kukkurovaca

From your home instance, go to search and enter the community like this:

[email protected]

Staying in federation with an instance that actively embraces bad actors increases the visibility of users here to those bad actors, and gives them access to our community. Defederating such an instance is a basic best practice in the Fediverse.

More importantly for those who wring their hands about not limiting the whole community -- failure to defederate from bad actor instances will be factored in when good productive instances with content folks here want to see decide whether to defederate us. (Remember that this place is already defederated by one prominent instance, which is a material detriment to users here.)

It is reasonable and normal to disagree about where the line is drawn in terms of what instances deserve defederation. It's often ambiguous what's a normal instance with sloppy moderation and a few bad apples[^1] versus what's a place that is run by and for bad actors.

There's a wide range of standards that can be applied. It seems like the general vibe can be broken down into three groups:

• Only defederate spammers and child porn
• Only defederate spammers child porn and tankies
• Defederate spammers child porn, tankies, and rampantly fascist troll farms

I don't think anyone has really advocated for anything aggressive than that on here (could be wrong)

[^1]: Although also important to remember that the point of the bad apples thing is that they spoil the whole batch if you don't take them out.

Vote: imaqtpie

Additional commentary: goat in particular seems based on activity to be trolling/sealioning/derailing discussions

Defederation is a normal part of life in the fediverse, and this instance already defederates from the start. Healthy fediverse instances have clear standards for what instances they do and don't federate with.

Normally those are defined by admin; in this case admin has now stated a desire for the community to make rules decisions. So, reasonable and normal to discuss. And reasonable and normal for folks to have disagreements about.

This instance is already paying the price for lax moderation in having been defederated by beehaw, which regardless of how much you or I personally care about the content on beehaw does notably impact the user experience for many folks. And the more this site "stops worrying about nazis" the more that will happen. (And the more users will get fed fed up and migrate to instances with clearer moderation practices.)

Not referring to you or anyone in particular, but it feels like a lot of the folks in this conversation had never heard of defederation before a couple weeks ago and are acting like it and the fediverse generally are a brand new idea. Defederation for Lemmy in many ways has higher stakes than it does for Mastodon due to being structured around communities and not just individual user -- but that's all the more reason to have clear standards for it.

Because rather than make a decision one way or the other, the instance admin announced an undefined consensus-based decision making process, as a result of which we now have both this thread and this one

The call is coming from inside the house on this one

Yeah, I dunno at this point in terms of what the intentions are. But in terms of how this all looks to the outside on the nazi-bar-ification scale, it's not great. Give an inch and they'll take a mile, and failure to cut them off reads to them as tacit approval. The longer it goes on, the more attractive this instance looks to them, and the more likely it is that other instances that actually host content people want to see will choose to defederate this instance to stop the spread.

It’s up to you to come together, discuss, and reach a consensus. If you wish to add, remove, or modify a rule, make a post, garner support from other members, and I’ll implement the change. This invitation extends beyond our immediate community - I welcome input from everyone across the fediverse. Again to be clear, I gave an example of modifying rules but this applies to anything that I have the ability to do on this instance.

@[email protected] what constitutes "consensus"? A majority, a supermajority? 100% buy-in on most important topics is simply not on the table, and setting a bar too high for action is tantamount to predetermining that action will not be taken.

(I have no problem with the tyranny of the admin, either, as long as it's clear what direction the site is headed in so I know whether to stick around or not.)

De-federation should not be used as a political tool to divide social media along partisan lines.

I certainly agree with the statement, but bigotry isn't a partisan issue. I don't think anybody here is calling for defederation over estate taxes or redistricting or infrastructure bills. We're talking about people's right to exist and hate campaigns that are the equivalent of someone posting on behalf of ISIS, to put it charitably. Apologists for people engaged in ideologically motivated violence, literally out there killing people.

Yeah, I think basically people have a reasonable right to know if the site has a hard line on tankies and a soft line on fascists, because if so, it's a cryptofascist site IMO.

Like, I think absolute free speech maximalism is not a sustainable moderation principle, but even if I did, that's not we have here to begin with.

See first post in previous thread on the main community: https://sh.itjust.works/post/151703

Not an ideal response to a report, to say the least.

I think they are low hanging fruit that would represent no GREAT loss if chucked, but I also think this is a good chance for everyone here to think deeper about the process for this.

I agree! Kicking these questions to the newly formed "Agora" without defining a process (which was done after there was already substantial discussion on exploding heads which surfaced more than enough material for admin to make a decision IMO) invites this kind of "well shit, let's vote then" thread.

But if the instance is going to be healthy going forward, standards and a process are a must.

The question is not, are there some assholes there, the question is whether the admin/moderators there are operating a right wing extremist troll farm. So for example, is bigotry taken down promptly (or at all) when it's reported? Or is it left up?

I think in this case it's quite easy to say chuck 'em. But there is absolutely a need to discuss standards and a repeatable process for defederation generally, because this certainly won't be the last time it comes up, either way. I started a discussion thread here