I saw that a post was made in !main@sh.itjust.works about defederation about a month ago, an admin commented to make a post here to discuss defederation, but the post was never made.

https://maga.place/ is very obviously a small community with no real substance to it, but I saw an antivax post to !science_memes@mander.xyz and was surprised it still exists.

Anyways I don’t really have a lot to say but uh, I recently hit a full year on this great instance 😊 (old account @TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works)

  • matlag@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    6 days ago

    Defederate!

    Being “MAGA” is not associated with conservatism, it’s claiming your support for a openly fascist president at war with his a part of his own people. MAGA is not a political view, it’s an aggregate of hate against pretty much all minorities: immigrants, LGBTQ, muslims,…

    Here I’m going to point:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini’s_law It takes much more energy to prove an “alternative fact” as wrong than to dump it in a post.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance If you tolerate the intolerant, you enable intolerance.

    Don’t we have minorities on this instance? Are we really advocating for a constructive dialogue between groups of people who just want to exist and people who wish these other groups could be exterminated?

  • meep_launcher@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    7 days ago

    Personally I think that we deserve the respect to make our own decisions on this issue. Defederation should be reserved for situations where actual laws are broken that would jeopardize the existence of this instance or even Lemmy as a whole.

    As a former mod on a larger subreddit and then a mod on a decent lemmy community, and now a sad mod trying to pick up the pieces (RIP lemm.ee), I’ve seen how hate can be pervasive in most every sphere. If we start locking things down because we want a hate free Internet, well… We won’t have much of an Internet anymore.

    My modding style was always the “let 'em cook” method. Unless doxxing, impersonation of a mod, spam, bots, and the like are happening, the community would dogpile the user, and frankly as a bystander seeing coherent arguments against hate was more convincing than just censoring it all together.

  • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    29·
    10 days ago

    I’m reminded of a story about a bartender, who immediately kicked out a Nazi simply for entering the establishment. The Nazi wasn’t causing any trouble. But the rational was that once you start allowing Nazis in “because they’re nice”, they’ll start inviting their friends, who might not be so nice. Now your bar is a Nazi bar, and they become much harder to kick out because “you already let us in, why do you have a problem now?”

    Nazis (and fascists in general) use the same tricks as narcissistic people, by holding you to your words because you believe in words. They don’t, so they happily trample all over you once you let your guard down.

    Nazism, by definition, is hateful and violent ideology. Maga is following in their footsteps. They have no place in this world.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      8 days ago

      That’s a really poor analogy here though. Here’s one that I think is better:

      • instance = country
      • community = bar
      • federation = visa agreements

      Communities can block individual users that are undesirable without the instance getting involved. That’s the Nazi bar example, and it’s totally reasonable for communities to have strict moderation for who they let in.

      Instances should only get involved if admins from another instance refuse to take action against their users who cause issues. And an instance can block another with minimal drama, it’s like border security not accepting visas from that country any more. Until we have evidence that an instance isn’t capable of enforcing rules on its users, there’s no reason to ban them.

      • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        7 days ago

        Well that’s why we’re voting, isn’t it? This isn’t the admins making a decision to defederate, it’s the users.

        And jesus fucking christ the amount of FUD going on over this is more enough to show that it should be defederated.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          7 days ago

          Yes, and that’s why I’m making my case for not defederating. I don’t like their content, and honestly wouldn’t be sad to see them go, but I’m against defederation decisions being made based on political views, and that seems to be what’s happening here.

          FUD going on over this is more enough to show that it should be defederated.

          Weird, I came to the opposite conclusion. Here’s the process I followed:

          1. Saw the post in main asking if we should defederate, and I pointed them here
          2. Saw voting thread pinned and saw only yes votes
          3. Looked at the post body and the linked posts and saw zero evidence posted
          4. Looked at the actual instance and saw a bunch of conservative talking points and very little discussion or votes; total users were 26 or so, and they pretty much only had a conservative community

          The negative impact to users seemed exceedingly small, since they didn’t even have engagement on their own posts, and I haven’t seen anyone discussing issues with the few users they have.

          So why defederate? This seems like a bunch of people virtue signaling over pretty much nothing, mostly based on the domain (WTF?), and somewhat based on conservative views.

          I think we should stay federated on principle to remind people that civility has value. We don’t want to be like Lemmy.ml that bans people over content critical to the CCP or Russia, and how is defederating from this instance any different?

          Maybe we need to defederate later if their instance causes issues, but then we’d be absolutely justified.

  • Sunoc@sh.itjust.works
    18·
    18 days ago

    The post on Science Memes got downvoted into oblivion, which is funny.

    But yeah, we should probably defed these pos.

  • Icytrees@sh.itjust.works
    17·
    9 days ago

    Why should users of this instance spend their leisure time with people who not only want to take away their rights, but label themselves as such? A label that tags their user name regardless of what they’re saying.

    Why should we, as users of this instance, ever allow someone who visibly declares their support for hateful politics, to engage with the most vulnerable among us in the first place?

    MAGA policies are killing women. I’m a woman. I see someone calling themselves MAGA and I see someone who supports stripping away my autonomy and letting me die.

    Everyone can join as many instances as they want if they believe defederating from hate speech enthusiasts is creating an echo chamber.

    • Banana@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      7 days ago

      Completely agreed. Also history would dictate that giving literal nazis a space/platform with which they can influence people is a bad fuckin idea. We don’t owe them tolerance and they should be censored because they are a cult and don’t intend on good faith discussion.

      Call me radical, I’ll say hang loose 🤙

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      10 days ago

      And keep your own echo-chamber? I’m very disappointed in this community… I haven’t come across any posts from that community but their front page looks no worse than news@lemmy.ml just with a different slant. They don’t even have any comments so the community must be tiny.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    10 days ago

    I haven’t seen any evidence of their users consistently violating rules of other instances, I’ve only seen intolerant communities on their instance. That should not be grounds for defederation, we should only defederate if their instance refuses to deal with reported abuse from their users.

    So I’ll vote no on this. While I very much disagree politically w/ that instance, I don’t think that’s enough to defederate.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            7·
            10 days ago

            Bait?

            If we make decisions based on a difference of opinion, we’ll just create a massive echo chamber. To avoid that, defederation needs to be based on actual rules, and I think those rules should center around moderation. Regardless of the other instance’s views, if their moderation keeps up with reports, we should stay federated. I don’t know if that’s the case, hence the ask for evidence.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                6·
                10 days ago

                As long as they keep their opinions in whatever community they choose and don’t force it down anyone’s throat, I’m fine with it existing. I’d rather have ugly opinions openly debated instead of festering in the background where others get sucked in and we get a pathway to extremism. It’s pretty easy to just block the odd community that pops up all you never see it again.

                Debate them or ignore them, but completely blocking them just kneecaps this burgeoning platform. Nobody is going to join if the standard is “only leftists that meet this litmus test”.

                Obviously you can vote however you choose, I personally prefer to lean on the side of allowing content vs blocking it outright, at least until they refuse to obey our rules when in our communities.

                • nao@sh.itjust.works
                  5·
                  9 days ago

                  You’re making a valid point, on the other hand

                  Nobody is going to join if the standard is “only leftists that meet this litmus test”.

                  What if the standard was not “only leftists” but “everyone but the far-right”? They are allowed on most (?) major platforms these days, and it hasn’t helped them become better places.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    10 days ago

    As a general rule, I am against defederation unless the instance is going to cause liability or technical problems (bot spamming, illegal content, etc.)

    This instance in particular is closer to banning a user that is self hosting. It is closed, requires account approval, and thusly defederation will not catch any unknowing users in a dragnet.

    So I think defederation is a reasonable exception for this instance, especially given the community vote in progress.