Hello World,
Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events, we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad.
Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity of the posts and comments, we are not waiting for the next Lemmy update that will allow users to block instances.
At Lemmy.world, we have always strived to foster an inclusive and welcoming user environment. However, recent posts and comments from Lemmygrad have clearly violated our server rules and, more importantly, our core values. We firmly believe that hate speech and incitement of violence have no place in our community, regardless of personal beliefs or affiliations.
As always, we encourage all users to report any content they deem inappropriate or harmful. No matter one's stance in any conflict, Lemmy.world will always take immediate action to remove and ban any posts or comments that incite violence or propagate hatred.
We encourage everyone to continue engaging in discussions within the boundaries of respect and understanding. As we move forward with this decision, we remain committed to providing all community members with a safe and welcoming space. We appreciate your continued support and cooperation in upholding our shared principles.
Thank you,
The Lemmy.World Team
No, even when the option comes for users to block whole instances we will still defederate with instances we do not want to moderate the content from. But we also always reserve the right to re-federate with any instance if the concerns are resolved.
And as per https://lemmy.world/legal : We are not a free speech zone. This Code of Conduct lays out the expected standards of conduct and behavior. Users may not say or post anything that violates these rules, and all participants are required to follow this code. If you disagree with this code, you are welcome to keep looking for other Lemmy instances. Hereโs a list of all public instances.
Thank you for not being a Freeze Peach site!
Your modlog shows far more removed content from sh.itjust.works or lemm.ee users in comparison, so why don't you defederate from those instances as well?
It's probably because the two instances you named have admins who actively try to moderate problems as opposed to joining in as with lemmygrad. But that's just my take from it all.
Both those sites are larger than lemmygrad.ml so it's expected more shit will flow from there. Unlike, however, lemmygrad.ml the admins of both those sites seem to try to rein in the chaos themselves, thus leaving the workload here on lemmy.world lighter, so there's no need to defederate. The admins of lemmygrad.ml not only won't control their mob, they egg them on.
Hold on, what did we do this time!?
Y'all are cool. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming that Lemmygrad was defederated for any sort of outsized rule-breaking behavior from their users on this instance.
Fair enough. I didn't really consider the moderation effort required. And you could stand to be a little less aggressive. I have no problem with the rules as they stand. It would be nice though if there were a way to still communicate with these users without being subjecting everyone to their community posts. But my concerns go further than LW.
I get why LW doesnt have an interest in being a free speech platform, but I still think it's better to be a good influence on people rather than shutting them out. Their bad ideas don't go away when we defederate and will probably even grow in momentum if left unchallenged. You shouldn't have to deal with them if you don't want to and their content need not be visible by default. I just think Lemmy needs options other than defederation. We risk recreating the siloed communities federation was meant to counter.
And it's not like these worst offenders don't deserve to be alienated, I just think it's inevitable that we will become used to defederation but and start doing it on a whim. Lemmy will become a sanitized environment devoid of anything coming close to contraversial. If this happens, it takes away the biggest advantage we have over Reddit, Twitter, etc. No important conversations will happen here, the population will fracture and dwindle, we will all return to Reddit.
I'm not really asking LW to change anything, I'm just saying there needs to be finer controls built into Lemmy that will prevent defederation becoming the default method of dealing with troublesome instances.
Know that when I said "If you disagree with this code, you are welcome to keep looking for other Lemmy instances" I was directly quoting the CoC.
If you want an overview of the instances we defederated with, and why, we keep the list updated here: https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world
If you didn't want that then why use Lemmy in the first place? The entire point is that it's an open platform. It's one thing the defederate hate groups, but it's something entirely different to willfully lock yourself in an echo chamber. The problem is when defederation becomes the norm and is used to eliminate any uncomfortable discussion at the whim of moderators. This isn't just a problem with LW, its common on all instances.
Being an open platform, anyone is welcome to create their own private spaces, and that's fine. It just seems odd to recreate the conditions of the old social media platforms. And of course I'm free to leave if LW isn't for me.
And no, I'm not a free speech absolutist. But I also don't think you need to be one to think open discorse is important.