I was there, I saw the thread. @TheDude, did you? It was pretty strongly in favour. Do we really need to keep waiting around to see if an instance administrated by a guy who wants to declare “cis” a slur is going to turn out okay?
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 for context.
Allowing transphobic views to spread online makes people feel more comfortable harassing us in our dms, calling us slurs, and telling us to kill ourselves, or harassing us in public. Then they rally together pass laws to take our children away, throw us in jail, and ban us from recieving basic life-saving healthcare.
Edit: When it isn’t banned, then we have to take the time to explain all this to the uninitiated and hope they won’t ignore us or say we’re being extremist too. It’s exhausting. Banning it outright takes that weight off us. Case in point, the N word used to be a lot more common on the internet. Now far fewer people feel comfortable saying that shit casually, and we don’t have to discuss why people shouldn’t say it. The message is clear: act like this and you aren’t welcome here.
I hear ya. Quick question, do you dislike Beehaw? I’m considering whether it’s appropriate to promote for vulnerable people to join safe spaces like that, or lemmy.blahaj.zone. Those instances will defederate swiftly from instances with similar concerns for safety. There are many instances that are not pomoted as safe spaces, and there are some that are, and I’m wondering if the question of defederation could be transferred to a recommendation to join a safe space and not an open space where no such safeguards are set due to a higher preference for free access? Let me know what you think.
BeeHaw, I heard it was family friendly and defederating a lot so I didn’t want to get walled off from non-family friendly content right away. Maybe I was too quick to judge. Blahaj is pretty cool. Those seem like solid suggestions.
Ultimately, we haven’t settled down into our own echo chambers yet (which is pretty normal on the internet, keeping things tribal), so things are bound to be more stormy with this new surge of users as they find their homes. Ultimately, people will probably flock between instances based on admin rules and enforcement that most aligns with their own values. Until then I’ll keep recommending transphobes shove a pineapple up their ass sideways and centrists who want to let transphobes and racists advocate for our extermination to do the same.
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Well, after thinking about it, I don’t want to put too much labor on admins. I think it’s wise to keep more power in the hands of the user, so I’d like users to be able to block instances instead of relying on defederation. They can defederate if they want to but mostly for issues that affect the health of their own instance. And mods can mod.
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Does vlemmy defederate anything? The Instances list doesn’t seem to show any blocked instance.
Ok, sorry, I’m a little buzzed and feisty currently. After thinking about this in context of the best options for users and the health of the community as a whole:
As a user, I’d like to be able to block instances if I see a need. I don’t think this is possibly yet, but I can block communities and individual users, which is useful.
At the admin/instance level, defederating would be a temp or permanant nuke, for defederating from instances that cause bigger issues like allowing bots to manipulate votes, spreading hate, or exposing their intended audience to content they don’t want to allow (child friendly instance such as BeeHaw blocks porn, fair play) per the admin’s discretion
Last but not least, Mods are only responsible for posts on their own communities and pruning comments or blocking users who violate their rules or the instances rules. (They should be able to report to admins/the instance when a user was blocked for violating instance rules so the admin can consider banning across the instance if necessary).
I have thought of developing an anti-instance block, but since I would definitely not use it I haven’t gone forward with it. But it seems quite an easy task, to be honest. A script would just go over any post or comment, check the community’s instance, check the poster/commenter’s instance, and if any of the two match, it can simply do node.deleteNode() and that’s it, ez pz. It’d probably take me less than an hour to do this.
I haven’t heard of vlemmy defederating. My main reason for joining this instance was so I didn’t have to provide an email address, which was the first priority for me due to added privacy. Long ago, reddit never required email addresses, so I think that’s a good feature for now (protecting against bots is another can of worms altogether). I may shift to another instance soon, we’ll see.
But free speech, I don’t think people started advocating for free speech so they could coexist with nazis and bigots. I imagine it was more for allowing criticism of people in positions of power, like government figures, admins, and mods without repercussions (executing people, throwing them in jail, banning, etc). If you’re merely advocating for transphobia and racial slurs, what the fuck is the point of protecting “free speech”? Why would someone even value that?
Edit: To put it another way, I won’t choose to be part of an instance whose admin allows open bigotry in their own content or stays federated with other instances that allow bigotry, cp, neo-nazis, or alt-right communities to thrive. I realize that at a more granular level, I will have to use my own discretion and power to block whoever I see fit or switch instances, but I can also use my voice to advocate that admins not allow that shit either.
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