So, I’ve been on an interesting journey lately to try and find a NSFW fediverse instance that fits my preferences. Found some unique ones that might work, but still not 100% sure they are “the one”.
It’s no secret that I’m furry trash, so, it seems like we’re off to a good start here at a place called “yiffit” ;D A large, endless gallery of high quality yiff is fine by me.
But I like other things too, i.e. socializing and memes, learning new stuff, etc. and I’ve had some pretty negative experiences with some overzealous, power trippin’ mods in the past. So, I’m curious about this instance in particular and its stance on moderation.
– How strict or loose is the overall policy? What is the stance on expression? What kind of content is going to be permanently off limits? If something rubs someone the wrong way, am I to at least expect a warning? Or an imediate permanent ban? Is there an appeals process? Will there be advanced notice of any major changes? How “focused” is this instance aiming to be?
I also understand that the fediverse is a relatively new concept, and not everything is fully established yet in many respects. More than anything, I’m just trying to pin down the culture of this place. I have no intention of testing these limits, but I am tying to guage just how chill this place is and if there’s anything else I should know before committing.
In my experience, furries tend to be a pretty welcoming bunch, but hey, you never know.
I’m curious what other people think their ideal “furryNSFW” instance looks like, and what they want to see going forward as far as moderation is concerned.
Hello there! Those are actually some great questions.
To give you a better idea about my overall way to handle moderation in the fediverse please have a look at the following links:
- The About page of the Packmates.org mastodon instance which I also run: https://packmates.org/about
- This post regarding present and temporary challenges that restrict some content until at least the 15th of August: https://yiffit.net/post/19519
In this regard I have good news that I’ve already started talking to other fediverse admins about a way in which we could tag communities with different labels to allow remote instances mute some hardcore stuff that I want to allow but non-furries might find offputting.
- This post about how I might handle federation / remote content: https://yiffit.net/post/136140
The bottom line is that I don’t care what you type of yiff you enjoy as long as you’re a good person. I’m a fan of feral yiff, hypnosis and bdsm myself and understand how ostracizing it can be to be judged as a bad person due to the type of yiff you enjoy.
Right now these are the restrictions that are in place and whether they will be lifted or not.
- Underage characters (permanent)
- Extreme or potentially disturbing to users on other instances: scat, gore, snuff, feral on human, very realistic feral, blood, etc…
(Most of these will be temporary. I aim to lift the restrictions on almost all of these by August 15th, after having found a way to tag content in such a way that allows remote admins to hide it if they so want without having to defederate from us.
The ones that I’m most on the fence about are gore / snuff, since I can understand how disturbing these can come off and I’ll need to find a way to keep that content from being seen by most people who would clearly want to avoid it.
Since I’m not familiar with that content myself, I also need to get some people’s opinion to make sure that the way this content is posted is safe and in such a way that it does not enable any sort of abuse networking. I’m sure that most people are good, but I need to make 100% sure that I’m not allowing problematic dog-whistles by, let’s say, actual toxic sadists. Maybe my concern is unwarranted, but it’s something I need to learn about since I do not know this world and the burden is on me to create a healthy and safe place).
- Discussion of divisive or controversial topics, including call-outs or brigading (Permanent. please avoid topics that could cause problems just because you want to see who’s on your side, especially if they’re related to politics)
Regarding remote content, I will delegate moderation of remote content posted by remote users on remote communities to the remote admins. I will block instances and users that are ‘spammy’: harassment, proselytizing, spam, doxxing, illegal content, etc. I will try to mute everything else. The only thing I ask of local users is to not get involved in fringe or divisive politics, discussions, and other behavior that is controversial.
tl;dr: If the content is legal I really don’t care, but I need to find ways to make sure that other fediverse neighbors aren’t negatively impacted. From local users I expect them to go out of their way to avoid trouble, confrontation, division and conflict. And of course, I will not host any users or content that’s hateful / hate speech / discriminatory.
Edit: also, for now all NSFW communities should be loosely furry related. Characters should at least have cat ears or something like that. This might change in the future, but it’s best for now to keep the instance on-topic as it grows.
I hope this answers your questions or most of them ^^ Let me know if you have any other questions.
This seems fair, and very helpful! Thanks!
Personally, I think giving users more options than blocking a community outright or completely defederating from other fringe places is very much worth looking into.
Not saying everything should be promoted in /all or anything like that. Obviously you’d want to avoid anarchy, haha. But if it’s legal, relevant, and doesn’t hurt anyone, it would be nice to be searchable at least, imo. I’ve always been more of a live and let live kinda person and blocking things, even uncomfortable stuff, never sits well with me.
In particular, I really like the idea of better tagging and filtering so the user can pick and choose for themselves. I guess we’ll see how things develop, but this was very encouraging!
I already have a system in mind which I’ve loosely discussed with other admins. This week I’ll be working on a proof of concept.
Lemmy already allows hidden communities that only show up to followers. It just isn’t possible to toggle that via UI yet.
