this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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Hey all, I recently left reddit like many of you. I have a question regarding lemmy and the fediverse on the history of banning and defederation. I have noticed several posts calling for varying communities to be disconnected. were these removal requests as prevalent before the mass migration? Usually I am all for communities existsting in their own spaces, barring illegal content. I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.

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[–] [email protected] 164 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Let's not sugar-coat this: do not tolerate fascists and bigots in your spaces. Period.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago

I agree 100%

If you want to tolerate Nazis, bigots, fascists, etc under the guise of "free speech" then this is not the instance for you. And I hope we maintain that moving forward. Y'all can have your own hellhole somewhere else

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

A clear-cut and uncontroversial rule that will see little to no opposition, yes.

And in many cases it's also clear-cut and uncontroversial whether someone is a fascist or a bigot.

But in other cases, you're going to run into trouble. A particular case in point; I don't like the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy. I have, in the past, been immediately called a sexist when I've mentioned that fact. But I personally don't care one whit about the gender of the trilogy's protagonist, I just think they're bad movies. Maybe there are other people who actually do care and that's the reason they don't like those movies. Maybe there are people who don't believe me when I say I personally don't care about the gender of the trilogy's protagonist. So, is https://reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/ a bigoted community? If there was a Fediverse equivalent, should it be blocked? Different people will argue different ways.

I can think of lots of other scenarios, I won't make a big rambling list because I'm sure I'll step on a landmine eventually. I'm just arguing that seemingly simple straightforward "rules" that are easy to agree with can still end up mired in complexity when people try to implement them in the real world.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I don't feel like there is as much gray area here as you're making it out to be. There is a big difference between

"The new star wars movies are bad cause they are WOKE!1!1!1!1!1 Women are bad!"

vs

"The new star wars movies were an incohesive mess due to changes between writers and directors for all 3 films"

But also it's not like we will be defederating whenever people get in a slap fight, people are still going to have shitty opinions on any instance and get downvoted for that. This is for a pattern of behavior being tolerated and prolific.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The whole reason /r/saltierthancrait exists is because the folks at /r/starwars largely refused to make that distinction. It could be that "misogynist" was simply a convenient weapon to bludgeon the people who disagreed with their taste in movies and they didn't genuinely believe that everyone who disliked those movies were misogynist, but the weapon was deployed nonetheless and resulted in a schism.

These words are just too convenient sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah I have no doubt someone called him a sexist for not liking the new SW, but from what I've seen across communities online 99% of people are easily able to distinguish between someone critiquing films over being a misogynist. And there was def rampant misogyny in some places when they got released.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's a bad faith argument they used against you for having a good opinion that they disagree with. In my personal head cannon I ignore the prequels and sequels because they cheapen the original plot. Rogue One I'll take though.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

That’s a valid concern, but in “fuzzy” cases like that, I think we can trust the mods. They’ve shown good judgment so far.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"No nazis or bigots" is a nice slogan, but if people turn off our brains and turn off our humanity and just start mindlessly chanting slogans that justify the punishing of our enemies, then there's no difference between us and the typical German in 1938.

It doesn't take a lot to end up in a bad place if we think we're purely good and in the right and our enemy is purely evil.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lmao fuck off. Tolerating nazis leads to more nazis. The only way to get rid of them is to stomp them out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Are you familiar with the Salem witch trials, the werewolf trials in France in the 1500s and 1600s and the Satanic Panic of the late 80s and early 90s? Those people thought they were morally justified in anything they did against the accused because they were fighting against literal Satan.

World War 2 ended 75 years ago. Virtually everyone who was a Nazi is dead of old age.

So who are you stomping?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

lol you are delusional if you think Nazi ideology is dead.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

There are plenty of white supremacist fascists out there. People often call them nazis because we don't give a shit about splitting hairs regarding if they are a member of the actual Nazi party or if they're just closely related scum.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

also funny that you only bring up horseshit things as your dodge with witches, werewolves and Satan, you know all not real, but Nazis and bigots are real so it seem a weird comparison

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're not talking about punishing anyone, we just don't want to hear or see their bigotry. They can have their space and we can choose not to interact with them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That's a fair point.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Ya we should have thought harder about who the bad guys REALLY were in WW2

FFS

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There is a really, really big difference between "we want to kill you" and "we do not want to be killed by you".

Don't tolerate fascists. However comfortable that centrist illusion is, you are signing your own death warrant and that of millions of others (most of whom will suffer the consequences of your actions long before they get around to the people who feel safe enough to argue that fascists must be tolerated).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Very well said.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“communities existsting in their own spaces”

In some sense that is what defederating does, no?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In fact, defederating can ensure communities can continue to exist in their own spaces without being harassed or being subject to bigotry

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.

Yeah go and take a stroll through those instances and you'll see quickly why their posts aren't welcomed here.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

I also have recently left Reddit. And I am all for blocking content that contains hate speech. Allowing fascist content to take root is unacceptable.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems to be popular to defederate from right-leaning instances. The Fediverse basically started as a far-left stronghold, so it isn't surprising.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

It has been common in other parts of the Fediverse - Mastodon for example.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.

I counter this part of your post by throwing in there that for me and my time on reddit, the worst parts of the broader experience were the fact that communities of neo-nazis (r/conservative, r/conspiracy), Donald Trump cultists (r/the Donald), incels (numerous subreddits including r/incels and r/theredpill), and pedophiles (r/just18 among other porn based subreddits that were quarantined and banned several years ago) were allowed their own communities on the platform for as long as they were. This gave these horrible ideas time to draw attention and build a userbase that then degraded the quality of reddit across multiple other communities.

If kbin or lemmyworld immediately start banning or defederating these instances or communities/magazines, then to me that is how this larger community works and it is inherently not former redditors migrating here to shape the Fediverse in the image of reddit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I eventually couldnt even browse r/all without seeing bigoted and generally fascist remarks getting thousands of upvotes with hardly any people that debated their takes not getting two to three digits of downvotes.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Yes. Defederation of bad actors has always been common and it's expected.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Personally, I prefer individual users being empowered to easily block instances over instances blocking stuff "for" the users in most cases. Issues:

  1. Users from other instances can still require mod actions. Moderation time is limited. Defederating from more problematic instances can be necessary if they cause more trouble than can be easily dealt with.

  2. It is important for instance owners to achieve a coherent "front page" which includes the wider fediverse. I’m unsure if it is possible to ban individual instances from the frontpage while still allowing users to specifically visit them as they want.

  3. Some instances are legally ambiguous or even contain content fully illegal in some countries.


I did for some research. Basically, all the top-defederated instances on this list are so for good reasons, often even legal reasons: https://fba.ryona.agency/scoreboard?blocked=100

Note that if you click on an instance, it will show you the various admin reasons for why people defederated.


The one I saw someone asking to be removed (exploding heads) seemed to be more normal discussion with a big extra dose of edgy humor magazines and swear words. This includes various slurs and straight up racism. This very much falls into the category of "I don’t want those here, but I’d prefer if users can still visit them" for me.

However, Lemmy.world admins have compiled some issues these users being, including harassing DMs to users. See for yourself: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/107898/Lemmy-world-Admin-Response-to-Defederation-from-Exploding-Heads#comments

Specifically, admins and community moderators of that instance were the problem. This seems like it would quickly fall into the "unfeasible to moderate on a case-by-case basis" category. Therefore, the nuclear option of defederation may be necessary.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The reason I am on lemmy.world is that so far, they have basically blocked nothing and that is the experience I'm looking for. I want to be the one who decides what I see.

That said, others prefer a more curated experience and thus choose other instances. That's the beauty of the fediverse, you can have both.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

didn't lemmy.world just defederate from exploding heads tho?

https://lemmy.world/post/747912

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The reason I am on lemmy.world is that so far, they have basically blocked nothing

https://lemmy.world/instances

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