kukkurovaca

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

!dndnext@ttrpg.network

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.

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.

The call is coming from inside the house on this one

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.

@TheDude@sh.itjust.works 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.

Created a separate [Discussion] post for general defederation standards.

It will be important to articulate what standards are intended to be applied to instances generally; it's not just about the particularly awful vibes of this particular one. There will be dozens or hundreds more like it, not to mention the spammers and whatnot.

Aye

Going forward, will be necessary to articulate standards and processes for defederation, to avoid having to relitigate the concepts of free speech, hate speech, etc. every time.

Nay

Also wtf

The best way to ensure that democracy doesn’t spiral into Haiti

You have no right to tell me what I can see and respond to anymore than I have a right to tell you who you can and cannot block.

That's also not what defederating is. Nobody's speech or ability to see speech is being restricted, since we are all free to set up accounts on other instances. Users are making a reasonable request to the instance owner for a normal moderation action that is in line with stated community standards and past defederation decisions (i.e., lemmygrad); the instance owner is free to honor it or not.

The basic question, which every fediverse instance has been having to deal with since inception, is how to draw the line on communities that willingly include bad actors. It has to be drawn somewhere, and where you draw it says a lot.

lol, defederating is not anything like jail

• Federating is like sitting at a big table with a bunch of people in a restaurant.
• Blocking is moving a couple seats down from someone who's being an asshole so you can't hear them anymore (but meanwhile they're still harassing your friends, you're just ignoring it)
• Defederating is separating the group so that you're no longer at the table with the asshole and their asshole friends

Now, in a tolerant society, we should be tolerant of people who are merely annoying. But not people who are normalizing violence and hate. There are people you fundamentally should not sit at a table with.

It's important to understand the difference between a good faith disagreement and bad faith propaganda and harassment campaigns, which is what the right wing troll farms deal in.

Nazi instances will proliferate and it benefits nobody else to stay in federation with them. It makes the whole fediverse less usable and more dangerous. And whether you like it or not it sends a message to people who are targeted by them that they are not truly welcome here, regardless of whatever moderation rules are espoused.

And in North America, as in many places, these people are acting as a propaganda arm for a literal violent terror movement. Sometimes under a fig leaf of ”irony” but it makes no material difference whether they’re chuckling when they spew shit to me