Why is programming.dev federated with exploding heads?

The instance is currently federated with every instance (including places like lemmygrad and explodingheads) as the current stance is defederation should be a last resort with users being able to choose what they want to see instead

Exploding heads has some very questionable content though so its status is currently being discussed by the admins

I wish there were a way to block entire instances per user.
- It is an option in Sync for Lemmy at least.
- This is actively being discussed too
- Yeah it should be a per user decision..
- This would make my life so much easier
I understand the reasoning but I think it's not the same situation as lemmygrad, which I feel is a normal instance with an ideological bent. Exploding heads is just violent propaganda. I hope you defederate.

What about hexbear? Is programming.dev federated with them? Or are they intentionally defederated with everyone?
- hexbear split off and has been running their own fork for awhile separate from the rest of lemmy (so they couldnt federate with lemmy instances). They are coming back now though so lemmy instances will start to be able to interact with them soon
I am not a fan of reaching for defederation often; I actually came here from beehaw because I felt like they just pulled that trigger too fast and too frequently.

However, I do think that we should defederate from exploding-heads and hexbear. I don’t go looking for chances to be offended, but I do notice that when I see something truly distasteful on All it is almost exclusively from one of those two lately, and at this point removing them from All would make my lemmy experience just a bit more friendly.

It’s not even worth reporting content about them because when you do it seems like a common theme is that they just tag you so they can harass you. I tested this myself recently by reporting obvious misinformation/propaganda and the next time I logged in there were indeed items waiting in my inbox calling me a coward, etc.

Edit: fun fact, even if you block a user, and you block the community they are posting from, any time they mention you in a post you still get a message in your inbox, which seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight and a tool for harassment.

For those not aware of any drama, could you spill the beans?

Here's the front page of exploding-heads.com. It has a picture of a trans person hanging themselves with slurs I censored with an emoji since it's probably against the rules to post here
They are not left wing, mainly.
- A particular flavour of right wing though. One that goes out of it's way to say the most aboherent shit on people that are not like them.
  
  In France we've got laws to regulate this type of speech. Say that AIDS is god's punishment to the homosexuals -> get a fine (or if it's the twentieth time you do it, go to jail).
  
  I don't find it shocking that people are banning content that some countries judge so problematic that they are ready to put people in jail for it.
- No, it's that they're massive bigots that harass people

For anybody that stumbles upon this post, pushed out our decision on it and it was talked about in the august newsletter https://programming.dev/post/1671024

The exploding-heads communities that break our rules have been removed from the instance (and if you find any more in the future report a post that shows it breaking the rules and ill deal with it)