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.
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.