Fediverse

So blahaj.zone defederated a whole instance because one community on lemmynsfw has pictures of (verified) adults that don't look adult enough? That seems... extreme, and rather insulting to the women whose bodies/appearances are supposedly too close to actual children to be worthy of attraction. Glad that's not my instance, though to each their own.

Weird drama over nothing tbh

Communities are free to federate with whoever they want;

Consenting adults can do whatever they want.

Now give me a medal

I saw the drama unfold when I was browsing All. My 2 cents:

• In terms of the content in question, the lemmynsfw admin was right. I believe the community they were talking about was c/adorableporn, which AFAIK is just naked women acting cute, not acting or implying they are underage. The blahaj admin seemed to have misunderstood the premise of the community.

• On the other hand, the lemmynsfw admin didn't really explain it properly and some of the words they used didn't exactly help their justification. At one point the admin said they do not discriminate against a poster's gender, looks, age, etc. and used words akin to saying they do not discriminate against people who are "too young". Obviously that didn't come across well in the conversation with the blahaj admin. The community's rules also had some questionable wording ("child-like" is the term I believe they used), which the mods changed when it was pointed out. So all these things didn't really help their defense.

• At the end of the day, it's the blahaj admin's lemmy instance, so they can do whatever they want and defederate if they wish. It's up to the users on the instance to decide if it was justifiable and if they are ok with losing access to the entire lemmynsfw instance because of a misunderstanding.

EDIT for transparency purposes: As someone mentioned in the replies, I missed the word "adult" in recalling the statement that mentioned "too young", so the admin did word it correctly. I stand corrected.

Admin from LemmyNSFW here, not the one that posted but an admin nonetheless.

I'm not really down with this being presented as drama as some are trying to, it's unfortunate the way it played out but overall its their choice to defederate. We actively encourage other instances who forbid pornography to defederate from us. Lemmy.ml, sopuli, etc etc we are totally fine with, we have no malice or hate towards them because thats their choice and their reasons and concerns for doing so are more than legitimate especially with how limited lemmy is right now and the locations that they host their site at. We have open discussions with other instance admins and welcome discussions of their potential concerns, it's just we didn't really know what the concerns were beyond "this looks wrong because it looks wrong delete it" which made it extremely frustrating to try to figure out concisely what the problem was so we could address it.

My only issue is it being presented as if we are fine with CSAM, when we aren't and to be accused of that is extremely serious.

Damn, lotta people here are thirsty for drama. Who cares if they defederated, no one in here is actually a blahaj.zone member, how about you let the users from that instance complain about it if they want to? I find it kinda weird that you're all jumping on the admin for not wanting to be associated with that instance when it doesn't concern you at all.

Isn't that the beauty of the fediverse? None of you are affected by this. What is it that you want? For all instances to be the same? What's even the point of making your own instance then?

Y'all are fucking weirdos fr. OP doth protest too much.

Not the first time that person was looking around for reasons to be outraged and ban communities. I hope they decide to go isolated and defederate from all instances.

Illegal content should be removed in any case, but there is nothing illegal here.

Sounds like they were trying to find a reason to defederate.

The blahaj admin defederating is totally fair, and it's the whole point of the fediverse. The dragging the issue into the public view to cover up their own mistaken impression is absolutely silly. The public attack in the form of implication that the other admin is supporting CSAM is sickening. This person comes across as the type to manufacture drama to make themselves seem like a victim. Were I an instance admin, they would be exactly the kind of person I would want to defederate from, as nothing good comes from association with people who like to play victim for attention.

IMO, plenty of nuance lacking in the discussion here.

1. Being able to defederate whenever you want is the point of all this. Freedom of association. It’s not a big deal.
   • EDIT/ADDITION: someone defederating from something you enjoy doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to enjoy it or that they have defederated from you personally. Each of us managing our own situation here is the whole point. It’s not personal. It’s not about you.
2. This especially goes for instances that are trying to create safe spaces for vulnerable people, as blahaj.zone is. To all the critics here, the job of such moderation is probably harder than you realise. There appears to be little empathy for what such an effort is trying to achieve. Moreover, it almost certainly will involve decisions that will not make sense to you if you don’t belong to the instance’s demographic. It’s also ok, given their circumstances, that they make decisions that seem excessive … because they have a bigger job to do than ensuring that they’re not too Puritan etc
3. This is even more especially so when it comes to something as intrinsically controversial, problematic and illicit as CSAM.
   • Just today a report came out stating that fediverse has a CSAM problem, where such content being masked by appearing alongside otherwise acceptable material is part of the problem. So maybe not fucking around with this shit as an admin makes a lot of sense, and maybe being less cavalier as a community about this issue might actually be necessary if we are all to enjoy our free social media ecosystem. We’ve lost one instance to being carefree about this stuff (vlemmy). And is “adorable porn” so important that it needs defending?
   • See Verge Article and Mastodon thread by author of report

Even though I don’t 100% agree with the defederation, it’s a bit alarming how quick commenters are to chastise their decision. Why risk being federated with a community that will allow or seek “childlike” NSFW content? That’s just asking for trouble, so I can understand why an instance would avoid being associate with that. That’s a huge risk for someone hosting a fairly large instance, especially with the criticism and accusations the LGBTQ+ community has been subject to recently

Lemmy needs more tools to help avoid defederation. Like the admins being able to block communities (defederating a community interested of the entire instance), or hide posts from a community/instance from c/All so people who are still subscribed or manually search can still find the posts

Also users should be able to block instances just for themselves, just posts or comments as well

Ah, the good ol' 'administrator discretion'. Seems like a classic case of power-tripping site admins doubling down on their opinion while disregarding any notion that they may be in the wrong. Can't say I'm surprised - it was only a matter of time before we saw this kind of behavior in the threadiverse.

Regardless of how you may feel about NSFW content on Lemmy, this is a huge red flag for lemmy.blahaj.zone, and I would advise against people joining that instance purely based on the admins' apparent inability to properly investigate or understand the content that they federate with. Hopefully they can clarify their rules in the near future and justify why exactly this defederation happened, or reverse their decision, swallow a little bit of pride, and admit they were in the wrong.

EDIT: More admin correspondence can be found here.

Very 'my way or the highway' behavior from the blahaj.zone admins. Really not a good look.

If an instance is sharing content that another instance finds problematic, then defederation makes sense. Regardless, though, it seems like lemmynsfw is doing their due diligence to handle illegal content. We all know that porn will exist... having good stewards of those communities is vital. Punishing them for providing a (legal) porn platform is counterproductive.

Weird. It seems like they were concerned with adorableporn.

As if adorable is a trait that only children can have.

Honestly, this drama every time an instance decides to defedarate needs to end. Freedom of association exists. If someone decides the don't want to be around you for whatever reason that's their right.

I just went to blahaj to check their post on this and the majority of people there seem okay with this decision, and those who aren't are free to go to a different instance.

One good thing about lemmy is that an instance defederating from yours doesn't affect you in any way. Your content isn't being taken down and can still be viewed by those who want it.

Isn't this the whole point of the fediverse? Freedom to choose by yourself what content you want instead of having a central authority decide for you and being stuck with that choice?

Yet every time something like this happens there's drama. It's absurd.