[Discussion] - SJW Rammy Statement

Seems like a good plan while their content is unmoderated. Appreciate your monitoring of the situation TheDude.

I think this is the perfect issue to use as a springboard for the discussion and possible creation of a federation policy that TheDude can refer to in order to better navigate decisions, and we can influence the specific instances via changes to the policy. As a first stab at this, I'll reference the federation policy originally written by @[email protected] here. I have made some slight tweaks to the original that I feel capture the spirit, while simplifying it. I have included references to Canadian law, as that's where the server physically is and thus it makes the most sense to use Canadian law as the reference.

Admins of sh.itjust.works may defederate with another instance when that instance:

is experiencing technical difficulties that impact the functioning of sh.itjust.works
is host to a large number of bot accounts that generate unwanted/disruptive traffic
is currently without administration due to credential theft, lack of time/interest, or any other reason causing the instance to be unmoderated.

Defederations done for these reasons must be immediately reverted once the admins are made aware that the underlying issue is resolved.

Admins of sh.itjust.works must defederate with another instance immediately when that instance:

is operated for the purpose of posting commercial advertisements to other instances.
does not remove in a timely manner posts considered illegal under Canadian law, including but not limited to child pornography, hate speech, hate propaganda (advocation and/or promotion of genocide).
~~is operated primarily for the purpose of political extremism/radicalization to include rampant bigotry, racism, sexism, calls to violence.~~

EDIT: On further reflection and reading, I'm unsure of my 3rd point there about political extremism, as that's very subjective. I'm unsure if it's even needed, as bigotry, racism, sexism and calls to violence are all adequately covered under Canada's hate speech laws.

is host to a large number of bot accounts that generate unwanted/disruptive traffic

Defederation questions/requests should be made in private, at least initially. That is to avoid turning an instance, which may temporarily not be actively administered/moderated, into a hotbed of illegal posting.

As it stands, any concern troll can turn a random small instance, which may not have an admin around for two days or three, into a hotbed of illegal or potentially-illegal activity, simply by bringing attention to it with a public defederation request.

Even with the presumption of genuine concern, the effect and end result will be the same.
Fun fact: My original was written in a hurry so I could run out to the grocery store before it closed, so please consider it a rough draft to be improved upon.

"is host to a large number of bot accounts" I think needs a little more context.

Awhile ago my All New feed was clogged with nearly identical bot posts to nearly identical communities somewhere out on the fediverse. Someone had created a community for every team in some sports ball league, and had set up bots for each that posted game scores/results for each. While it's very bot spammy, I think it is legitimate traffic that does not warrant defederation. This is a perhaps inelegant example of what bots are for.

How about "is host to a large number of bot accounts that generate unwanted/disruptive traffic"
- Thanks, edited!
I 100% agree. I also think point 3 should be time boxed, as in give the admin 3 days or something to respond, after which it'll be defederated, but it could also be defederated if it meets another criteria in the meantime.

I was coming to make the [Discussion] Defederate Rammy post anyways as the drama seemed to be blowing up, thanks for saving us the trouble.

Love the ideas I keep seeing to adopt a defederation policy so you all don't get called authoritarians everytime you have to defederate from an unmoderated instance quickly.

Good call. Seems like a fairly straightforward decision as here and Lemmy.world defederated from exploding heads, and the person posting inflammatory content on rammy is literally the exact same person from exploding heads.

Who is he and why is he doing it? Does anyone know?
- Seems to be basically a 4chan edgelord type of person.

Solid move The dude. That's, like, my opinion, man.

Will the users be able to block instances in the future? The whole defederation doesn't sit right with me but neither is the hate on that instance okay. But shouldn't the user be the one who should be doing this in the first place, for the overall health of fediverse

I believe it's on the roadmap for Lemmy, but that's outside an instance admin's control
I think some apps allow you to do this.
- Doesn't Mastodon?

Makes complete sense.

Great Job!

I'm not a huge fan of defederation (unless they're doing something illegal). We should just let Nazis make fools of themselves in public.

Not a good move. That instance had almost no content before the defederation trolls gave it publicity. You just made the age old mistake of feeding the trolls. And they will come back for more, and more, and more...

There's always the option of bringing them back later once they sort their stuff out. That's also just how Lemmy is designed so the trolls get cut off

I guess you guys gave up on the whole "democracy" thing quickly, eh?

I'm just along for the ride but Federated and Democratic are 2 different things. Also they're not preventing them from existing and creating content, they're just not cross-hosting them. I prefer my Lemmy Nazi-Free.

Democracy can't support Fascism because Fascists only want to abuse the freedoms of Democracy in order to destroy it.
- I never said federated and democratic were the same thing. I may have disagreed with past defederation, but at least it was put to a vote first, unlike this one that's effectively been done as "act first, open for discussion later", seemingly entirely because one random guy with no history raised a post calling for defederation. That's not how I want this instance, or really any platform in general, to operate.