What is Defederation?
Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and users from our instance will no longer be able to see anything (communities, posts or comments) coming from it, and their users won’t be able to see anything coming from ours.
What will get an Instance Defederated?
Our goal is to avoid defederation, but we will do so under the following circumstances:
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The instance spreads overwhelming amounts of drama, hate or negativity.
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The instance is mostly made up bots, and or promotes spam.
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The instance allows the harassment or doxxing of others.
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The instance knowingly hosts CSAM or other illegal content.
Has FMHY Defederated Instances?
Only the following, all for breaking the 1st rule above:
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exploding-heads
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lemmygrad
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Rammy
Things to Note:
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There are circumstances where we may block a specific community within an instance, rather than blocking the entire instance itself, but this is very uncommon.
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Remember that if there’s a community you don’t like, you can block it entirely in settings.
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Keep in mind that our goal is to keep this community safe, so if you see something that breaks our rules please don’t hesitate to report it.
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If its something urgent, you can always contact us easily via Divolt 💬. Its connected to our discord, so there are mods online 24/7.
I’m certainly not advocating for lemmygrad, and not even a user at FMHY, but somewhat surprised to see them on the list.
I mean they’re relentless with propaganda and misinformation, and I’ve blocked them in my client, just wondering where they fit into rule 1.
Maybe drama I suppose.
If you were looking for feedback, I would replace “overwhelming amount” in rule one with “significant and unregulated”.
I’d also replace “mostly” in rule 2 with the same.
It’s always going to be subjective and discretionary, but I feel like the wording as it is allows for more scope for users of banned instances to feel targeted (and therefore persecuted), than is absolutely necessary.
I might also include a sentence like “the primary objective of this policy is to promote the best possible experience for users of FMHY, and therefore requires admins to exercise discretion to determine which instances consistently undermine that objective for the majority of our users.”
… the implication being that someone personally may feel wronged by a particular decision to defederate whatever instance, but you’re trying to get the best outcome for the most users.
Regardless, it’s always good to publish a policy and promote some transparency. Good job.