this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Even on public instances, I don't understand why people think defederating hurts the fediverse. Just join a different instance, how hard can it be?

I'm on 3 different instances right now

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Do we have a way to combine feeds yet? I don't know of one. So it's kinda annoying to jump from account to account to make sure your seeing everything.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm not sure there is. Personally, I wish there were a way for an individual to block entire instances since I'm a terminally online individual with 3 accounts who sorts by all -> new for content :P

I get what you're saying, and hopefully it's a feature that gets added. I'm sure eventually it will, or maybe someone will make an app or an add-on

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I definitely can block inetances, I did with one click. Maybe it's the app I use? (Connect)

I still see comments from it's users but they're behind a (comment from blocked instance) button.

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

I believe it's a per-app feature. After switching over to Eternity (Infinity for Lemmy) I had to do my Blocklist again. Also each app handles blocked instances differently, and I think connect does it the best with how it still shows the comments, but not posts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Interesting. I use Jerboa, which makes it easy to block communities, but not entire instances. I'd check out connect, but I browse just as often in a desktop browser, so it would be really nice to have consistency.

It's not that big a deal to me, just a feature that would be nice to have imo

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

Sync lets you block entire instances, and that includes the comments.

It's a cool self federation

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

I don't see the blocked comments or posts with the Eternity app.

...But I also can't make my own posts yet....

Edit: wait... Not sure if it still shows comments from people on instances I've blocked.

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

The "block instance" feature is apparently in the pipeline for Lemmy.

Kbin currently allows you to block entire instances, so that's nice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, that's good news! I know it's been a request on github for quite some time.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, actually! Liftoff for Lemmy is still in early development, but you can get it on iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux, and it provides precisely this feature. There are a lot of features that Liftoff is yet to incorporate, probably most notably moderator tools and support for adding Kbin accounts -- but give it a try regardless, and do what you can to contribute to its further development. Liftoff is an app with a lot of promise and a surprising amount of functionality already this early in its development.

It's worth noting that Liftoff is a fork of the now abandoned project Lemmur, which I believe was the first Lemmy client to support combining feeds.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Cool thanks for the heads up!

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

It's why I've found myself gravitating to the less defederation-happy instances. But a new user wouldn't know to do that.

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

I'm building this into an app right now, I've got an android beta open if you're interested in helping decide the course of it.

Right now it just does the normal stuff with some extra features and lots of filters, but the goal has always been to build custom feeds on your device from a lot of individual sources. I'm redesigning stuff under the hood with that and support for other fediverse integration, I'm looking at kbin and mastodon in the near term, but I think I want pixelfed and maybe friendica down the road

The name is Luna, let me know if you want a link

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Cool, I can give it a try if you'd like!

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

Sure, but keep in mind the comparison to any non-federated site has to be that you had no other instances to jump to in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, banned groups would need to move to a different platform.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Summit for Lemmy supports multi-communities however it still doesn't support multi-communities from multiple instances at the moment unfortunately.

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

Social media needs to be as easy as possible if you're going to reach the masses. Most people do not give a shit enough to create 3 accounts; they'll just leave.

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

That's just fine with me. Quality > quantity

Some of the best forums I use have just a handful of active users

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

But quantity and quality are linked. If only, say, 0.1% of people will post high quality content, that means you need to attract a thousand people to get a high quality poster. You can't just put up a sign that says "high quality posters only". Plenty of quality posters also want an audience, so they'll go where the people are and leave if that audience isn't there.

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

This. I love reddit r/askhistorians and r/askphilosophy. But the vast fkn majority of people are not qualified to answer historical or philosophical questions. In these cases you need a lot of people on the site.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Cutting out huge swaths of users at once just stifles the content including the small percentage of actually quality content. You can't pick out and keep the good stuff when you cut off whole instances. It also brings down the engagement in your own content.

Take your favorite small forum and now split it according to political opinion, now split it again according to if users pirate movies(lol). Your forum is now dead since no one likes speaking into the void.

We should be treasuring the connections, not putting up walls because it makes the circle jerk easier.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Counterpoint: new users who don't know the ins and outs of the fediverse might join an instance at random and see significantly less content.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fair, but a lot of new users might also get discouraged if the first thing they see is content from exploding-heads or hexbear, and the instances that strive to be safe, inclusive spaces and thus do a significant amount of defederating are usually quite forthright about this when you sign up. For example, I knew just what to expect when I joined beehaw.

The instance I'm posting from now tries to keep things inclusive more via moderation vs. defederation. There are pros and cons to each approach. I can see both perspective.

I just don't think either approach harms the fediverse. I think that's a bit melodramatic.

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

Funny enough, Hexbear actually defederated from my main instance first, due to it not being inclusive enough for their standards. My own experiences with Hexbear as an autistic enby are that Hexbear is actually the most inclusive Lemmy instance out there, by no small margin. The issue with Hexbear is that its users like to "punch up" at non-leftists, pointing out how people propagate or benefit from exploitative systems, and justify these systems to themselves.

Being "dunked on" may annoy and wound the pride of non-leftists, but this is also very much not the same as the actually evil Nazi shit posted to EH, which "punches down". I have for many years understood the difference between being annoyed and having my pride wounded for having a bad opinion, and being actively terrorized and marginalized for being a member of a marginalized group. The world would be better off if more people understood that difference.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By no means am I saying it's just as bad or remotely the same as a Nazi instance. I mean, I consider myself anarcho-communist, so it's not like they're too leftist for me or whatever, but it's hard to call it an inclusive space while communicating in such a toxic, off-putting way. It leads me to question whether they're even genuine communists when they don't seem to be motivated by any sense of community.

Maybe I'm a bit quick to judge them, but they remind me of dirtbag leftists from CTH, who were so toxic that I'd actually encounter them freely using slurs in the threads. Not exactly punching up, eh?

So no, I'd take a million hexbears over one exploding-heads, but to be honest l don't have any reason to associate with any of them. Maybe it's my age, but it all seems so very childish and off-putting to me.

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

Hexbear at least has a no-tolerance policy for open slurs, as far as I'm aware. But you're saying with regard to /r/CTH, that it wasn't, like, people reclaiming slurs, or using "slurs" for non-marginalized groups -- that it was actual, proper, undeniably hurtful slurring you saw? And by the way, what is a "dirtbag leftist", anyway?

I can definitely understand being put off by the way that the Hexbears often talk. I have managed to have a lot of constructive conversations with the Hexbears, where they honestly just write normally and almost unfairly politely for my asininity; but when the Hexbears aren't in Serious Mode, which is most of the time, then their comments just look like cryptic emojis and weird slang, right? And I think that's appealing for a certain type of person, but not for others. I don't think it's necessarily bad to be childish or flippant, so it doesn't bother me.

Whether the Hexbear culture is toxic is a different question. I can feel comfortable asking silly questions there or expressing sides of my identity that I might hide in other spaces, but there are also parts of the Hexbear culture that I like less and wish would change. Foremost that they could use a reminder of Hanlon's razor sometimes.

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

I think you're trying to frame my disgust for hexbear on some non-existent sense of fragility. And I don't give two fucks if they thought they were "reclaiming" or "tactically" using slurs. Fuck all of that, there's also a reason people dislike 4chan and tumblr.

I've been quite active on subreddits like FWR and AHS, so I understand the difference between punching up and down, and I grasp the value in dismantling the patriarchy and other hierarchies. This ain't it. I've not seen anything positive come out of hexbear, and any potentially decent conversation is spoiled by people deliberately acting like a bunch of unlikable d-bags.

Admittedly, I've got my own traumas to cope with as a gay person in a conservative region, and I can be sensitive. I actually ended up blocking 196 from your instance due to some unchecked misogynistic and homophobic slurs that were never addressed by the mods.

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

Counter counterpoint: the other option is to give your unique identifiable butthole print to zuck

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

But he promised those pics were just for him!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m high as fuck AND on three instances rn. I win, right?

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

You don't win Lemmy until you have an account on every public instance!

Also, I'm slightly high, but "as fuck" would be a major exaggeration on my part

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't get it either. Defederation is a tool just like banning or spam prevention. If it's unused it's pointless to have.

But you don't ban everyone for a single offense just like to don't defederate lightly. If you do then people will move elsewhere and the problem resolves itself

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Too many people never used forums and think every site needs to talk to every site.

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

Forums died for a reason. Reddit took over that space for me because it was one place to see everything. Federation is a better version of that. Decentralized and connected is how the Internet should be

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

Reddit took over because threading on forums was awful. The centralization was just a nice bonus imo.

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

I added the 'for me' to curb the pedants, but it seems you still found your way. Your experience doesn't invalidate mine, sorry.

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

Sorry I missed that. My bad. Fwiw I agree. I like having all my gaming subs grouped together.

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

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If instances weren't supposed to be ever defederate, then we wouldn't have the tool. In the absence of real moderation/admin tools it's going to get used more frequently. And that's the admin owner's right!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I would say that a big part of the issue is the difficulty in transferring one's account. Ignoring the fact that one simply can't transfer their posts, trying to manually copy all previously subscribed communities to a new account is a rather tedious task. I am aware that there exists scripts that can automate that process, but I don't think that it's fair to expect that the userbase should run 3rd party scripts. Until account transfer is properly implemented, defederation will continue to be a major issue.

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

I think the best part of the fed is that you can see ALL the content from the other instances. I personally feel like its what the internet is supposed to be.

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

I just use one, but AFAICT they don't defederate, they haven't even defederated anyone on their mastodon instance and that's had a lot longer to have all manner of inter-instance bullshit develop.

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