this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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[Discussion]: Community standards for defederation (self.agora)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by kukkurovaca to c/agora
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys 5 points 1 year ago

I have the same views on this topic. Thank you for sharing, and wording it better than I probably could

[–] annegreen 4 points 1 year ago

Well said. I think it’s a slippery slope to start de-federating with instances we find distasteful.

[–] kukkurovaca 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

De-federation should not be used as a political tool to divide social media along partisan lines.

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.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My point is that de-federation should be a technical tool to ensure that all of the servers who are on the Fediverse work together to form one large social media network. It is to do things like shut off spam networks and other low-level maintenance. It should not be used as a tool for deciding who gets to speak and who doesn't get to speak. The exception to that would things that are likely to cause direct harm. A person saying 'Let's meet here and shoot up a school' or a person using an instance to dox people, instances that allow CSAM or other illegal content.

I very much disagree with a lot of the views I see on many communities. I disagree with the suggestion that we use federation as anything more than a spam filter or means of disconnecting blatantly illegal things. The difference is that I'm willing to actually discuss the disagreement and attempt to change people's minds.

I don't think it would be right for the server admin to come in and ban you because he didn't like your opinion and you shouldn't think it is right if he came in and banned me for my opinion. No progress can possibly be made if someone simply steps in and puts a wall between the two people that disagree.

I think the role of social media is like the role of the town square. People should be free to come in and say or think whatever they want, no matter how offensive you may find it as long as they're not directly harming someone. You can be wrong all day but you can't punch someone in the face. You can type whatever words that you would like, but you can't use this space to directly harm people.

De-federating another instance does absolutely nothing to their ability to think whatever thoughts you find offensive. It doesn't de-platform them, their instance will continue working just fine without your instance's federation. What you do when you de-federate is you cut off any chance that their mind can be changed and you cut off any opposing viewpoints from being able to try. That builds the worst kinds of echo chambers.

Whatever chances you may assign to being able to change someone's mind via debate, those chances go to 0% when you eliminate the ability to speak to them.

[–] darkwing_duck 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

no matter how offensive you may find it as long as they’re not directly harming someone.

The issue with the ban-happy people is that they equate offensive content to direct harm.

That builds the worst kinds of echo chambers.

That's literally what they want.

Whatever chances you may assign to being able to change someone’s mind via debate, those chances go to 0% when you eliminate the ability to speak to them.

They don't want to change anyone's mind. They want the echochamber.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These are the same users to use the downvote button against people they disagree with.

They're more comfortable living in filter bubble where their ideas are always correct and nobody can even possibly challenge them.

That's fine for a child, but an adult needs to face the world as it actually is both good and bad. It's odd to want to live in a democratic place but don't want to participate in the marketplace of ideas that is vital for making a democracy work.

[–] darkwing_duck -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

IMO democracy is merely tyranny of the majority. It's playing out right here in this community, on this instance.

What I really want is a benevolent dictatorship, ala a modern Marcus Aurelius with strong convictions. I hoped The Dude was him, but alas he decided to wash his hands of it and leave it up to community.

[–] Ajen 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who gets to define "benevolent?"

[–] darkwing_duck 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's the problem, isn't it.

[–] Ajen 2 points 1 year ago

I think anyone would be happy with a benevolent dictator, as long as they are allowed to define it themselves. That's obviously not practical though. I don't think democracy is ideal, but it seems to be the best system we have.

[–] haxe11 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Whooping_Seal 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I apologize for basically duplicating this thread, I deleted my old post and I will just paste what I wrote bellow

[Discussion] Defederation posts; creating some form of criteria / framework

I feel like it is significantly more productive if we discussed and vote on a policy for what types of instances are reprehensible to the point that we need to seek defederation. We could still create a system where defederations should still pass a vote in the Agora, but I think having some type of framework / criteria in place would be useful.

I don't think federated instances have to follow our local rules entirely. I think they should follow the No bigotry rules, but if another instance has a sensible framework for self-promotion we should still federate with them even if we currently do not allow ads. Pornography is more complicated, I am assuming part of the ban is so TheDude doesn't have to ensure there is no CSAM, if other instances have porn and use NSFW tags properly I am unsure if the CSAM implications still exist for federation.

I think we definitely need to make some type of criteria for defederation but I also think it could be productive to still vote on defederation requests (excluding legal implications ofc)

[–] kukkurovaca 7 points 1 year ago

Agreed, I think there are definitely some local rules that instance uses to manage itself internally and some that are also standards that they expect other good neighbors to have as a basic floor on their moderation, and I also agree that the key one is no bigotry.

[–] ScreaminOctopus 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I definitely think de federation should be on the table if an instance has a significant portion of their users breaking our site rules, or trolling/spamming our communities. We don't want to have our communities overrun with people who want to promote a negative atmosphere because the admins of another instance are unwilling/unable to moderate their users effectively, as it will just put undue burden on our admins and community moderators.

I'd say before de federating we should definitely try to engage with the offending instance's admins to see if they're acting in good faith, and if they have a plan for mitigating the issues.

Personally I don't think we should federate with instances that make themselves safe-havens for people who post bigoted/conspiratorial content and dog-whistling, as having that kind of content on our /all feed will drive away users from groups the content is targeting, making the community worse overall.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’d say before de federating we should definitely try to engage with the offending instance’s admins to see if they’re acting in good faith, and if they have a plan for mitigating the issues.

The way I look at it is that there are some things that are absolutely unacceptable. Violence, CSAM, Doxing, harassment campaigns, illegal activities, etc. These are a red line for de-federation.

Then we have our instance rules. They circumscribes the behavior that we allow and don't allow in communities on this instance. Let's say this is the green line.

There is a huge amount of grey area between the red line and the green line. I think that this grey area is best handled by individual users' ability to block and avoid communities and users that they don't care to see.

Federating with an instance isn't an approval of their users or communities, it is simply a line of communication. Cutting that line should be avoided if at all possible. Otherwise we don't have a social media network, we have a few islands of instances and we're back to being no better off than the current social media where you need to create 50 different accounts to access each island of content.

We don’t want to have our communities overrun with people who want to promote a negative atmosphere because the admins of another instance are unwilling/unable to moderate their users effectively, as it will just put undue burden on our admins and community moderators.

You're absolutely right. If an instance's users are coordinating to harass or brigade our communities, then the admin staff should work with the other instance owner to resolve the problem. De-federation would be a last resort if it isn't possible to reach a resolution. That scenario fits into the 'harassment campaigns' category.

[–] tcely 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Before de-federation we should talk to the admin/mods and also ban the accounts causing the problem.

I don't think de-federation should be used to clean up the "all" feed, that is not at all appropriate or useful.

[–] BaldDude 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

it looks like some people are realy itching to get instances defederated from sh.itjust.works. It's all they talk about.

People you don't like exist.
They probably don't like you either.
Life goes on and the world at large doesn't care.

Please stop making up problems, we will run into real ones soon enough. Instead, how about we stop worrying about "Nazis" or "Commys" or whatever over at other instances and try to enjoy watching this instance grow for a change.

edit: some formatting.

[–] kukkurovaca 11 points 1 year ago

Defederation is a normal part of life in the fediverse, and this instance already defederates from the start. Healthy fediverse instances have clear standards for what instances they do and don't federate with.

Normally those are defined by admin; in this case admin has now stated a desire for the community to make rules decisions. So, reasonable and normal to discuss. And reasonable and normal for folks to have disagreements about.

This instance is already paying the price for lax moderation in having been defederated by beehaw, which regardless of how much you or I personally care about the content on beehaw does notably impact the user experience for many folks. And the more this site "stops worrying about nazis" the more that will happen. (And the more users will get fed fed up and migrate to instances with clearer moderation practices.)

Not referring to you or anyone in particular, but it feels like a lot of the folks in this conversation had never heard of defederation before a couple weeks ago and are acting like it and the fediverse generally are a brand new idea. Defederation for Lemmy in many ways has higher stakes than it does for Mastodon due to being structured around communities and not just individual user -- but that's all the more reason to have clear standards for it.

[–] Kecessa 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a much more sensible approach to the question.

What were the criterias that lead to defederating from lemmygrad? That should give an idea of the reasoning that should be applied for other instances.

Disclaimer: I never checked any of their communities so I don't know how bad it is and I wasn't there early enough to see if they were brigading other instances.

[–] Potato 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I suspect there is no objectively right way to single out instances for exclusion to maintain a healthy community. There are clearly cases where it is necessary. An instance set up plainly as a place to automated spam needs to go. But we will see many edge cases as well, and these edge cases can end up being community defining for better or worse.

I might suggest, in addition to the existence of a well defined set of rules, putting de-federation from another instance, if there are objections, to a vote in the Agora, with a respectable supermajority (maybe 2/3) being needed to realize the de-federation. Violation of the rules justifies putting the instance on trial for being a crappy federation partner. But if no consensus can be found to that effect then, well, that's how it goes.

[–] tcely 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

There is no way we should defederate an instance because of this. Particularly, as we know reports will grow as the number of users does over time anyway.

Breaking the users' experience because your tooling is insufficient is a bad look.

[–] Oni_eyes 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Throwing up your hands and saying "oh well, you're gonna have to personally deal with all the trolls because we don't want to hurt their feelings to keep our rules in place" isn't better.

When the tools are created, they can refederate and use the tools as needed.

[–] tcely 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bad faith reports don't imply actual trolls for users to personally deal with.

Performing moderation actions on good faith reports from users is desirable.

Disconnecting your own users from content they find useful because of the volume of reports that they can't see or prevent, just because you can't be bothered to do the moderation work is undesirable.

[–] Oni_eyes 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Who decides that the majority are bad faith reports?

Users that want access to that content can, as mentioned a hundred times every time defederating comes up, go migrate or make a second account.

The fact is that there are not a lot of tools for mods right now so it's either: A) keep federated and let each individual user block trolls, Or B) defederating until such mod tools are available, which is something that is apparently being worked on. Considering many posters shit on beehaw for defederating when their community is predominantly of a group that receives intense trolling and has a notably higher suicide rate than baseline, and that online harassment is a contributing factor to that level, I don't understand why there is such a pushback until such a time as said tools are available in order to protect the larger community.

But I guess some people who do not have to bear that weight don't appreciate it, and a full throated defenders of free speech and "just asking questions" despite how that has worked out historically as enabling trolls at all levels.

In addition, these instances are growing fast and it will be difficult for mods to keep up with their duties even with a full suite of tools. Defederating is just a way to cool things off while assessing the damage vs potential and putting the most vulnerable first over users who don't personally care that they see said content.

[–] tcely 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who decides that the majority are bad faith reports?

The moderation team dealing with reports seem to be the only people in a position to judge bad/good faith for reports.

You seem very interested in intentionally mixing bad-faith reports that only the moderation team sees with other types of misbehavior.

Increased levels of reporting about a local user account is not a good reason to break the user experience for every local account by de-federating.

In addition, these instances are growing fast and it will be difficult for mods to keep up with their duties even with a full suite of tools. Defederating is just a way to cool things off while assessing the damage vs potential and putting the most vulnerable first over users who don't personally care that they see said content.

It is not a temporary action, it's actually not reversible because it breaks links and misses content.

So, no, it's not "a way to cool things off" because it creates more work.

Instances are growing fast, and moderation tools need to get better. However, creating more work for every user on the instance is not an acceptable solution to; the moderation load is increasing but nothing else bad is going on.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is "create another account if you want to see their content" more work for the individual user than "onus is on you to block each and every troll from that instance and their communities because you can't block the whole instance yet"? They're both a lot of work.

[–] tcely 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why does "people are reporting my account in bad faith" mean there are trolls to be blocked to you?

You are really stuck on ignoring the scope of the reason that started this discussion.

You can't actually see the bad faith reports as a user, so there isn't going to be any reason to block a user or an instance from your perspective.

It is the job of the moderation team to protect you from this mess, not to leave you and every other local user to wonder why your communities are less active and replies seem to come out of nowhere.

Then saying that you can just create another account on a different instance to get back to a functional state is adding insult to injury.

There is no way that every user on the instance being asked to move instances is less work than just handling the bad faith reports against one user.

Any admin/moderation team that prioritized themselves over all of their users can't be trusted any longer.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why does a user crying that people report them in bad faith mean that the user is implicitly telling the truth? Defederating isn't about removing a single user, it's about blocking a community that allows users to post content that goes against the core instances values, like no bigotry. You're arguing that because one person on another instance is crying bad faith reports for their interactions on this instance, we should not look at how that instance is run and instead put the onus on the users to block what they view as trolling against the core values for a whole community?

Or am I missing something?

[–] tcely 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You seem to be missing a few things:

  1. It's not the user deciding/complaining. They likely don't know it's happening until the moderation team informs them. The moderator has decided the report is a bad faith report about a local user.

  2. The scope is limited to de-federation of an instance for being the source of these bad faith reports.

  3. No content from the external instance is relevant for this discussion.

  4. I am not arguing what you claim I am arguing.

I don't know how to explain the concept to you. You seem to be very fixated on misunderstanding. Please stop replying to me.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 year ago

Ok so by bad faith reporting you mean something akin to brigading?

[–] goat 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Breaking the users’ experience because your tooling is insufficient is a bad look.

The Beehaw method

[–] tcely 2 points 1 year ago

Indeed.

[–] goat -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think your examples fit pretty well!

I don't think defederating should be used as a 'mega downvote' button.