ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works
hey folks, we'll be quick and to the point with this one:
we have made the decision to defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. we recognize this is hugely inconvenient for a wide variety of reasons, but we think this is a decision we need to take immediately. the remainder of the post details our thoughts and decision-making on why this is necessary.
we have been concerned with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy is--particularly with federation in mind--basically since it began. i have already related how difficult dealing with the explosion has been just constrained to this instance for us four Admins, and increasingly we're being confronted with external vectors we have to deal with that have further stressed our capabilities (elaborated on below).
an unfortunate reality we've also found is we just don't have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don't scale well. we have a list of improvements we'd like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible--but we're unanimous in the belief that we can't wait on what we want to be developed here. separately, we want to do this now, while the band-aid can be ripped off with substantially less pain.
aside from/complementary to what's mentioned above, our reason for defederating, by and large, boils down to:
these two instances' open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;
the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to bad actors on those two instances;
our need to preserve not only a moderated community but a vibe and general feeling this is actually a safe space for our users to participate in;
and the reality that fulfilling our ethos is simply not possible when we not only have to account for our own users but have to account for literally tens of thousands of new, completely unvetted users, some of whom explicitly see spaces like this as desirable to troll and disrupt and others of whom simply don't care about what our instance stands for
as Gaywallet puts it, in our discussion of whether to do this:
There's a lot of soft moderating that happens, where people step in to diffuse tense situations. But it's not just that, there's a vibe that comes along with it. Most people need a lot of trust and support to open up, and it's really hard to trust and support who's around you when there are bad actors. People shut themselves off in various ways when there's more hostility around them. They'll even shut themselves off when there's fake nice behavior around. There's a lot of nuance in modding a community like this and it's not just where we take moderator actions- sometimes people need to step in to diffuse, to negotiate, to help people grow. This only works when everyone is on the same page about our ethos and right now we can't even assess that for people who aren't from our instance, so we're walking a tightrope by trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isn't sustainable forever and especially not in the face of massive growth on such a short timeframe.
Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically aren't open to having strangers walk in off the street, even if they have a bouncer to throw problematic people out. A single negative interaction might require a lot of energy to undo.
and, to reiterate: we understand that a lot of people legitimately and fairly use these instances, and this is going to be painful while it's in effect. but we hope you can understand why we're doing this. our words, when we talk about building something better here, are not idle platitudes, and we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space, and we think this is necessary to do that right now. if you disagree we understand that, but we hope you can if nothing else come away with the understanding it was an informed decision.
this is also not a permanent judgement (or a moral one on the part of either community's owner, i should add--we just have differing interests here and that's fine). in the future as tools develop, cultures settle, attitudes and interest change, and the wave of newcomers settles down, we'll reassess whether we feel capable of refederating with these communities.
This is not something we've considered, is there anything in particular you find problematic over there? You can disable all NSFW content in your account settings if that's the issue
Checked it, and yeah no clue if any of those are minors or if there's any verification, the original Reddit community it mimics was banned along with Jailbait years ago. However, the sitewide rules forbids content with minors, so if that community is doing that it's grounds for banning and maybe calling the authorities if there's serious doubts of anything.
So, teens at lemmynsfw.com has the description: "A replacement for Reddit’s r/teens. Posts should feature teens, and not break any sitewide or common sense rules."
not as of now, no. while we can't personally accommodate porn (in part for the same moderation reasons lined out here), we don't have an objection to NSFW so we've only defederated with instances that host content that's illegal or legally dubious
quick vibe check: i am extremely not interested in you trying to debate me on whether content like lolicon and shotacon is or is not legally dubious--even if i somehow ceded this point to you, it's not going to change our judgement because it's at best incredibly fucking weird and we want nothing to do with it. please read the room here.
Though it's not something I personally enjoy, it is very important to me that I make a point of sticking up for even the weirdest and grossest content out there that isn't hurting anyone, because a) freedom of expression must include art that disturbs me personally or it is meaningless, and b) if you ignore people going after art just because it's gross, eventually someone will decide the art YOU like is gross. But even if I disapproved of lolicon and shotacon, I would still not be down with you lying about its legality, because I happen to have principles.
Ban me or whatever if you must, but someone has to point out bullshit when it crops up.
It's not "pedophile content." It's pixels that look absolutely nothing like real human children. And I don't care whether anyone allows it on their servers or not. They're free to ban it. I care that people make shit up about it being illegal when it isn't.
Perhaps that content is more legally dubious than I realized, but claiming it's outright illegal is nonsense, and it's still true that almost nobody in the US is ever prosecuted for it.
That is such a strange hill to die on though. I understand that what is legal/illegal does not always correspond to what is right, but it’s really weird to defend content like that.
Ahhh, the ole "You defend weirdos? Seems pretty sus. Sure you aren't one of them?" response. To which I say: Of course I'm a weirdo! I'm a queer kinkster! Obviously I'm weird. Am I that specific kind of weirdo? No, but so what if I were? That wouldn't undermine my argument. My point is this: Is it weird and fucked up and creepy? Yeah, arguably. So? It's still not hurting anyone, and if you start moralizing based on your own personal feelings of disgust, that quickly leads you down a dark path of "anybody who does something that grosses me out is a bad person who must be stopped." That's exactly the same rhetoric conservatives use to go after anybody who fucks wrong in the privacy of their own bedroom, and I'm not about to become the thing I hate. Taking your side would make me a hypocrite as someone who cares about the freedom of adults to get off however they please.
Ban me or whatever if you must, but someone has to point out bullshit when it crops up.
i don't think it's necessarily ban-worthy, i mostly just think it's really bizarre and kind of cringe-worthy to die on this particular hill unprompted over the point--which has not changed and will not change, so there is no sense in you replying further on this point--that we're not interested in federating with instances that host legally dubious or unlawful pornography, which includes lolicon and shotacon
I'm perfectly happy to die on the hill of freedom of expression because, as a queer person, I know that when people start coming for the harmless weirdos, I'm next. I've walked out of communities over this before, and I'm willing to do it again. Again, I have principles.
Absolutely no one is saying you should have to federate with instances like that if you so choose. I'm merely pointing out that it's not illegal, and perpetuating the stigma against being into weird but harmless shit will eventually come back to bite not just you, but anyone who likes anything that's not vanilla sex between a married man and woman under the covers with the lights off for the sole purpose of procreation. Puritans always go for the weirdos that even other weirdos don't like first. Then when they move onto something less weird, everyone is shocked and all "leopards ate my face." I've seen a disturbing trend of people equating what you enjoy in fiction to what you enjoy in reality over the past few years, and I feel a moral compulsion to fight back against it because I know that shit never ends well.
So, i partially agree in principle thanks to Neil Gaiman, the law should not punish people for what's essentially victimless crimes (unlike IRL CP there's no one being hurt here, just people drawing... things...), but on the other hand this is not about laws and the government not arresting you, is about this particular community. You're still free to host all that up to what the law allows you where you are, but this particular community has no obligation or desire to let this pass here.
I'd say let it be legal, let the people create, host and distribute that to people who care about it, but that doesn't mean everybody is obligated to welcome it. I for one don't, I've been a weeb for decades and have seen many things i cannot unsee, and would like to avoid all of that if possible.
Also, like the alt-text of that XKCD strip says, defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession: you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.
I'm not saying that this community should welcome it here. Like, not remotely saying that. Even leaving aside any other issues, this community disallows porn. I'm literally just saying that claiming it's illegal is nonsense. Hell, I wasn't even going to get into the moral side of things until alyaza took the tone they did.
This community doesn't even disallow porn though. The staff are just comfortable drawing the line where they have.
Your comment further down about how "It's pixels that look absolutely nothing like real human children." Is incredibly disingenuous as the entire point of loli/shota is creating stylized pornographic art that looks like children, it doesn't matter how well they achieve that goal, the subject matter is the same. Frankly it is not "harmless" as you say it is.