster. I would have instance blocked them ages ago, but Lemmy in its current state leaves us unable to defend ourselves in this way. By the time that hammer is dropped if it does, the targets will already have been made. Hell, I grew up in a place where a lot of these people come from and I left there too for a reason. We cannot build and be proactive if our base is undefended.
  
  *If I start seeing it.
- I was on Lemmy two years ago (or something like that), and I ultimately left because of the gore brigading that kept happening. Mods were unable to control it. Wasn't that a thing on Mander as well?
I disagree with defederation when it's due to non-illegal discussion, but I feel Lemmy (and kbin) should have more sane defaults. In a perfect world, no one would defederate but there would only be a whitelist of federated defaults on the main page for each instance so you have to actively go looking for the content in order to see it.
Chipping in to say I support defederation from exploding-heads. I don't consider myself someone who likes to go knee deep into what's considered "politics" either, but allowing known bad-faith actors to discuss anything is not a good idea, from my experience. Conversations go off the rails quickly. Especially when such actors discriminate against marginalized groups (as unfortunately politicized as they are in recent times).

On that note, I can't seem to block the following communities? Not sure if the buttons are broken, but it only allows me to highlight text.
- I wonder if it's the same issue I posted about here: https://slrpnk.net/post/602890
- I don't disagree, what I disagree is with a blocking action before they actually come and act in bad faith in a way that is difficult to contain. I see blocking an instance as an absolute last resort, after other approaches have failed. I do not want to block an instance because it has a potential to do something, a high likelyhood of doing so, or because it has done it to some other instance. I understand that this is an unpopular view, and that many prefer a proactive approach.
  
  I can see that same issue when I clicked the link, I am not sure why. Worth looking into it. But refreshing the page fixed the button for me, does it do it for you?

Here is a relevant podcast episode by Sean Carroll (includes transcript). He identifies as an intellectual who is interested in open, rational debate, and gives some considered thoughts on how to balance moral principles like free speech vs people's well-being. If you have time and interest, I can recommend it (and his podcast in general).

Ooo thanks for this! I just came here to lurk this servers decision on exploding heads, but I got a cool podcast link!

I expect things may be a little chaotic over the coming weeks and months.

I'm used to having people or memes I strongly disagree with on my feeds, I'm less used to AI porn on my feed....it's come a long way since Leisure Suit Larry.

Reddit had plenty blatant transphobia, racism, misinformation, antivax stuff etc. But generally outwith particular subreddits it was mocked, argued against, downvoted, removed or users banned. This seems more like r/Science blocking everyone from r/Conservative.

There is rapid growth and communities are being stress tested with far more than just an increase in bandwidth.

As the Lemmy code improves and more 3rd party tools are made available, tailoring Lemmy feeds for the individual should become easier to mod and manage without server sized banhammers.

In the mean time I'm prepared to tolerate some chaos, porn and shit posting....and also understand if instances feel defederating others is the best course of action in the mean time.

Switching between instances is super easy in Jerboa or in browser and whilst this instance is the best I've found I will be keeping an eye on things from a few vantage points.

Mind you, there were subreddits that employed this technique of banning users subscribed or active in other communities they didn't like or approved of. So I guess that would be nothing new. I just wish there was a user-side way to block, at the very least the content coming from instances you don't want to follow. But then you could be still engaged by the users coming from these instances. Then again there are ass hats everywhere.
- Blocking people for subscribing or participating in certain communities was the most childish part of spezland. It seemed like a esclating war of control rather than a forum for communication. Good riddens!
- Current option is block these 5 communities:
  
  https://mander.xyz/comment/656060

(edit - my comment was posted twice)