[Discussion] Defederation does not do what you think it does
[Discussion] Defederation does not do what you think it does
In the spirit of being encouraged to speak my mind here's a slight effort post:
Defederation does not do what you think it does.
The instance creator and admins are those with the ultimate power within their instance. The active users delegate them that power by interacting with their instance.
Defining "defederation" within the context of Lemmy as I understand it:
"the act of denying the ability for accounts within specific instances to interact with each other"
Anyone at this current time can create an account on most instances. One site on sh.itjust.works is defederated right now, but anyone here may also have an account there, who knows? The value comes from our activity and interaction within each instance.
Defederation is a narrow and a slippery slope because it doesn't actually solve any problems. There are many instances which are doing things I think should be banned. I don't interact with them. I don't provide them with any value.
We uphold an inclusive enjoyable community here by being active. Individuals with malicious intent are ostracized naturally by an active community. Defederating entire instances does not stop bad actors, but an active strongwilled community does.
It's not our responsibility to moderate other instances.
You're viewing a single thread.
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.
I just want to append that a "rampantly fascist troll farm" would be something like The Stormfront, which hosts literal neo-nazis, or possibly 4chan's /pol/ forum, where Jewish conspiracies are blamed for all the world's ills and... only maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the users are saying that ironically. These are real websites with real people, and if you are used to Reddit as your main social media, I would urge you to take a look just once and get an example of what actual hate speech looks like. That is, illegal in the UK, or could be used as evidence to increase the sentence in conjunction with a guilty verdict for violent crime in the US. Trumptard/trans-skeptic is no the same as rampantly fascist.
I only ask to reserve the use of the word for two reasons. One, the real thing is out there and we shouldn't forget it. Two, accusing someone of attempting a fascist takeover of the government which would end democracy... is a pretty good excuse to take over the government and end democracy. It's the same sort of thing as saying someone's words are "violent" towards you in an attempt to justify (real) violence towards them.
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.
It's not our job of shielding others from bad thoughts because they may be swayed by them. And you are denying those who aren't swayed to interct with those thoughts if they so choose.