this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023

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The Agora

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[Discussion] Should we defederate exploding-heads.com? (Closing arguments) (self.agora)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by imaqtpie to c/agora

384 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Exploding-heads.com is another instance on Lemmy where alt-right MAGA types tend to reside. Some people on this server want us to defederate from them immediately, some people want to save defederation as a last resort. They have 104 active users (more stats below).

It seems that exploding-heads has also experienced a recent botswarm invasion. This is obviously another point in favor of defederating them, assuming you are worried about botswarms, which is currently being discussed here.

My advice to you all is please try to discuss this in a civil manner, we need not allow them to create divisive conflict inside our communities. No matter how the vote turns out, you're not going to be able to defederate from your fellow sh.itheads so be nice.

I've linked many of the previous discussions below so people who are out of the loop can get a general sense of the situation.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714 https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126 https://sh.itjust.works/post/410325

Lemmy.world just recently defederated them.

https://lemmy.world/post/747912

https://lemmy.world/post/577526

Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.

Ensuring diversity of servers is beneficial to the platform as a whole, but it is also not our responsibility to bear that burden.

TLDR, just wrap up any last points in this thread before we open the vote tomorrow. Please be civil.

EDIT: To clarify, this isn't the official vote, this is the final discussion. The vote thread will be posted tomorrow and you will only be allowed to make a single comment saying Aye or Nay.

EDIT2: Vote thread is up, this thread is now locked. Very lively discussion thread sh.itheads. Please try to be more respectful next time.

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[–] Bronzie 1 points 1 year ago (27 children)

Even though I don't agree with what seems to be the general sentiment there, I still say Nay.

Lemmy is pretty fresh for the most of us still, and is in an incredible growing phase that could amplify in two days when the Reddit API goes down for third party apps.
Still, too many posts these days are about defederating left and right. All communities here are fresh and trying to find their footing, ours included. If we shut the door on all instances that have issues this fast, we're sabotaging the potential growth of this platform, in my opinion.

I'm not saying that anything should go, but let's not allow a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

If they keep allowing the horseshit to flow, I am very open to changing my vote.

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

Moderation should be accomplished with an iron fist for now, growth before anything. I vote yes.

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[–] god 1 points 1 year ago

I vote not to defederate.

I agree with the Chinese Bot Troll on this one. I like open stuff. For me, personally, we've already defederated too much. I don't care enough about EH that it'd matter to me too much, but if it were up to me we wouldn't defederate anything that wasn't either a bot instance or a scam instance. As long as we have enough moderators to keep policy violators away, and we continue to observe, I don't see a reason to defederate. Then again, we've already defederated too much so I'm not too invested in this.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 0 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I think federation should be used as a tool for combatting spam (brigading included) and dealing with instances that allow illegal content or that promote actual violence.

De-federating is not the tool to use because you don't like seeing the content in your feed, you can block the communities. De-federating isn't the tool to enforce this instances moderation rules on other instance's communities.

Brigading is certainly a concern and if their users were doing that we would need to reach out to their admin to attempt to resolve the issue. As a last resort we could de-federate to mitigate the problem.

I'm not at all defending the ideas on EH or the user's posts or comments. There are some truly disgusting opinions being represented there. I just haven't seen them cross the line into allowing violence to be planned, or allowing CSAM or spamming.

It is very important to understand that de-federation is just a global block list that is enforced on every user on this instance. It is convenient for the users to have spam instances automatically blocked and for the users to not have to worry about CSAM in their feed. Beyond that, if a user wants to read alt-right content then it isn't up to me to tell them that they cannot.

If you want to block content that is 100% up to you, nobody can tell you who you can block. In exactly the same way you should not attempt to exercise any control over another user's block list.

De-federation is just a block list. Curate your own block list otherwise let the admins remove spam and obviously illegal stuff. De-federation isn't a super downvote button an we should not use it as such.

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