because whole instances could suck, and admins need an easy solution.
dont like it? switch instances or setup your own. that is the beauty of the fediverse
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Moderation tools on Lemmy are supposedly seriously lacking. Defederation may sometimes be the only practical option even if it's not ideal.
Don't you think it's an inherent problem if the general solution is terrible UX?
no, i don't believe blocking whole instances is a problem. i think you're struggling to find a problem where there isnt one. there are thousands of instances over dozens of different platforms that all intercommunicate. this idea that servers cant block other servers is shortsighted, insecure and frankly, brought by someone who apparently doesnt have experience managing servers or large volumes of humans.
A user should be able to interact with every other user if both wish to.
That's the problem, as that isn't possible right now, unless your twitter circle took just the right instances for themselves. Sure there is self hosting, but down that road of argument eventually everyone will be self hosting.
A user should be able to interact with every other user if both wish to.
No I think you've been misled as to how this place works or have misinterpreted information you've recieved. This statement seems to imply that the Fediverse is some sort of free speech haven where people can do whatever they want and say whatever they want, when that couldn't be further from the truth. The Fediverse is not some decentralized free-speech network where servers work together to thwart censorship and user freedom is paramount (seen plenty of articles and videos claiming this or at the very least implying it).
The Fediverse is a collection of individually run websites which run a software using a decentralized ptotocol to talk to each other. These websites are individually run either by individual people, organizations, or companies, each instance on it's own is not that fundamentally different to classic social media, but the fact that they can communicate with each other in a decentralized manner is what makes it unique and also more powerful. However it's important not to forget the fact that each one of these sites are owned and operated independently and it is the choice of those site owners whether to federate or not with certain instances or ban users from participating or appearing in their instance. The decentralized or user choice aspect is that a user on an instance that has defederated or banned them, can simply go to another instance that they think fits them better, or they can host their own and call the shots themselves (within reason).
Some people may not like this top down moderation system, but in all honesty it's the only method that really works. True free speech sites are horrible to be on because the loudest and most angry people rule those places and attack anyone who even slightly disagrees with them (look at 4chan and kiwifarms), that mentality hurts the appeal of a space, and so people gravitate away from spaces like that and towards spaces which exclude such content and have rules and some amount of censorship.
I like to emphasize " if both wish to".
If that's included in your view, then what's the point of using a unified protocol? At that point we're more backwards than just using a SSO for everything.
You're probably right on me completely misidentifying the fediverse for what it is, as i expected something like resources shared forums for everyone, but got greeted by admin drama as soon as leaving lemmy for a second. In that sense the fediverse really got a PR issue and users here acting high and mighty to someone not getting their perfect system truly isn't helping it.
Gonna wait for bluesky to play out. ATproto seems a lot more than what i initially expected from activitypub.
I like to emphasize " if both wish to".
Your problem is that you're still seeing the platform as 'controlled by users', which isn't how top down moderation works, the sites/instances are controlled by the ones who own them, they are the ones who call the shots and it is their job to enforce the rules and their choice to choose to kick someone or a site out of their circle.
A user does not have a say in this anymore than they have a say in other moderative decisions on the site. If a user's desire to interact with the other instance goes against their home instance's desire they have the option of migrating elsewhere or start their own. The fediverse is about having options of different platforms that can communicate with other platforms, not catering to free speech and user choice demands. The whole thing is still up to the individual sites and the people that run them, and they are not obligated to do anything for users (many will gladly put you in your place if you try) who they are graciously allowing to use their service.
There have been instances that were defederated for posting nazi / racist content, and CSAM. Do you think that their users should be able to interact with everyone else, or that their content should be stored and hosted on other people's servers?
As far as I understand it, content posted to one server gets stored on every federated server for the other server's users to see. I certainly don't want to see the sort of content that's been defederated from the servers I mentioned.
As far as I understand it, content posted to one server gets stored on every federated server for the other server's users to see.
This is wrong, else every self hosted instance would've been a storage nightmare.
There have been instances that were defederated for posting nazi / racist content, and CSAM
I assume the later is something CP? Yes, those are legimite cases, just like spam/DdoS, but even then in every case i've seen yet, a Limit would've been enough. A pretty good example seems to be qoto.
says someone completely ignoring the open architecture of the fediverse. youve proven my points, thank you.
Please enlighten me then. I'm completely oblivious besides everyone here turning into condescending tones without giving proper answers.
Readers: can somebody who sets up a no-block instance let us know when the nazis plan a bombing?
I kinda want a representative experience on here. If 3% of the world is discussing racist evil stuff, maybe I want to see that evil in 3/100 posts. A dark reminder. An opportunity to inform others of what’s going on in the peabrains.
I think that’s what I want. (Maybe I’ll register for an instance which hasn’t defederated from anywhere, see if I’m wrong.)
Gotta be able to boot Nazis. Otherwise it'll be Nazi bar.
I always suspect the people who don't want defederation to be a thing kinda want the nazi bar. It's always the lead into the freeze peach bullshit.
Sounds like it. Anti-defederation is the lead to freeze peach bs, which in turn is also the lead to Nazi bars. It's leads all the way down to Naziland!
I often say, "Free Speech doesn't mean other people are required to provide you with a soap box and megaphone."
We don't want defed because it's a sledgehammer 'solution' that immediately denies us agency and reeks of Reddit-tier pre-emptive sub banning.
The Nazi Bar idea is for the most part a boogeyman.
If you want your shitty 8chan-esque absolute free speech platform go for it and make your own, just don’t moan that others don’t agree to such nonsense.
Most of us want to avoid the shit instances entirely and we certainly don’t bloody want to have to go around manually investigating and blocking the CSAM or other horrific ones.
But hey, you go do . . . somewhere far away from the rest of us.
Server admins are just people, generously running a server, for you. This costs them time and money to do. If they don't want their server amplifying the content from some other server that they see as problematic, they absolutely should have that option.
I think it is interesting to think about decentralized social network structures and I am interested to see what types of communities can arise out of them but I think it is a huge mistake to conclude that because massive monolithic centralization is a problem that the polar opposite is necessarily best.
There are advantages to degrees of coordination and grouping, 99% of the time when my instance admin defederates from another instance it saves me from having to do something I was already going to. There is obviously a risk but so long as there is a healthy community of alternative instances this isn’t actually an issue.
I think that is the point too, the system you are asking for seems like it puts more power in the users hands and that is certainly true to a certain extent, but this vision quickly falls away when you put new users in a situation where in the federated feed they keep encountering toxic instances they have to repeatedly step outside of their pleasant experience to block.
To put it another way, you are making EVERYBODY in a community experience something toxic, emotionally react to that and then have to block that instance/user. It’s like tasting milk to see if it has gone bad, realizing it has gone very bad with chunks floating around in it but instead of throwing it away so nobody else in the household has to have such a unpleasant experience you just put the milk back and decide you aren’t going to drink it but you aren’t going to bother to tell anyone else in the house either.
It might seem like you are guaranteeing everyone the freedom to choose the milk they want but you are also giving rancid milk the power to get into as many mouths as possible. Is that really the better solution?
At any rate, you can still follow accounts on instances your instance has defederated from.
I do think there could be some features added to help avoid full defederation. Like if instance admins could set a default list of banned instances, and the users could choose to unban those instances for themselves. Of course defederation could still be necessary sometimes like for illegal content, software bugs, or malicious attacks.
"Like if instance admins could set a default list of banned instances, and the users could choose to unban those instances for themselves.”
Which is exactly what a list of limited instances would allow the user to do.
Defederation is an absolutely necessary tool. There are instances out there you don't want any part of, with CSAM etc. But with that said I think defederation should mostly be used for such things. Block lists (containing instances, users, hashtags) that users can subscribe to would be a better way to handle the rest, and instances could recommend and/or curate lists for their users and maybe activate them by default.
Instances defederating from another instance because that second instance hasn't defederated from a third instance is a good way to ruin the future of the Fediverse I think. It's just an immature and destructive behavior leading to fragmentation.
If a user mutes an instance you still have to worry about a poorly moderated instance that federates illegal or harmful content to yours or worry about harassment to other users,etc.
Defederating should not be used nonchalantly but it has its place.
How has the user lost any power? The user is always absolutely free to move to another instance. Hell, the user is absolutely free to run their own instance.
A better question would be what power does he have left? Either he's dependent on instance administrators to be able to interact, or merely follow other users, or he's dependent on instance administrators to not get blocked before the fun even starts. It's inherently undemocratic.
He has the power to create his own instance with his own rules; he has the power to leave for an instance run by like-minded people.
And other people have the power to block that instance should it poison their internet experience. :)
I told you what power the user has. Is it not undemocratic to expect instance admins to associate with people or instances that they find repugnant? Seriously, start your own instance. The barrier to entry is lower than you might think, but you may gain some appreciation for the people who run public instances for free.
The reason is the same why ad in public spaces are bad.
„People can just look away!“ I hear you say but all you display is a lack of knowledge about how the human mind works and why advertisement is nearly a trillion dollar business.
Blocking known bad actors (meta) is indeed taking action for a whole community and should not be done without democratic vote. But once done, people who are unhappy can just leave.
"People can just look away!" is a terrible analogy cause they wouldn't have to look at an ad if it is hidden. Yet at limiting they would still be able to walk into their store and buy something. Right now blocking is removing the ad, the store and all its personal altogether.
"People who are unhappy can just leave." is the same argument you are trying to impose. To where, i ask you. Nevermind needing to leave your current toots all behind, it's a terrible suggestion and horrible UX.
They absolutely have to look at the ad first, then even introspect enough to understand what it does to them and then have the mental capacity to hide it.
Its the same reason we have billion dollar corpos in the first place: the amount of people with the capacity to see that its a bad idea never reached critical mass so it never got prevented/stopped.
Now we start to gain on those companies and some people still try to kumbaya their way to peaceful coexistence with them. There is no coexistence with psychopaths and never will be.
Looking away is exactly the analogy that fits and you know it.
Would I like to nuke meta? Absolutely! But I cant so I do the next best thing.
They can leave to one of the other thousands of fediverse servers.
I‘m not sure if you‘re oblivious to this by design. Its the same issue with leaving a country or state that imposes laws you dont like. Does it make more sense to vote? Absolutely.
I‘m not going to school every one person on a server that „ads are bad for you because…“. Thats ridicolous and one major reason I left corpo media. No idea why you are here though. You‘d be very happy on the threads side of federation from what I hear.
You’re welcome to make your own instance that is totally free for all corpos to exploit and show us all how great that works.
Good luck.
Why are you acting condescending while do your best to miss the point?
They absolutely have to look at the ad first
No, they don't. That's what Limit is for.
Its the same reason we have billion dollar corpos in the first place Now we start to gain on those companies
Who said something about billion dollar corpos?
Looking away is exactly the analogy that fits and you know it.
I don't. Please explain if you know better than i do.
Would I like to nuke meta
Who said something about Meta?
They can leave to one of the other thousands of fediverse servers.
Which are just as likely to be blocked for arbitrary reasons or blocklist bullying. A simple, but prominent example is mastodon.art.
I‘m not sure if you‘re oblivious to this by design. Its the same issue with leaving a co* untry or state that imposes laws you dont like. Does it make more sense to vote? Absolutely.
Yet.. you can't vote..
You‘d be very happy on the threads side of federation from what I hear.
Again, nice of you to assume things for me.
You’re welcome to make your own instance that is totally free for all corpos to exploit and show us all how great that works.
Last but not least, who said something about corps?
To be civil and adjourn to your argument, sure, i hate Meta like the next one and they should be cut off by design, but that was never the point. I am just advocating for a streamlined user experience where one account can interact with everyone, if they choose to do so. A default black veil by admins is perfectly fine to move their instance in the right direction, but why should it be more than that? Every further action is authoritarian and undemocratic.
You‘re accusing me of the exact thing you‘re doing and aren’t even answering my arguments, blocked.
What arguments? I made my point clear and yet you're bringing up unrelated topics.
Good luck, i guess.
I think fediverse platforms could have the option to call for a vote in defederating.
Meaning, idk, users who have been active for the past X months on the instance get notified about the admins wanting to defederate from some instance, then the users get to check out the instance themselves and vote yes or no to defederate.
To be clear, I am not saying this should be "mandatory", I am saying instance admins could have the option to call for a vote if and when they want to.
So you could decide to join an instance that vows to go the democratic way if you want to. Nothing would bind the admins to always call for a vote except their own word tho. Or you could not care about it at all and join an instance that also doesn't care.
I also would like to get notified whenever the instance I'm in defederates from another instance, and have an easily accessible list of all instances that we have defederated from.