Lately we have been dealing with a few abusive members from Feddit.nl and we were unable to get in touch with the instance administrator.
Part of the problem is the instance’s open registrations which do not require you to enter an e-mail address during signup. This in combination with an inactive admin is a recipe for abuse.
We hope this is only temporary but we have to do this to protect our users.
Edit: we use fediseer, have a look https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world
Edit 2: We got in touch with the Feddit.nl admin. Email requirements were added to the sign-up process and we’re setting up a communication channel. So that means we are federating with Feddit.nl again!
A user on there posted CSAM. Given that images federate too and that moderation over there seems to be lacking, do you not think it’s unrealistic not to expect defederation?
I never said I didn’t understand. I’m pointing out a problem that can, and I believe, will, lead to issues with user retention. If one is punished for the bad actions of someone on their instance that they have no control over, it will lead to frustration. I know this because it has happened to me twice now- once with vlemmy disappearing due to someone posting something bad that spooked the admin, and now feddit.nl because someone posted something bad that spooked these admins. I’m not saying it’s not understandable, I’m merely saying that a problem exists.
I expect the Admin’s priority was to worry about potentially inadvertently hosting CSAM rather than user retention.
Two problems can exist simultaneously. I’m suggesting that something should be done about defederation, and the things that lead to it (like automatic image proliferation), because if defederation continues as it is, it will hurt user retention.
It really won’t. Mastodon has whole block lists and has done for years and guess what - user retention is no problem at all.
From what you’ve commented here, you’re annoyed that you keep picking instances to join that allow shitty things to happen and then don’t. The issue there is not defederation, it’s that:
In the real world, instance Admin’s are legally responsible for what’s on their servers. If you want to defed from absolutely no one then you need to rent a VPS and spin up a Lemmy instance of your own. That way, the legal risk is all your own.
I mentioned elsewhere, I don’t have the ability to run my own instance. Mastodon also has user migration tools, making it much easier to start up a new account on a different instance. Lemmy does not. I’m also not even talking just about myself. There’s been drama about large instances defederating from each other since I joined- which, to be fair, was only a few months ago, but it’s also when the population exploded and defederation became a real concern. My main problem is the simple idea that, due to actions entirely outside of my control, large sections of the fediverse can just disappear for my account, forcing me to either accept the newer, smaller fediverse, or make a new account somewhere else that happens to federate with both my previous instance AND the defederated instance if I want a single account to view the same content I used to.
This is part of the growing pains, once moderation tools mature, this type of federation will be less of an issue.
I think so too, especially if and when users get the ability to block entire instances. That will prevent some of the defederation-for-wrongthink (in either direction, it doesn’t matter), and as it matures, I think the “accidentally hosting CSAM” will be less of an issue as well.
Sharing Nazi views and spewing racist vitriol isn’t “wrongthink”, now you really seem to come across as concern trolling and disingenuous (especially putting it in quotations).
A user blocking an entire instance still means their hateful members can post and clog up another one. We don’t need Lemmy.world turning into truth.social. People don’t want to see or read that garbage or be exposed to it, this isn’t a “both sides” issue.
LASIM can help you move all your account details. Lemmy is nowhere hear as mature a product as Mastodon so it’s no surprise a lot of what Mastodon has, Lemmy doesn’t - yet.
I’m really not sure you’re ever going to be able to have what you seem to want because it doesn’t exist. There’s a limited set of tools available and if an instance Admin isn’t being vigilant, there’ll always be fuckwits ready to do shitty things. If the only way that other Admins can tackle that is defederation then that’s what’ll happen. It’s not going to affect user retention because I think the majority of people are quite prepared to accept that unmoderated instances are a liability of a much greater scale than defederation.
I’d say that’s fair. I understand that what I want is unlikely to come about, it’s a somewhat extreme view, and due to Lemmy’s current configuration, admins are on the hook legally for everything posted on their server. Something needs to change for defederation to change, and it’s very likely that defederation won’t change. I’ve only ever been expressing a concern of mine. Lemmy doesn’t cater to my will- I’m not even a programmer, I couldn’t do any of this stuff even if I had the power to do so. I just hope that it does change.
Defederation is never going to go away because there are whole instances out there dedicated to hosting illegal material and because, lets not forget, Admin’s want the Lemmyverse to succeed and a way for it to not succeed is to federate with instances that do this and also have userbases made up of racists, homophobes, transphobes etc. Literally no one wants to be constantly firefighting their own individual user block lists to keep blocking hundreds of awful people. What they want is to spend time on their communities. That’s why instances have codes of conduct stating what they won’t allow. It allows quick, painless instant separation from arseholes without putting the onus on all their users to individually block users from whole instances.
But, as Admin and Mod level tools (and to a lesser extent user tools) get developed, defederation will happen less and less.