What is Defederation?
Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and users from our instance will no longer be able to see anything (communities, posts or comments) coming from it, and their users won’t be able to see anything coming from ours.
What will get an Instance Defederated?
Our goal is to avoid defederation, but we will do so under the following circumstances:
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The instance spreads overwhelming amounts of drama, hate or negativity.
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The instance is mostly made up bots, and or promotes spam.
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The instance allows the harassment or doxxing of others.
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The instance knowingly hosts CSAM or other illegal content.
Has FMHY Defederated Instances?
Only two, both for breaking the 1st rule above:
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exploding-heads
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lemmygrad
Things to Note:
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There are circumstances where we may block a specific community within an instance, rather than blocking the entire instance itself, but this is very uncommon.
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Remember that if there’s a community you don’t like, you can block it entirely in settings.
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Keep in mind that our goal is to keep this community safe, so if you see something that breaks our rules please don’t hesitate to report it.
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If its something urgent, you can always contact us easily via Divolt 💬. Its connected to our discord, so there are mods online 24/7.
I really like that you are codifying policy like this.
The “instance is mostly made up by bots” is obviously a great call but your wording makes it sound like <50% bots is cool, >50% bots is not cool. haha
Can always check https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/instances . Blocked Instances are at the bottom
Oh, thank god for defederating exploding-heads.
Shockingly like pulling teeth on some instances. But they’ll defederate meta and lemmygrad in a heartbeat. Says a lot about some folk, but whatev.
The hysterics over the as yet purely hypothetical prospect of Facebook/Threads being on the fediverse, along with some worrying signs of censorship, have caused me to to flee lemmy.world. Here’s hoping FMHY will be a better fit for me.
It became the largest instance and the one to absorb most of the attention-seekers that expect to be treated as “customers”, despite the instance admin (of lemmy.world) emphasizing they’re all volunteers working for the community.
Threads already violates rules 1 and 3, hosting people who escalated their harrassment into real life multiple times already, so I hope the decision to block them (should they ever choose to federate) is a no-brainer to FMHY admins.
How is threads more overwhelmingly negative or tolerant of doxxing than other major platforms? Like what is the basis for your comment?
Threads is owned by Meta, which:
- Has profited from a genocide in Kenya: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-kenya-pro-genocide-ads-hate-speech-suspension-1849348778
- Has profited from a genocide in Myanmar: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence
- Hosts Libs of Tiktok, who, among other things, led a harrasment campaign on children’s hospitals, based on a completely made up rumour of said hospitals providing genital surgery for minors.
- Hosts Moms for Liberty, which is a neo-nazi organization that has quoted Hitler (with attribution) in their promotional material, and made fun of a moment of silence for a Holocaust memorial.
If your point is that Meta is no worse than Twitter or whatever other corporate media, then whatever, I’m not really interested in discussions about whether it’s better to come down with plague or leprosy. They all suck.
If your point is that Threads itself isn’t technically compilicit in anything yet after being up for 10 days, then I think that’s pretty naive.
Also if you’re gonna mention genocides that Facebook is complicit with, don’t forget the Rohingya genocide
You cited rule 1, which is
The instance spreads overwhelming amounts of drama, hate or negativity.
And rule 3
The instance allows the harassment or doxxing of others.
So the question is whether the fediverse instance Threads has done the bad actions.
You are arguing for a preemptive defederation based on the actions of the corporate parent having nothing to do with content on the instance in question.
Since libsoftiktok is on Twitter not Facebook, it seems you want to be defederated from Threads based on the actions of not just Meta, but also Musk’s Twitter.
I mean it’s an argument, and many agree with it. Many instances have already defederated threads.net. but it’s certainly not in the rules cited in this post.
Libs of Tiktok was on Instagram and already is on Threads, along with the rest of the usual suspects: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110667668701596654 They have already started their shtick of quoting random people to direct their followers to harrass the target.
Wait. Threads requires an instagram account. How can libsoftiktok be on threads if she is permabanned from IG.
Are you even sure this is true or is this just a rumor that you’re repeating?
Edit: there does appear to be an account called libsoftiktokofficial. Not sure whether it’s really Chaya but it has plenty of anti-trans propaganda
Ok fair, I’m not familiar enough with Threads lore to know if libsoftiktokofficial is really Chaya or not, and why the account is up if they were banned twice. It looks like their last post is from 6 days ago, but I’m not sure if I’m seeing the up-to-date view from the web interface from Europe (and honestly I can’t be arsed to try a VPN for that). Perhaps the whole situation on Threads right now is just early platform chaos.
In any case, the whole discussion might be moot, if any of these happens to Threads:
- Flops after the instagrammers get bored of it.
- Thrives, but never enables federation.
- Enables federation, but only as an allowlist for select big instances (like mastodon.social).
- Enables open federation (RIP their mods after poa.st and people spinning up throwaway Pleroma instances catch a whiff of it), but the interface to Lemmy is too awkward for anyone to bother (like federation with Mastodon is wonky already).
- Federation with random tiny Lemmy instances works in an usable manner, but someone on their side defederates after noticing that FMHY admins are very ok with piracy.
On the off chance that none of that happens, though, I’m not sure what is to be gained from federating with an instance that has orders of magnitude more users than the entire fediverse combined (even if their count is inflated) and the only moderation policy is “whatever makes Zucc richer”.
Libsoftiktok started on Twitter. And while she did have an instagram account, it was banned from both instagram and Facebook, while the Twitter account had its shadowban lifted after Musk took over.
Given that Meta is presenting Threads as Twitter, but “sanely run”, and that libsoftiktok has already been permabanned twice, it seems likely that she will also be banned from Threads. Certainly this is a weird point to hang your case for defederating Threads on.
Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and our users will no longer be able to see communities, posts or comments from users on the defederated instance.
It should be noted that it’s a two way street, no? They won’t see any content from here either?
Also, I thought single community ban from other instances wasn’t possible yet? I remember the vlemmy guy saying that before going MIA.
Yeah good point, I just added that it goes both ways. As far as blocking single communities go I don’t have all the details but I’ve been told we’ve done it for one so far.
Is it possible to list blocked communities in the /instances page? Or at least list them in a post? Just so users know what’s being blocked.
No not yet but I think there’s plans to make it possible.
I see. Thank you!
Is the way you’re doing it not part of official lemmy? Or was it implemented recently?
I’ve been hearing different answers on this lately, particularly regarding Lemmy.world and Beehaw. Beehaw defederated LW, but not vice versa. The result is that no one on Beehaw can see any posts on LW, but users on LW are seeing some posts on Beehaw. It doesn’t seem to be a complete cut to all communication.
But that’s still something worth bringing up - Here is the list of instances that block FMHY, and are (somewhat) effectively isolated from us here:
https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=lemmy.fmhy.ml
The only one that’s significant is feddit.de. From what I can tell, it’s because FMHY has open registration
This is probably outdated since feddit federates with us, I even joined some of their communities.
https://feddit.de/instances says we are blocked. I think it’s still possible to view and interact with feddit communities from our instance, but those interactions do not propagate to the feddit server.
I would have preferred to have a no-defederation policy (except for maybe threads due to EEE fears), but as long as it is not swung around constantly, I am okay with it.
The two that are blocked are political circlejerks that I personally dislike anyways. I am hopeful there is not more.
We want to use defederation as a last resort and hopefully when users are able to block instances themselves we’ll be able to use it even less frequently. I dislike defederation personally as well, and like Nbats stated here, if the community’s opinion of those two instances change and the instances themselves make their communities safer we’ll refed.
Good. Hell, once the user-instance blocking thing comes out, give people a list and instructions to block those political instances, porn ones, etc. etc. I always like it to be on the user level, rather than some over-arching force telling me what I can and can’t view. Freedom to make the decision for yourself should be a large priority.
There is probably some need for a default block list that the admin can set though… Otherwise new users would probably not have a really good time.
Yeah instances that post illegal content and bot instances would probably be on a default blocklist.
If Lemmy supported user instance blocking I would agree with you, but until then this is the best option available.
Does EEE mean embrace, extend, and extinguish?
Yes.
Just curious, how could Meta EEE in the case of the fediverse/ lemmy? As in, technically how does them joining as an instance affect others whether they’re blocked or not?
And what advantages would there be to preemptively devederating instead of waiting or leaving it to users?
I’m kind of hoping Threads can lend credibility/ momentum to the fediverse so if I’m missing something about how they could negatively impact it I’m earnestly interested.
Centralization. Meta will develop the fediverse protocol up with their own specific enhancements, locking most of us onto their version of the platform due to convenience given enough time. (Think RCS as an example, it’s technically an open standard but Google has effective control of it thanks to special features)
You might say “Well, if they are a better platform, so what, why not go there”, but the problem is that they can cut off the rest of the fediverse as “outdated” essentially privatizing everybody.
exploding-heads
:o
Out of curiosity, what’s the deal with exploding-heads? I keep seeing them referenced negatively all over several instances.
Edit: thanks for all the replies! I’ve got it now hahaha
It’s basically alt-right spam. Lots of Breitbart links, right-wing culture war mouthpieces and memes, etc.
Breitbart on the mainstream, centrist posts. Most of it’s way further out there. I have no idea which ones are inauthentic shitposts and which ones are legit. They are way beyond Poe’s Law.
But more important is when they show up on other instances. Everything becomes an argument, dragging down everyone and everything they encounter. This also can’t be solved by just blocking the communities on EH, it must be blocked at the community’s instance or our (the viewer’s) home instance.
They’re basically /r/the_Donald.
At first I thought it was just some edgy troll community, but it didn’t take long for me to find a fairly upvoted comment saying “look, I just don’t like immigrants” or something like that. So yeah, seems like that kind of place over there…
It’s a fairly far-right instance, which makes it unpopular with many left-leaning members of the fediverse. Tt also tends to export a lot of trolls and drama that cause it to get defederated by mainstream instances that don’t want to deal with the moderation hassles.
It’s a fairly far-right instance, which makes it unpopular with many left-leaning members of the fediverse
As a centrist I’m not a big fan of the far right. You don’t have to be left wing to think fascism is bad
Check coments here: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/809481
Yes, very cool. And about Threads, I will probably block Threads myself just because it’s a twitter clone, it doesn’t need to be on lemmy. But people should be able to make that decision themselves.
I think preemtive defederation/blocking from Threads is the most logical decision for every instance since we are talking about a known hostile company, not something new testing the waters that nobody knows how it will behave, it’s Meta being Meta (even if they are trying to hide it behind the “by Instagram” slogan).
I just hope this is done as an absolute last resort, and doesn’t become common practice.
Yeah I don’t see it happening at all outside of circumstances like this where the community as a whole is really pushing for it.
People have been highly vocal about de-federating from XYZ instance because they’re “transphobia”, “nazis” or something else they object to.
People should be looking at the tools they currently have, blocking communities/magazines or whole domains, that way content you don’t like is hidden just for you, without impacting anyone else.
Banhammers on an admin level should be a method of last resort
That was exactly the problem with exploding-heads. EVERYTHING on it was some kind of hateful bullshit. It wasn’t one community that you could easily block.
I’m really hoping that lemmy implements blocklists like mastodon so users can block instances themselves soon.
Agreed 100% some places way over moderate and create these horrible echo chamber safe spaces- no thanks. I’m an adult. I can manage my own queue, and If I’m offended, I can block things myself. I don’t Like over moderation
So what does deferedating from them do for us? I wasn’t seeing their content anyway because it wasn’t popular enough to end up on all.
Does it have any practical effects for fmhy users?
I personally joined this instance because so many other large ones have massive federation lists. So if the only effect of defederating is to send a message, then I’m not sure I’m for that.
Yeah they haven’t become a huge issue for us yet, but they have for other instances, and most of our reports of “racism” have come from things posted to exploding. Deferedating isn’t to send any sort of message, its just to prevent having issues with them in the future.
I think it’s valid to make these kinds of decisions, in the future if there are more popular instances that end up being defeated but don’t create any obvious issues then maybe it would be best to have a community discussion or at least take into account various opinions. That’s not to say a loud minority should be catered to, and ultimately if that instance is incredibly valuable to that subset of users perhaps they can migrate to said instance or move to another that has not chosen to defederate.
Just my .02c
and their users won’t be able to see anything coming from ours.
That is not true, beehaw defederated from sh.itjust.works, but we can still see posts from beehaw in our feed. Granted, if we comment, nothing gets sent back to beehaw, only members of sh.itjust.works will see those comments.
Are members of defederated instances informed/notified when they comment (or interact in general) under a post of instances that defederated from them? If the answer is “no” then it’s trash design. If the answer is “yes” then it’s good design.
There is no formal warning, like from the software, but the admins did explain this and most just removed beehaw comms from their subscriptions (or at least I presume), but I kept them, for experimental purposes, to see if this is actually true. I don’t actually see anyone commenting in those posts. They appear empty. I know they aren’t cuz I can view beehaw from other accounts, but to sh.itjust.works, they appear empty.
The thing is I don’t think an instance can check if it’s being defederated by some other instance in the fediverse. If there is an easy way to check this, than yes, I do believe a formal warning on a post on an instance thay has defederated from you is in order. Things are kinda chaotic now regarding other bugs and features that are more important, but when things kinda settle down, yeah, I believe they should look into this as well.
Isn’t lemmygrad a community on the lemmy.ml instance, not an instance in itself?
Nope, it’s an instance
Ok.
defederate enough and people will switch, much less friction to just go to a more open instance. much better than what we had with centralized sites.
Don’t defederate enough and people will switch to a less objectionable instance.
It’s a balancing act.
how is it the instances job to moderate for the user? I get defederating from like spam stuff, however the user should be in charge of its own flavour. Well, we will see what approach wins, i just find it odd how one can choose federation over centralization and still prefers to be babysit.
Because there’s no one broad brush one can paint everything with to solve all issues. It takes a variety of approaches to solve the variety of problems that occur in the world.
Those running instances are people too, and they create their instance for a purpose. If that purpose is to let people go hog wild, including bigots and authoritarians, then they can refuse to do any defederating (or moderating, I suppose, if it’s solely the responsibility of the user to curate content as you purport). The thing is… that doesn’t make an instance particularly palatable to people who dislike when other people are dipshits around them. And, rather than get into prolonged troll-baiting contests, they decide to just go somewhere better… all that leaves is the bigots and authoritarians… and the people who feed their need for attention by arguing with them.
I don’t believe cutting everyone out who says something you object to, even to the smallest degree, is a good solution. Often people are teetering on the edge of extremism, and just need a rational counterpoint to help them tip the right way… but sometimes you just need to remove toxicity from your life. When it comes to running instances, you can either take the laissez faire approach and let people do whatever they want… and welcome the extremists that draws in. Or you can take a more active, albeit gentle, hand. So you promote a place worthy of discussion and fun.
because it either is or isnt what the users expect or admins want
its the fediverse, if you disagree with an instance’ curation policies you can leave
Censorship is cool again 1 month after reddit fucked up
Defederating from people who support bombing innocent people is not censorship 🤦
The US has its own instance?
Why wouldn’t they? Do you not understand that anyone can make an instance and create the community they want, and that if the one they are in doesn’t match what they want they can start up their own? You can too.
It was a joke about my countries propensity to support the bombing of innocent civilians under the auspice of “war on terrorism”, not a serious question. I appreciate you offering up that information though, much love.
It’s been difficult to catch jokes with the amount of people that have still continued to have the old views of social media sites like reddit due to not understanding that people aren’t locked to instances they signed up to thinking it is a singular authority. So my mistake.
It’s all gravy, baby. We’re good. I appreciate your impulse was to be helpful and educate me, that’s becoming more rare these days, and it’s so important.
Damn, this thread turned wholesome as heck :)
I was referring to lemmygrad.
Hmm. I’ll keep an eye out for such, but I’ve not seen any there. Cheers.
I thought they used Tanks not bombers.
In the same way it’s ok to punch nazis.
I mean our goal is to not have to do this, but its up the individual instances to protect their own reputations and neither of the ones we blocked have done that so far. If they clean things up and the communities overall opinion of them changes then we can consider federating with them again but as of now they have too many people against them.
It’s not cool, but if you think defederation is censorship then you can switch to a different instance. This is a non-issue.
This guys’s posts are exactly what you’d expect from someone that gets offended when an alt-right instance gets blocked.
You really gotta look up what censorship is before you use the word.
Umm… What did you think the point of mods on reddit was? The mods we chose to support and followed here to lemmy and kept the community on track?
And you know you can just lurk on here and can use another instance that better fits your idea of the type of conversations you want. There’s nothing keeping you from making an account on exploding heads and chatting away with them. You can multiple accounts you know.
I left Reddit because the admins killed third party apps. Not because I was a fan of mods blocking whole communities, which wasn’t actually a power that Reddit mods had.
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