cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/567170

We’ve been defederated. Were there that many trolls/assholes on our server? What on earth happened while I was asleep?

hey folks, we’ll be quick and to the point with this one:

we have made the decision to defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. we recognize this is hugely inconvenient for a wide variety of reasons, but we think this is a decision we need to take immediately. the remainder of the post details our thoughts and decision-making on why this is necessary.

we have been concerned with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy is–particularly with federation in mind–basically since it began. i have already related how difficult dealing with the explosion has been just constrained to this instance for us four Admins, and increasingly we’re being confronted with external vectors we have to deal with that have further stressed our capabilities (elaborated on below).

an unfortunate reality we’ve also found is we just don’t have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don’t scale well. we have a list of improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible–but we’re unanimous in the belief that we can’t wait on what we want to be developed here. separately, we want to do this now, while the band-aid can be ripped off with substantially less pain.

aside from/complementary to what’s mentioned above, our reason for defederating, by and large, boils down to:

  • these two instances’ open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;
  • the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to bad actors on those two instances;
  • our need to preserve not only a moderated community but a vibe and general feeling this is actually a safe space for our users to participate in;
  • and the reality that fulfilling our ethos is simply not possible when we not only have to account for our own users but have to account for literally tens of thousands of new, completely unvetted users, some of whom explicitly see spaces like this as desirable to troll and disrupt and others of whom simply don’t care about what our instance stands for

as Gaywallet puts it, in our discussion of whether to do this:

There’s a lot of soft moderating that happens, where people step in to diffuse tense situations. But it’s not just that, there’s a vibe that comes along with it. Most people need a lot of trust and support to open up, and it’s really hard to trust and support who’s around you when there are bad actors. People shut themselves off in various ways when there’s more hostility around them. They’ll even shut themselves off when there’s fake nice behavior around. There’s a lot of nuance in modding a community like this and it’s not just where we take moderator actions- sometimes people need to step in to diffuse, to negotiate, to help people grow. This only works when everyone is on the same page about our ethos and right now we can’t even assess that for people who aren’t from our instance, so we’re walking a tightrope by trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isn’t sustainable forever and especially not in the face of massive growth on such a short timeframe.

Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically aren’t open to having strangers walk in off the street, even if they have a bouncer to throw problematic people out. A single negative interaction might require a lot of energy to undo.

and, to reiterate: we understand that a lot of people legitimately and fairly use these instances, and this is going to be painful while it’s in effect. but we hope you can understand why we’re doing this. our words, when we talk about building something better here, are not idle platitudes, and we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space, and we think this is necessary to do that right now. if you disagree we understand that, but we hope you can if nothing else come away with the understanding it was an informed decision.

this is also not a permanent judgement (or a moral one on the part of either community’s owner, i should add–we just have differing interests here and that’s fine). in the future as tools develop, cultures settle, attitudes and interest change, and the wave of newcomers settles down, we’ll reassess whether we feel capable of refederating with these communities.

thanks for using our site folks.

  • bdiddy@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Oooo fediverse drama right out of the gates. Meta in Lemmy is going to be interesting no doubt about that.

      • User Deleted@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        If only a few major instances are defederating your instance, its a “them problem”; if a majority of major instances are defederating you, maybe it’s a “you problem”. (talking about lemmygrad.ml)

      • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksM
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        1 year ago

        Lol fair.

        Did that occur after sh.itjust.works was founded though? I joined pretty early and I thought we had been defederated from lemmygrad.ml since the beginning. The drama comes from all the people who got suddenly booted from communities they were subscribed to.

        • AyyLMAO@exploding-heads.com
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          1 year ago

          No idea of the chronology, instance blocks is a config file setting and doesn’t show up in the mod logs. You’d have to look for announcements from your admins.

          I understand the drama, but only have one piece of advice to those who can’t accept such an decision: If you want it your way, make your own.

          • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksM
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            1 year ago

            I understand the drama, but only have one piece of advice to those who can’t accept such an decision: If you want it your way, make your own.

            Agreed.

      • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, this is different than blocking the tankie instance, but I still don’t think that should have been done.

        Shitjustworks and world are generalist instances while lemmygrad celebrates the slaughter of landlords, which even Mao accepted went too far in the end.

        Their users posted the announcement that critisizing the CCP was allowed in world to accuse them of racism, homophobia, and the hatred of chinease people. No examples at first, just the origional post. Even their ‘examples’ were not congruent with that accusation. This ended with their suggesting the mods to be similarly bigoted.

        There are plenty of examples where the users are imagining wild bigotry from people, attempting to get them banned even. They are, many of them, very violently against a conversation even when it’s respectful from what I’ve seen outside their community

        I still don’t think they should have been banned though, but we have to recognize the difference. Scroll the local tab here and then try theirs. The difference is clear

        • AyyLMAO@exploding-heads.com
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          1 year ago

          What can I say? If people can’t accept that other people might have different opinions and worldview, it’s not people I think I’d miss the opportunity to interact with. So I don’t really lament those who block my home instance.

          To address your surprise; it seems that the majority of new people coming to the Lemmyverse are reasonable and thinking people.

          • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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            1 year ago

            I run my own instance and haven’t defederated from y’all yet.

            As long as an instance doesn’t have like, truly abhorrent content like pedo crap (looking at you, burggit), or aren’t literally Nazi supporters, I really don’t care. I can just not sub there. Unless/until they start being a bigger nuisance outside their little hellhole.

      • bdiddy@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        lol just looking at that instance and yeah I can get behind that decision