2y ago

banning and defederating communities

Hey all, I recently left reddit like many of you. I have a question regarding lemmy and the fediverse on the history of banning and defederation. I have noticed several posts calling for varying communities to be disconnected. were these removal requests as prevalent before the mass migration? Usually I am all for communities existsting in their own spaces, barring illegal content. I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.

78 comments

Let's not sugar-coat this: do not tolerate fascists and bigots in your spaces. Period.
- I agree 100%
  If you want to tolerate Nazis, bigots, fascists, etc under the guise of "free speech" then this is not the instance for you. And I hope we maintain that moving forward. Y'all can have your own hellhole somewhere else
- This.
- A clear-cut and uncontroversial rule that will see little to no opposition, yes.
  And in many cases it's also clear-cut and uncontroversial whether someone is a fascist or a bigot.
  But in other cases, you're going to run into trouble. A particular case in point; I don't like the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy. I have, in the past, been immediately called a sexist when I've mentioned that fact. But I personally don't care one whit about the gender of the trilogy's protagonist, I just think they're bad movies. Maybe there are other people who actually do care and that's the reason they don't like those movies. Maybe there are people who don't believe me when I say I personally don't care about the gender of the trilogy's protagonist. So, is https://reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/ a bigoted community? If there was a Fediverse equivalent, should it be blocked? Different people will argue different ways.
  I can think of lots of other scenarios, I won't make a big rambling list because I'm sure I'll step on a landmine eventually. I'm just arguing that seemingly simple straightforward "rules" that are easy to agree with can still end up mired in complexity when people try to implement them in the real world.
  
  I don't feel like there is as much gray area here as you're making it out to be. There is a big difference between
  "The new star wars movies are bad cause they are WOKE!1!1!1!1!1 Women are bad!"
  vs
  "The new star wars movies were an incohesive mess due to changes between writers and directors for all 3 films"
  But also it's not like we will be defederating whenever people get in a slap fight, people are still going to have shitty opinions on any instance and get downvoted for that. This is for a pattern of behavior being tolerated and prolific.
  
  That’s a valid concern, but in “fuzzy” cases like that, I think we can trust the mods. They’ve shown good judgment so far.
  
  That's a bad faith argument they used against you for having a good opinion that they disagree with. In my personal head cannon I ignore the prequels and sequels because they cheapen the original plot. Rogue One I'll take though.
  
  "No nazis or bigots" is a nice slogan, but if people turn off our brains and turn off our humanity and just start mindlessly chanting slogans that justify the punishing of our enemies, then there's no difference between us and the typical German in 1938.
  It doesn't take a lot to end up in a bad place if we think we're purely good and in the right and our enemy is purely evil.
  
  Very well said.
  
  The concern you raised cannot be overstated. Accusing someone of bigotry or hate because their opinions of a subject are different has become a common invalidation and attack strategy. Another example is the Little Mermaid movie. By most accounts it's just not a very good movie. But you'll likely be called a racist by certain groups if you state that you don't like it. I haven't seen it. I don't have an opinion on it. But I witnessed the resulting arguments unfold across the internet. It is okay to dislike works created by or starring POC. It is not okay to dislike them because they were created by or star POC. Some people seem to find it impossible to differentiate between the two.
  
  in many cases it's also clear-cut and uncontroversial whether someone is a fascist or a bigot.
  Perhaps different life experiences. In many cases nothing is really clear-cut when it comes to people and their opinions. People who believe "they figured it out" inadvertently become totalitarians.
- PERIOD
- 💯
- we should defederate from kbin for hosting fascists and bigots
  
  Satire doesn't work as well on fedi when everybody has to check what instance they're on AND what instance you're posting from to figure out if you're serious
“communities existsting in their own spaces”
In some sense that is what defederating does, no?
- In fact, defederating can ensure communities can continue to exist in their own spaces without being harassed or being subject to bigotry
  
  Is kbin a community, or a platform for communities to run on? I'm subbed to maybe 20 magazines now, and I can't even tell you which one comes from which server.
  I think of magazines as communities, and servers as enablers of the platform they run on. Sure there are purpose-built servers around a topic, but as a data point of 1, I haven't joined kbin to be a part of kbin community, I joined because it seemed to be the most reliable provider for me to reach communities across fediverse.
I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.
Yeah go and take a stroll through those instances and you'll see quickly why their posts aren't welcomed here.
I also have recently left Reddit. And I am all for blocking content that contains hate speech. Allowing fascist content to take root is unacceptable.
Seems to be popular to defederate from right-leaning instances. The Fediverse basically started as a far-left stronghold, so it isn't surprising.
- Tankies, not just commies
  
  Most instances also defederated from lemmygrad (commies) so its not generally politically left either.
  IMO, Stalinists aren't exactly tolerant either. You're still talking about a totalitarian and authoritarian viewpoint, even if they're on the left on economic matters.
  IMO, if your point is to make a community welcoming, then you have to get rid of intolerant voices. That--broadly speaking--means that you have to remove people advocating for any kind of absolutist, authoritarian rules. It's easy to see at a macro level, but it's all fuzzy at a micro level.
I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.
I counter this part of your post by throwing in there that for me and my time on reddit, the worst parts of the broader experience were the fact that communities of neo-nazis (r/conservative, r/conspiracy), Donald Trump cultists (r/the Donald), incels (numerous subreddits including r/incels and r/theredpill), and pedophiles (r/just18 among other porn based subreddits that were quarantined and banned several years ago) were allowed their own communities on the platform for as long as they were. This gave these horrible ideas time to draw attention and build a userbase that then degraded the quality of reddit across multiple other communities.
If kbin or lemmyworld immediately start banning or defederating these instances or communities/magazines, then to me that is how this larger community works and it is inherently not former redditors migrating here to shape the Fediverse in the image of reddit.
- I eventually couldnt even browse r/all without seeing bigoted and generally fascist remarks getting thousands of upvotes with hardly any people that debated their takes not getting two to three digits of downvotes.
It has been common in other parts of the Fediverse - Mastodon for example.
Yes. Defederation of bad actors has always been common and it's expected.
- I did for some research. Basically, all the top-defederated instances on this list
  FYI, that list is generated by kiwifarms software. You should not be linking to it directly
- Thanks for sharing that site. Very interesting. As someone who enjoyed lurking on r/conservative and r/conspiracy (just to see what’s going on in their echo chambers) I am imagining I might need to join a different server if I want to rubberneck those types of instances.
  
  You could always just view their instance without logging in, no?
- didn't lemmy.world just defederate from exploding heads tho?
  https://lemmy.world/post/747912
- The reason I am on lemmy.world is that so far, they have basically blocked nothing
  https://lemmy.world/instances
I agree that racists/nazis etc should be condemned through out the entire platform. this is an instance where I hope the vast majority of the community would agree that defederation is a fair solution. With the easy question out of the way how far has the community gone in the past regarding the removal of content and users on less offensive but still taboo topics?
Eeh let me go against the grain here a bit: Personally I'd rather have my account on somewhere that doesn't police my access. IMO one of the major boons to the Internet that it being decentralized and not particularly easy to police by any one authority. I've lived a big part of my life in an authoritarian country, and censorship gradually builds up. I have no interest in granting this kind of power even governments rarely get to exercise, to some random people.
I firmly believe that the best kind of content moderation is to use the small "X" button right next to the browser tab. I would understand and completely support not wanting to see certain content, communities or users yourself, but unless illegal [1] I don't see any reason why you should be able to prevent others.
[1] even then, question of in what jurisdiction comes to kind
Anyway, I know that nowadays vouching for information freedom doesn't win much favours. Cool thing about ActivityPub is that barring future potential scaling issues, I can run my own instance and enjoy the Internet as it once was.
edit: I have to say that there's a level of irony in asking for bans and central controls on content on a platform that in its very nature decentralized and supposed to be empowering.
- I have to say that there's a level of irony in asking for bans and central controls on content on a platform that in its very nature decentralized and supposed to be empowering.
  There isn't any irony. That's the whole point of the decentralization - it empowers everybody to be part of the communities they wish to be in, and not participate in those they disagree with. We have the power to leave any instance where we disagree with the admins and move to a new one.
While I don't doubt people's intentions are well, I feel perfectly capable of deciding myself what should be defederated or not. Currently using kbin.social. Any resources for people interested in learning more about this and potentially wanting to host their own instance (which I assume you'd need to, to be able to control this?). Or maybe there are already instances out there that don't defederate and leave it up to the individual?
- Or maybe there are already instances out there that don't defederate and leave it up to the individual?
  It only takes one to defederate. Any large instances that stay neutral will eventually be defederated with by other instances, as per the beehaw example recently. So your best option would indeed be to host your own small instance.

78 comments