Didn’t want to further derail the exploding heads vote thread, so:
What are the criteria that should be applied when determining whether to defederate from an instance? And should there be a specific process to be followed, and what level of communication if any with the instance admins?
For context it may be useful to look at the history of the Fediblock tag in Mastodon, to see what sorts of stuff folks are dealing with historically in terms of both obvious and unremarkable bad actors (e.g., spam) and conflict over acceptability of types of speech and moderation standards.
(Not saying that folks need to embrace similar standards or practices, but it’s useful to know what’s been going on all this time, especially for folks who are new to the fediverse.)
For example:
- Presence of posts that violate this instance’s “no bigotry” rule (Does it matter how prolific this type of content is on the target instance?)
- Instance rules that conflict with this instance’s rules directly - if this instance blocks hate speech and the other instance explicitly allows it, for example.
- Admin non-response or unsatisfactory response to reported posts which violate community rules
- Not sure if there’s a way in lemmy to track incoming/outgoing reports, but it would be useful for the community to have some idea here. NOT saying to expose the content of all reports, just an idea of volume.
- High volume of bad faith reports from the target instance on users here (e.g., if someone talks about racism here and a hostile instance reports it for “white genocide” or some other bs). This may seem obscure, but it’s a real issue on Mastodon.
- Edited to add: Hosting communities whose stated purpose is to share content bigoted content
- Coordinating trolling, harassment, etc.
For reference, local rules:
Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
No Ads / Spamming.
No pornography.
I think de-federation should be very limited.
It should be used as a tool to fight spam, disassociate with instances allowing the commission of crimes, that propagates abusive content (CSAM, Doxing, Targeted Harassment, SWATing, etc) or other things that cause direct real-world harm.
De-federation should not be used as a political tool to divide social media along partisan lines. If people cannot handle distasteful opinions then they have access to the block button. If users from other instances break the rules here, then they can be banned from here. If you find other communities distasteful, then don’t go there.
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.
As much as I very much dislike the current political climate, and even though I’m aware that there is actual violence going on against those that don’t deserve it, I must say I disagree with your claim. Not every racist or sexist or homophobe is guilty of violence. We are a tribal species, but not every disagreement has to mean war. Additionally, I don’t think defederating communities at the first signs of any of these will achieve what you want.
My point is that de-federation should be a technical tool to ensure that all of the servers who are on the Fediverse work together to form one large social media network. It is to do things like shut off spam networks and other low-level maintenance. It should not be used as a tool for deciding who gets to speak and who doesn’t get to speak. The exception to that would things that are likely to cause direct harm. A person saying ‘Let’s meet here and shoot up a school’ or a person using an instance to dox people, instances that allow CSAM or other illegal content.
I very much disagree with a lot of the views I see on many communities. I disagree with the suggestion that we use federation as anything more than a spam filter or means of disconnecting blatantly illegal things. The difference is that I’m willing to actually discuss the disagreement and attempt to change people’s minds.
I don’t think it would be right for the server admin to come in and ban you because he didn’t like your opinion and you shouldn’t think it is right if he came in and banned me for my opinion. No progress can possibly be made if someone simply steps in and puts a wall between the two people that disagree.
I think the role of social media is like the role of the town square. People should be free to come in and say or think whatever they want, no matter how offensive you may find it as long as they’re not directly harming someone. You can be wrong all day but you can’t punch someone in the face. You can type whatever words that you would like, but you can’t use this space to directly harm people.
De-federating another instance does absolutely nothing to their ability to think whatever thoughts you find offensive. It doesn’t de-platform them, their instance will continue working just fine without your instance’s federation. What you do when you de-federate is you cut off any chance that their mind can be changed and you cut off any opposing viewpoints from being able to try. That builds the worst kinds of echo chambers.
Whatever chances you may assign to being able to change someone’s mind via debate, those chances go to 0% when you eliminate the ability to speak to them.
I think your examples fit pretty well!
I don’t think defederating should be used as a ‘mega downvote’ button.
it looks like some people are realy itching to get instances defederated from sh.itjust.works. It’s all they talk about.
People you don't like exist. They probably don't like you either. Life goes on and the world at large doesn't care.Please stop making up problems, we will run into real ones soon enough. Instead, how about we stop worrying about “Nazis” or “Commys” or whatever over at other instances and try to enjoy watching this instance grow for a change.
edit: some formatting.
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.
High volume of bad faith reports from the target instance on users here (e.g., if someone talks about racism here and a hostile instance reports it for “white genocide” or some other bs). This may seem obscure, but it’s a real issue on Mastodon.
There is no way we should defederate an instance because of this. Particularly, as we know reports will grow as the number of users does over time anyway.
Breaking the users’ experience because your tooling is insufficient is a bad look.
Throwing up your hands and saying “oh well, you’re gonna have to personally deal with all the trolls because we don’t want to hurt their feelings to keep our rules in place” isn’t better.
When the tools are created, they can refederate and use the tools as needed.
Bad faith reports don’t imply actual trolls for users to personally deal with.
Performing moderation actions on good faith reports from users is desirable.
Disconnecting your own users from content they find useful because of the volume of reports that they can’t see or prevent, just because you can’t be bothered to do the moderation work is undesirable.
Who decides that the majority are bad faith reports?
Users that want access to that content can, as mentioned a hundred times every time defederating comes up, go migrate or make a second account.
The fact is that there are not a lot of tools for mods right now so it’s either: A) keep federated and let each individual user block trolls, Or B) defederating until such mod tools are available, which is something that is apparently being worked on. Considering many posters shit on beehaw for defederating when their community is predominantly of a group that receives intense trolling and has a notably higher suicide rate than baseline, and that online harassment is a contributing factor to that level, I don’t understand why there is such a pushback until such a time as said tools are available in order to protect the larger community.
But I guess some people who do not have to bear that weight don’t appreciate it, and a full throated defenders of free speech and “just asking questions” despite how that has worked out historically as enabling trolls at all levels.
In addition, these instances are growing fast and it will be difficult for mods to keep up with their duties even with a full suite of tools. Defederating is just a way to cool things off while assessing the damage vs potential and putting the most vulnerable first over users who don’t personally care that they see said content.
