"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
Excuse me while I go donate even more money to PieFed
By becoming paternalistic, the engine starts becoming what it criticizes. It's better if users themselves can choose what they want / don't want to see.
If a user wants to see that, they are free to make an account on the triad themselves, admins should not have to platform their toxicity and misinformation.
And it's also toxic to user uptake in general, a Threadiverse veteran will know what to block, a brand new user on the cusp of breaking from Big Tech social media won't. They'll see that crap and bail, then go on to talk about how they "tried that threadiverse stuff and found a whole bunch of pro-Russia/DPRK simps"
At the end of the day though. It isn't the instances themselves which are actually the problem. Rather the people on them. We can rightfully rail against them all day long as much as we want. And they do give us plenty daily to point out all their flaws.
It also won't change the fact that many of them can and already have set up shop on other servers as well. Even if you blocked every domain ending in ML. That type isn't going away. If anything those instances do quite a bit to contain/expose them.
The problem with defaulting a software to cut them off. Is akin to those trying to legislate morality. When morality is legislated, no one is moral. Because there is no choice or consent. Likewise a "boycott" entered into without knowledge and consent, isn't really a "boycott". Can we beat them by becoming like them? I'm not so sure.
Still, baked into the engine, it doesn't have a healthy prospect. If someone ill intended is involved, he/she can use such an instance as a distraction to set a precedent and narrow further and further what people can and can't see. And when those that would previously applause it notice the problem, it has the risk of being too late.
Example of two Piefed instances that currently federate hexbear:
List of Piefed instances that currently defederate hexbear:
https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list
As you can see, instances defederating hexbear are instances managed by teams which were going to do so anyway, as they already did on Lemmy.
Instances who want to federate know how to do so, there are three examples.
I think that is only partially true
Social media tends toward extremes and it takes man hours to do moderation. Instead of continuously banning hexbear users it would be better to just ban the instance.