Why though? They’ve done nothing worthy of defederation, they’re simply trying to maintain their standard of quality. And they are a HUGE INSTANCE.
Extremists are always going to get pigeonholed by the rest of the network that doesn’t want to see that shit filling up their All page and infiltrating their comments.
Leave blocking communities and instances to users. If you don’t want to see “extremists” in your All page, block the community. Block the users in the comments.
Defederation should happen based on the instance community’s collective decision (no vote was done for defederation) and when an instance is actively working against the rules of a federated instance. Hexbear has not shown itself to be breaking the rules or to be planning to, and the arguments used by the world admins were all opinions and not based in reality. The admins of hexbear specifically made a post telling their users to respect federated instances rules.
Yes, the users are opinionated - but that in and of itself isn’t worth defederating with.
Mind you I’m not about to start asking to defederate from world, but I’m still kinda worried that this type of preemptive defederation is going to be the norm for world.
I would love to be able to block entire instances but I don’t believe that is possible yet. If it is please tell me how cause I have a bunch that would be on the chopping block!
Sadly I don’t think it’s possible on the Lemmy-ui/server level, but some mobile apps allow you to (maybe just one, note sure. Either Memmy or Voyager since I use them interchangeably). I also look forward to the ability to block instances fully on desktop.
Memmy only recently introduced instance blocking. And I believe it just prevents it appearing in the UI
I can block instances on Connect for Android.
no /wefwef ?
Can we block instances yet?
I don’t believe that there’s a lemmy-ui or server side option for it, but some mobile apps do let you block instances which for me is good enough.
It’s not just about blocking it for yourself, though. Content from all federated instances ends up in YOUR instance’s All tab. So when extremist instances sneak in and start federating with everyone, their shit gets broadcast to a huge audience that everyone can see, including users not logged in. So by not defederating, the admins are effectively supporting the platform of extremists and not enforcing their own instance content rules through inaction. This is what I mean by admins needing to maintain their own standard of content on their own instances.
We just did this at lemmy.one with exploding-heads for the same reasons.
You want to defederate from the largest Lemmy instance, the poster child, and the mascot of Lemmy? Good luck. They are Lemmy now.
The way .world has dominated is problematic for federation, honestly.
I agree, but it’s too late now. Even Sync defaults to the .world instance, and at this rate, they’ll only grow bigger.
Yeah it won’t happen on its own, there would need to be a concentrated effort to oppose .world domination at this point.
It won’t be a problem until .world starts demanding mutual defederation (i.e. instances federated with .world have to pledge to defederate from instances .world deems problematic)
.world domination
😏
It won’t be a problem until .world starts demanding mutual defederation
To invoke the fallacy that isn’t always fallacious (slippery slope) that seems like the logical next step. If they amass too much power and are already abusing it this way, what’s to prevent them doing this next?
I don’t think they’ll do that until they federate with Threads 🤑
deleted by creator
That seems like an argument from tradition though. Just because something has default become some way doesn’t mean it has to remain so. I think there’s bigger principles at play, censorship of minority opinions for starters.
I think the concept of a mascot or poster child for Lemmy is somewhat antithetical to the concept of federated social media. Kind of a no gods no masters situation.
Is it really federated social media now though? With how much .world has grown, they could disable federation and be their own walled garden.
instance active users monthly lemmy.world 34436 lemmy.ml 6716 lemm.ee 4265 Like, they have nearly 5x more active users than .ml at this point, how ridiculous is that?
I feel like it’s been so active because app developers almost all default to lemmy.world. It’s a bit concerning honestly, I wish things were a bit more spread out because everyone is at the mercy of Lemmy world and as we’ve seen several times it doesn’t look like the admins of the instance are making decisions based on community feedback.
I suspect most people who joined Lemmy ended up on .world because they would have gone here first:
For a while Lemmy.World was one of the first ones you came across; between that, the open signups and the “general purpose” moniker, rapid growth was probably inevitable.
Add the fact that lemmy.ml and others were/still are doing applications for sign up instead of an automated system. I applied twice for a .ml account and never got a single response, not even a denial or “your application is being processed”. I have no idea if my application was ever even seen.
On the other hand, I signed up to lemmy.world and kbin.social in minutes and have been using them ever since.
I was tempted to join .ml but the banner at the top of the application form was discouraging. Went to .world and here we are.
Yeah, it felt a lot like “you need to prove you’re worthy” more than just proving you’re not a bot.
I mean, if I wanted a walled garden I’d just go back to Reddit. Federation is part of lemmy’s beauty, but if the imposition of a particular mindset through defederation becomes the norm, why would anyone respond with anything but defederation?
In short: why tolerate intolerance?
This is my take. I choose the instance that fits best for me, and I know what my admin, u/db0, uses as his litmus test for defederation. As long as you find the instance that is handled how you want, you can avoid whatever side of Lemmy you choose. That’s not to say badmins don’t exist or won’t replace the good ones eventually, but that’s the nature of decentralization. You have to be prepared to move in those cases. That’s why I bounced from .world real quick.
5x actually isn’t that bad!
I was worried about a 90-9-1 situation, with .world dominating 90% of the fediverse.
It’s actually really bad. With how big it is, it’s now the default for even new mobile applications, which means it will now only grow bigger. 5x is just the start. We are just seeing the start of the centralised decentralised Lemmyverse.
i orniginally planned and tried alot to join lemmy.world but tiny mistakes in chaptas stopped me
deleted by creator
I really feel like everyone is letting their emotions and ideologies run the narrative here. Lemmy.world was already defederated with Hexbear, everyone was. What they are doing is choosing to remain defederated once Hexbear federates. And that is perfectly within their rights. Until we get better moderation tools and the ability block instances at the user level I can completely understand why the admin and mods don’t want to deal with potential issues. Maybe once we all have better tools then we can try playing nice together. This is the same reasoning Beehaw took and I think it makes sense in this case as well.
I disagree with lemmy.world’s decision, for three reasons:
- Address problems as they appear - negligence is bad, but so is jumping at the gun.
- Locking users out because they’re misbehaving is different than locking them out under the assumption that they’ll misbehave.
- Given that lemmy.world is a generic purpose instance, odds are that it would work better by letting users sort themselves out, and only intervene on problems when it is not reasonable to expect users to do so.
I also think that lemmy.world’s current size in comparison with other instances is a bit problematic. It’s great to see instances growing but it would be better if said growth was spread out.
Just my two cents, mind you. I’m from neither instance.
There’s a naked man outside a store, whippin’ his dong around & throwing poo at passersby…
Do you have to let him the store just because he hasn’t actually done any of that stuff inside yet?
Or can you preemptively decide he won’t be allowed inside?
FWIW, I agree with everything you’ve said, just looking for clarification.
I think the analogy would be more accurate if he was whipping his dong out and throwing shit within his own home. And he can do what he wants there, because it’s not affecting anyone else. Sure, the people in his house can have whatever opinions they want of him, but if he’s cleaned up and dressed before he leaves his house, who cares?
Visiting hexbear costs you nothing, dude. Take a look at their official statement about federation: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770?scrollToComments=false
Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.
Is this “a naked man outside a store, whippin’ his dong around & throwing poo at passersby” to you?
I read that, thanks. From my point of view, when I read the term “dirtbag lib dunking”, yes, I did equate that with poo flinging & dong whippin’.
Visiting it costs nothing; but if they are federated with other instances I am on, I’m still gonna see the poo flinging and dong whipping outside the window as I scroll through the feed since I can’t block the entire shebang myself.
If he dressed himself before trying to enter my store, I’d probably let him in. However I’d keep watching him; and on his first attempt to take off his clothes, whip his dong or throw poo, I’d throw him out.
Note however that there’s an important difference between both situations: defederation affects a whole group of people. We could claim that some of them were whipping their dongs, were throwing poo, but we can’t automatically point at all of them and say “you’re all at fault”; that would be incorrect and immoral.
Note also that I’d likely see this in a different way, if the defederating instance was beehaw instead of lemmy.world. Due to the purpose of each instance (generic and free-for-all vs. safe space), and overall impact on the lemmy side of the Fediverse.
defederation affects a whole group of people.
then they can just sign up for a different instance.
They can sign up for other instances. However the underlying “you’re from hexbear, so we’ll assume that you’ll misbehave” message is still the same.
And managing multiple accounts is still an inconvenience for the users; one of the cool things about lemmy is that you can register once and access content across multiple instances, but once you’re required to sign up to 2+ instances you’ll likely end off in the larger one, starving the smaller one, due to the network effect. (The exception is if the smaller instance clearly fills a niche that cannot be satisfied by the bigger one.)
And managing multiple accounts is still an inconvenience for the users
I mean, maybe if you’ve never used a computer before
maybe if you’ve never used a computer before
It is inconvenient for people in general, not just for the ones who “never used a computer before”. Think on why.
The matter here is if that inconvenience pays off for some reason. Such as potentially protecting lemmy.world users. I don’t think that it does, and again, there are moral issues at hand too.
im on wefwef/voyager and it’s not a hassle to switch btween my accounts i also have a 3rd account on lemmy.wtf
Thanks for the follow up! New to Lemmy & still working to understand the impact of defederation, so I honestly do appreciate the expanded viewpoints.
Why would you? In fact, everyone should defederate from hexbear, they’re basically lemmygrad lite anyways.
I feel like the admins of hexbear are fairly conscious of their user base and have made sure to take all the necessary steps to properly federate with world. What’s concerning to me is that world preemptively defederated without hexbear showing any signs of hostility or malicious intent. Remember how long it took world to defed from exploding-heads? A literal nazi hub?
It all seems like de federation based on political ideology which, I mean, is in worlds own rights to do, but the fact that they’re the largest instance making preemptive decisions based on nothing isn’t boding very well.
That’s what’s worrying to me. If they federated and started brigading communities, that’s one thing, but I don’t think they even have the numbers to meaningfully do that to start with. It feels like ideological censorship.
I mean, they’re opinionated but we’ve nothing concrete to suggest they’ll be invasive or detrimental to other instances. Even lemmygrad generally keeps their stuff to their instance.
Have you even visited hexbear?
I googled this to find the drama and the first link is to their fucking cth community lol
you don’t get to be edgelord shitposters and then complain when people don’t let you come over to kick their sandcastles down anymore
What’s the issue with their cth community?
no issues on its own but when your whole brand is edgelord shitposting, you can’t be surprised when people don’t want to federate
They don’t like cops or America.
Defederation should always be seen as last solution and should not be a preemptive action.
I’m out of the loop: What’s the deal with Hexbear?
They are authoritarian Russian/Chinese stans, pretending to be leftists.
No one stans Russia in hexbear, we literally say “the collapse of the Soviet Union was the largest humanitarian disaster of the latter half of the 20th century”
fuck them
Gross.
Instances can defederate whenever they want, but skimming the sidebar and announcements, it’s weirder to me that lemmy.world is still federated with lemmygrad, which seems to be very similar to hexbear.
Anyone have any insight into the difference between lemmygrad and hexbear?
Lemmygrad is marxist leninist
Hexbear is leftist unity, larger, and more shitpostery. Also hexbear has more trans users because of even better moderation and pronoun tags being the default.
I’m conflicted with lemmy.world’s decision to defederate with them.
In theory I disagree with them because I think open discussion is always better than silencing or deplatforming.
Of course it’s a bit different with activists who are not looking for an honest discussion, only to further their ideology.
Also, getting a swarm of tankies will not make the instance a fun place and will probably make me switch to another one who defederated with them.
I don’t mind people whom I disagree with, I’ll gladly talk with both libertarians and communists, but in my eyes tankies are the same as neonazies.
Adding to what others have said, opposing viewpoints are GOOD. Well reasoned opinions should be encouraged. I don’t want to end up in another curated echo chamber built by someone else. Add the tools for users to block an instance and for blocks to work better in general. Give us the tools to decide our content. Leave the curation up to the users.
Otherwise you’ll just end up with everyone spinning up their own instance and building a million individual echo chambers(tho it wouldn’t be bad if there were more instances lol)
Interesting that the top comment is this:
Not in favour of this. I chose Lemmy.world because I wanted an instance that would federate even with people I might disagree with. If it’s illegal and abusive, sure. But to defederate on ideological grounds? I was planning a recurring donation but this makes me consider setting up my own instance. They’re welcome to whatever discussions they want to have on their instance. As long as they respect the rules of other instances when they’re here, then everybody wins. As for their point about dismantling western propaganda - if they have documented sources then let’s have a conversation. It’s not like there isn’t western propaganda
I don’t remember which episode, but the podcast blocked and reported described exactly that that is what’s going to happen to the fediverse. Sad.
(found it. The conversation is about mastodon and starts at 43:30)
Why are all the instances defederating each other?
Are there others defederating lately?
Idk, I thought I heard of a few doing so. Like defederating mastodon, that corpo Facebook one, ++. Though no specifics, just stuff I thought I heard; may be misremembering
The Facebook one (Threads?) was defederated because of the real risk of Embrace Extend Extinguish:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
I thought .world is not preemptively defederating - it was why I ditched them already
Politics and ideology like usual. It’s ruinning every social media
It would be very funny ngl
