my dude just dont subscribe to those communities. this whole "defederate them because i dont agree with them" will ruin the entire fediverse
sh.itjust.works Main Community
Home of the sh.itjust.works instance.
This. Not wanting to see certain content is a 'you' problem, not a 'server' problem.
This is a server problem when the "yous" are from said server and made their wish known, like in the post linked by OP.
It's not possible for users to block/hide instance from /all yet. Or every user from an instance everywhere
I think you are right and rule should be simple: if they are doing something illegal ban them immediately. If not, go and change the laws and don't force us to be judges and responsible, because it can become easy to defederate anyone.
Today it is about transfobia (which I would hope not to have anywhere near me) but tomorrow might be something what is not bad, but some people just don't like.
We will end up in the same hateful place reddit has been for some years now.
TLDR: We should change the laws and not fight with virtual ignoring.
It's quite funny to envision legality being the only criterion to take into account for defederation: my home instance as well as any other indulging into media piracy, which is widely considered as theft or counterfeiting, would be blocked, but not hateful instances as long as they can "hate civilly", shall we say.
I really don't like this flood of "can we defed this instance because i don't like their ideology" posts.
Sure, you (and me) might find it offensive, but some others might not, and it shouldn't be us that get to decide what is right for them.
I agree that genuinely illegal/unethical instances like that anime cp one mentioned in another comment should be defederated, but I believe these political instances (exploding heads, lemmygrad, etc) should be federated with, and the user should be the one that blocks them.
Maybe this would be different if there were a lot of extremist instances that the user would have to block individually, but with the current low amount I think it's best to give the user the choice.
Allowing transphobic views to spread online makes people feel more comfortable harassing us in our dms, calling us slurs, and telling us to kill ourselves, or harassing us in public. Then they rally together pass laws to take our children away, throw us in jail, and ban us from recieving basic life-saving healthcare.
Edit: When it isn't banned, then we have to take the time to explain all this to the uninitiated and hope they won't ignore us or say we're being extremist too. It's exhausting. Banning it outright takes that weight off us. Case in point, the N word used to be a lot more common on the internet. Now far fewer people feel comfortable saying that shit casually, and we don't have to discuss why people shouldn't say it. The message is clear: act like this and you aren't welcome here.
I hear ya. Quick question, do you dislike Beehaw? I'm considering whether it's appropriate to promote for vulnerable people to join safe spaces like that, or lemmy.blahaj.zone. Those instances will defederate swiftly from instances with similar concerns for safety. There are many instances that are not pomoted as safe spaces, and there are some that are, and I'm wondering if the question of defederation could be transferred to a recommendation to join a safe space and not an open space where no such safeguards are set due to a higher preference for free access? Let me know what you think.
This is all easy to say for non-trans folk who aren't being targeted for the next genocide. If we allow users like this to hide behind crypto-fascist rhetoric, vulnerable minority communities will be overwhelmed and pushed out by the sheer volume of hatred.
I am completely unfamiliar with federation as a concept so there may not be a way to effectively moderate an entire instance consisting of several communities, but if there is a way to protect vulnerable communities without de-federaring, it needs to be done.
Well, let us assume that there is an instance X that specifically ban any instance that contains historical stuff about Holocaust and how bad it was. The instance X may not contain any Nazi propaganda, but you know that they are Nazi. Would you ban them or not?
The honest answer is that we're still trying to get The Agora running, and a backlog developed in the process. We are working on it, it's just going to take some time to sort through the old votes. We've been focused on cleaning up the process so we don't have this problem moving forward.
Thank you, I appreciate the honest answer.
If you click on 'Instances' link on the very bottom of a page you can check who is defederated. Right now it looks to just be: burggit.moe lemmygrad.ml
Indeed, but we did vote strongly in favour of defederating exploding heads and I'm still seeing their alt-right garbage in my feed. I don't have a lot more patience for people who clutch their pearls and wonder if it's okay to infringe on the free speech rights of fascists than I do for the fascists themselves.
If you want to personally avoid it showing up on your feed you can just open the communities and block them (I don't think there's a way to block an entire instance yet unfortunately).
But yeah I understand that it's not ideal to have to do that to avoid seeing their garbage in your feed to begin with.
"We"? In numerous places i've seen "we" being annoyed by this defederation warrior nonsense, but instead we could come up with some clear guidelines ... as it is instated now, you can go by the orderly procedure and start a discussion thread ... uh wait ...
https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126
https://sh.itjust.works/post/229169
Or the extravagant way, get banned by the other instance: https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714
clutch their pearls and wonder if it's okay to infringe on the free speech rights of fascists than I do for the fascists themselves.
I didn't know any of the instances were run by the government. Private companies (in this case, instances) can deplatform whoever they like and it's not infringement. They are under no obligation, be it legal or just a back room handshake deal, to allow any speech on their platform.
Whoever is clutching their pearls over it is either ill informed or disingenuous. There are plenty of both kinds of people spouting misinformation and disinformation.
They're not, and they can absolutely decide to host or ban whatever they want. But I don't think they should.
When you start banning things you don't like, you end up creating an echo chamber, and then you eventually get to the divisiveness that we have today. Liberals flock to X, Y, Z platforms, and conservatives flock to A, B, C platforms. That's a problem, because it eliminates any kind of cross-pollination of ideas.
That said, not all ideas are worth hosting. Harassment is never okay, so any individual, community, or instance that protects those who harass others should be blocked. But just having different ideas shouldn't be grounds for blocking.
We should absolutely not support cancel culture in any form, we should instead encourage dialogue. Instead of blocking people that think trans people are gross or whatever, we should be open to explaining how those views hurt real people. If you convince just one person, they'll influence others and we'll make progress toward broader acceptance. I draw the line at actual harassment, but ignorance shouldn't result in a ban.
So that's why I urge restraint when blocking communities. We really don't want to go down the road of blocking things we don't like because that just puts up walls that fragments an already fragile community.
God this argument is old and tired. Why don't we just sit down with the fascists, surely if they understand we have feelings that they're hurting, they'll stop threatening us and our families. We just need to be nicer to them!
You people don't know any of the history of the 1930s.