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We should defederate lemmy.ml

I'm making this post directly in response to the extremist moderation in this thread, though I came very close a little while ago to a similar post because of moderation here

Comments that have been removed on the grounds of "No bigotry" include:

There are no good guys in that conflict. Only innocent civilians.

Maybe provide examples? I see nothing that would prevent me from saying that with a straight face.

Gee, I don't know, I vaguely recall a (perhaps minor) news item happening on the 7th, something about a music festival? I may be misremembering though, since this very impartial news site has no mention of it whatsoever.

It's a terrorist organization vs terrorist state. The only good guys are the civilians dying on both sides.

Everyone who opposes genocide, colonialism, and terrorism are the good guys, so neither Israel or Hamas. But Hamas is not Palestine/Palestinians, the same way that Israel/Zionism is not Jewish/Judaism; no matter how much Israel, Hamas, the media, or military industrial complex tries to conflate them all. IMO Israel is more to blame than Hamas as they should know better given a) their history of persecution b) their significantly greater wealth and education, and c) their demographics — more than half of all Palestinians are technically children, below 18.

I don't know what could possibly be less "bigotry" than that last statement. Now, I side pretty much 100% with Palestine in the Palestinian genocide being committed by Israel, but it's not even remotely bigoted to suggest that maybe the killing of civilians, even if done in the name of a good cause, does not make the killers "the good guys" (even if they are "the better guys of the two bad guys").

And in the other thread, they removed comments like:

That's pathetic. That's a pathetic misunderstanding of geopolitics and the nature of modern intelligence infrastructure. You're still in the mindset of "Having SIGINT = bad guys". As if places like Russia, and North Korea would just be magical kingdoms of freedom and accountability if they just didn't have signals intelligence! That's stupid. What differentiates the west (much like what differentiates good media sources from bad) - is accountability, and oversight. Anyways I'll let you get back to your petty fears and misunderstanding the basic lay of the informational and geopolitical landscapes. Maybe if Trump magically wins the election Glenn Greenwald will spend Trump's time in office attacking the Democrats and defending Trump and Russia again. I'm sure you'd enjoy that. The crypto-rightwing are just like that. Aren't you. Semi-pro-authoritarians who don't understand what causes freedom, and think it's something about being a soldier of fortune for a foreign state, or something that comes from "the barrel of a gun". Idiots believing they're freedom fighters popping some imaginary info-bubble. You don't know how lucky you are, or how good you have it, or why... That's your problem, and your weakness.

which were critical of authoritarian states in a mildly impolite way for being violations of their "Be respectful" rule. Meanwhile they failed to remove (and in fact, the comments came directly from an admin) comments that are far more directly disrespectful to their interlocutor, like:

This is wrong on so many levels 😂 If you’re this propagandized, then I’m sure you don’t know what actually happened in and around Tiananmen Square, which by the way is not even censored in China like we’re always told.

Followed by a gish gallop of links.

And

Okay, stay confidently incorrect in the Five Eyes corporate media bubble then 👍

“I’m in this photo and I don’t like it.”

and the especially pathetic disrespectful comment consisting of nothing but:

The admins of that instance are pretty blatantly disregarding their own rules in order to push their agenda. If that shouldn't be grounds for defederation, I don't know what should.

edit: accidentally left a link out earlier

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47 comments

  • This thread might be a good place to request asklemmy@aussie.zone (or something similar) be created. I know that the federation issue with LW will eventually be fixed but with only two other asklemmy communities (that I know of) already playing a role across Lemmy a third asklemmy on AZ might become the preferred asklemmy for folks who don't want to hang out elsewhere while also helping to promote AZ among folks who just haven't clocked it's existence yet.

    @lodion@aussie.zone

    @Nath@aussie.zone

    @Zagorath@aussie.zone

  • Don't go to .ml communities if you dont like their moderation. Their users don't brigade us so I'm not sure why we would need to defederate from one of the largest instances, especially given the issues with lemmy.world.

  • Made some time at work, don't tell my boss...

    Think of lemmy instances as countries: when you visit a country/instance you're expected to abide by their local rules, whatever they may be. And when users from other countries/instances interact with Australia/aussie.zone they're expected to behave in line with our rules.

    Not agreeing with the population of a country/instance doesn't mean you can't visit it. If/When you visit, you can't expect them to adhere to your rules at home... or to apply their own rules consistently.. just like the real world.

    Defederation of an instance will only be done when:

    Legal- the instance is generating content that may raise legal concerns for Aussie Zone. For example porn.

    Technical- the instance is generating content that may cause performance/security issues for Aussie Zone. For example large volumes of automated traffic or malicious traffic.

    Trolls- an instance whose users predominantly interact in bad faith with communities outside of their instance.

    I don't believe lemmy.ml meets any of these, their "quirky" politics are largely self contained on their own communities from what I've seen. If they're crashing aussie.zone communities and posting outside of our rules, please report them.

    To address some comments in this thread (paraphrasing):

    we should defederate instances with bad admins or admins heavily moderating alternative views to their own

    So far as their actions do not trigger any of the defederation criteria noted above, they can do as they see fit (even if it does make hypocritical dickheads).

    no incentive to create alternative communities
    If there is no incentive, then it can't be a large enough issue to enough users.

    pro-authoritarian bias
    Given how simple it is for a user to block an instance for themself, I'd rather allow our users had the option to decide this for themselves. Some prefer to engage with people from an alternate perspective, for those that don't they can block the instance.

    TLDR

    Not defederating lemmy.ml at this point in time, if their user behaviour outside of their instance changes in future my stance may change too.

  • Just filter the instance mate don't have to defederate from every idiot on the internet.

  • Fwiw, even reddit has the "quarantine" and "nsfw" flags so you aren't seeing every sub with cookers and porn. If we can't have that, I think we should be defederating from the servers filled with cookers so the new user experience is better.

  • Eh, I disagree. I don't want to defederate from any instance except blatantly illegal ones or immoral ones.

    The admins of an instance being dickheads doesn't make every user of that instance a dickhead. And if you go around defederating every instance you don't agree with a minority on, we're gonna end up with no friends at all. It will also drive people away from becoming Lamingtons if they see defederation drama going on - why join any instance if you may end up on a deserted island?

    Side note: here's a nice bit of light reading on tolerating intolerance. And not tolerating tolerance. And vice versa:

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

    • Side note: here’s a nice bit of light reading on tolerating intolerance. And not tolerating tolerance.

      Right, which is exactly why they should be defederated. They don't even follow their own rules and go out of their way to be arseholes to everyone, as long as they perceive it to be something that pushes their agenda.

  • Feeling a bit conscious of the fact that I'm at work right now, and too busy to give this the diplomatic response it deserves. The short answer to this question is that we don't generally defederate anyone for anything they say/do inside their own instance. We do however happily support you in blocking them for yourself. Click on your username in the top-right, go to Settings and then Blocks. Under the Instance section, search for lemmy.ml and make sure you click on their name in the drop-down like this:


    Do this and you will no longer see lemmy.ml content.

    Disclosure: I subscribe to that community - and while I'm aware that the locals of lemmy.ml have quirky political leanings, that particular community is frequented by a lot of non-local members. Also, that post was always going to attract hardliners from all sides, wherever that question was asked.

  • i’ve only been here a short while and i’ve seen multiple meta posts now from a variety of instances talking about blocking that instance and moving to different software like mbin so i think this is a shared view

    eg. https://sh.itjust.works/post/27559887

      1. I can't find any comments in that linked post 'talking about blocking that instance' or 'moving to different software'. Nor do I think a designated drama community on another instance is a good litmus test for opinions.

      2. The only post I've found talking about blocking that instance, apart from OP, is a troll post you made (on a post about the UN voting on the blockade of Cuba which almost the entire UN has consistently voted against every year for over 30 years [wikipedia])

  • The admins of that instance are pretty blatantly disregarding their own rules in order to push their agenda. If that shouldn’t be grounds for defederation, I don’t know what should.

    I personally don't think staff of a community or instance choosing how they administrate posts there is a solid grounds for defederation, nor do I think defederation is a useful response.

    If you find their moderation and staff intolerable (and fwiw I also think some of those bans are poorly justified), I recommend you block those communities or their instance from your account. But I don't think blocking their users from contributing here and blocking us from contributing there is appropriate.

  • That's pathetic. That's a pathetic misunderstanding... That's stupid...
    Anyways I'll let you get back to your petty fears and misunderstanding... I'm sure you'd enjoy that... The crypto-rightwing are just like that. Aren't you.... You don't know how lucky you are, or how good you have it, or why... That's your problem, and your weakness.

    If i've understood what your saying, I wouldn't call this comment a mildly impolite comment critical of authoritarian states. I think more time is spent in the comment on derision of the other party on the thread.

    I've isolated the quotes above from the rest of the comment because they illustrate the point, (in my view), it seems they diverge from the subject matter under discussion to personal vilification.

    I'd probably call that particular comment a contravention of the 'Be Respectful' rule.

    Also: I don't think theres a link address for the 'here' link. So i couldn't look for more context.

    The first section of your post, i think i agree with you i can't see how those comments contain bigotry.

    Have you messaged the admin for an explanation for what was seen as bigotry in the comments?

    Sometimes a good faith message might elicit a good faith response, or even a reconsideration.

    • Have you messaged the admin for an explanation

      The admin literally replied to me when I reported the disrespectful comments (which at the time I didn't realise were being made by the admin) saying "Good luck with that" and then proceeding to be disrespectful directly to me. So no, I did not follow up the most recent thread by asking them for an explanation. Someone behaving in clear bad faith doesn't warrant further good-faith engagement.

  • I'm at work, don't have time to reply appropriately now. Will do so tonight.

  • a mildly impolite way

    Just be polite.

  • I'm new to Lemmy, how does defederation occur?

    • Lemmy is a Fediverse software which is able to federate content with other instances and even other Fediverse softwares (e.g kbin). Federation is what allows an instance (e.g. aussie.zone, the one I'm on) to interact with others (e.g. reddthat.com, lemmy.ml, mander.xyz, etc.), so we can visit their communities, subscribe, post, vote on their posts, comment, and more.

      Defederation is removing federation, which in this case would mean aussie.zone can't interact with lemmy.ml, view their communities and posts, etc.. It would occur if the aussie.zone admin sets the site to stop federating with lemmy.ml.

      Defederation can be useful if an instance is abusive and systematically federates unwanted content, for example in early days before the reddit API exodus, there was a particular 'free speech' instance with a lot of neo-nazis which was defederated by most other instances before it shut down. In another case back then, some troll was registering new accounts every day on any instances without signup questions, so they could evade bans and post shock pornography on lemmy.ml. lemmy.ml ended up defederating from every open instance until they secured their registration form to avoid the abuse. You can see a list of federated and blocked instances by going to an instance and clicking on the Instances button at the bottom of the page. You can see aussie.zone blocks a few dedicated pornography instances, and a few explicitly political instances.

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