this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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I prefer to deal with content in a case-by-case basis, and de-federation from an instance would be the very last-resort strategy. I want users to have the freedom to choose what they interact with. Today it's exploding-heads, soon it will be Meta, then some might want to defederate from lemmygrad, and after that something else.
My position is to resist de-federation. To defederate I would need to have seen that the users asking for defederation have made an effort not to engage with the content by blocking communities and reporting offending users/content who post to our communities, and the scale of the problem must be so significant that I can no longer deal with it manually. As of today, I have received zero reports of exploding-heads.
I have looked at the communities, and I can see that we have fetched content from the following communities:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
It is only five communities, and my suggestion is to block them if you find their content offensive. I hope that users will soon be able to block instances themselves.
If this is a deal-breaker, defederating with problematic instances is a very common position in the fediverse, and it will be easy to find an instance that blocks them.
It may not be wise to wait and watch with this one. Part of the reason people are leaving Reddit like myself is we do not want to deal with this anymore. These do not argue in good faith. They will eventually brigade us with the next controversy. I suggest asking your users and listening on this one. This is not a safe place unless defended, that sometimes means being proactive. Consider this my report as well.
Oh, it is probably not wise if it is my idea.
I am sorry that we are not aligned in this - especially considering that you are literally the most active user here at the moment!
Maybe it is in part our difference in experiences that give us different opinions. I am aware that people are mean online, but I have never been the target of an attack, nor have I experienced the meanness of the internet like others have. So I am definitely not be the best to administrate a vulnerable community.
I left Reddit and other social media a while ago but for different reasons. I left because I do not think that centralized parties should have the authority of dictating how we communicate with each other, to establish what is true and what what isn't, they shouldn't be able to take advantage of our reliance on technology to apply social punishment, and I do not like that they hold our private information. I tell you this because it may provide some insight into why our vision and priorities are not aligned - not because I want to argue this.
But all of these are important. The way I see it: I want to try out an experiment in which I am able to have a reasonably safe space without needing to cut off connections. And yes, maybe this is a naive view that assumes too good of the people, but I want to try.
But why is there no hope of stopping this? I feel like these issues can happen even within the instance, without need for federation, and that they can be dealt with in a few minutes. This is a very small instance, I've never dealt with something like this. I don't know that we ever will... To me these sound like hypothetical problems that may not be so hard to solve when it comes to it, and so I am not very deterred by those possibilities. I genuinely think that... we can handle this.
It is a balance, but it is clear to me now that for many people that balance lies strongly along the 'ensuring a safe-space' axis, and that people are willing to have an authority to sanitize the space if that means minimizing the risk. I am sorry if my choice of waiting until the waves hits the shore makes you feel unsafe here... While I am willing to change, it would take time. Towards the end of another comment[1] I extended an invitation to any user who would like to set up an science-based instance with more stringent federation moderation. I know you are good with technology, and I can already see that you would be a better community admin than I can, so if you would like to take on that offer I would be more than happy!
This is not a balance, not in a scientific community.
There is an immense gap between the scientific discussion of these kinds of issues and ideas, and the kinds of bad-faith polemic argumentation that takes place in spaces like exploding-heads.
We should not welcome those spreading mis/dis/malinformation as part of our community. We should not welcome their forms of argumentation as legitimate. We should not welcome their "questions" and "claims" as part of the debate, all in the same ways that these ideas and forms of argumentation are not welcome in the scientific literature.
You started this instance not as a "free speech bastion" but as "An instance dedicated to nature and science." A dedication to nature and science requires the forms of moderation you resist. A dedication to nature and science does not mean unmoderated, unregulated discussion.
What you do now drives the culture and the norms of this community. Every second you wait further entrenches this kind of speech as acceptable by the leadership of this community.
I'll hold my "engineers really need to stop making social spaces by themselves" rant for another day.
The thing is... My vision for this place is not a place to debate socially important topics that have a connection to science and nature. It is an instance to identify plants and mushrooms, and discuss recent papers. I did not create this instance to argue about the efficacy of vaccines, gender identity and politics, or advocacy for implementing policies to stop climate change. I want to talk about spectroscopy papers and help each other grow plants. What polarizing debate is there to be had about a new implementation of quantum computing?
My current perspective is that I should have already had a policy in place, to make it clear what I want.
I actually do want to hear this rant, because I feel like this might hit the nail on the head on how I feel 😅
I am working on writing an actual policy for the site... From reading the comments from the community, I think that many will not like my policy, because it will be rather limiting.
The sentence “engineers really need to stop making social spaces by themselves” resonates with me. I don't think that I can build the community that most people want, nor am I so interested in doing that. I want to have a space for my hobbies not argue with people.
I'm 100% with you. But, there's no completely "depoliticizing" those conversations even if you wanted to, even if your community was fully on board with that. More importantly @fossilesque is still correct in their assertion that it is only a matter of time before a community devoted to science and nature is a major target for bad actors - doubly so because your instance isn't limited to just your interests. If you want something just for your topics, you should moderate accordingly (as much as I would be heartbroken, given the fact that something is growing here).
Exactly. Narrowing this focus down - as much as I'm against it personally and would encourage you to take a real look at the community that's getting a start here before doing so - might be the right call for you as admin.
Background: I'm a IT/Cyber guy turned social scientist. The short version of the rant is that the philosophies and conceptual frameworks of engineering are not suited for understanding or even working with social groups. Imagine a social scientist with no other training turning to you and saying "I'm going to build a new utopian community, and I'm going to build a really tall sky platform where we'll all meet and live! No, no, I can build it myself. I mean I live in an apartment building that's tall, I get it, it's not that hard. Can I borrow your truck?" There are actual reasons that people spend decades studying our social world, and notably we are still struggling to really get a handle on how communities build, grow, and die online. The ones that are closest (for example, the widely circulated article on enshittification from Doctorow) tend to be people that understand that technology is inherently political and social, and that both technical and social forms of expertise are necessary to intentionally build communities. Beyond all of this is an inherent positivism to engineering - the idea that you can simply brush aside bias and context to get to "the truth" or "the right answer" of anything. While this approach is deeply flawed more generally, it works pretty great (by which I mean it creates measurably effective solutions for the problems as defined), especially for things that are technologies that don't deal much with human beings, or worse, social groups.
There's more to say - specifically tying things down to this example with Lemmy - but it's the weekend and I'm kid wrangling.
There is no community without challenge. No community without tension. Healthy communities grow through and with the challenges, it's the churn of novelty and acceptance that makes the community.
Once extremists fixate on a target they do not stop. I've watched it be done to others. I've had to ban people across multiple subreddits because they go to scream anywhere they can and then into my inbox on multiple accounts. It's not good faith behavior. Simply blocking after the fact does not stop it. They find other ways once they have a mission. It's easier and healthier to stop it before it's an issue. It's not so easy as it sounds. It'll persist for as long as they are fixated which is not sane or rational. If it's let in, it changes the culture of the instance inherently.
You should be the bartender here: https://www.boredpanda.com/bar-bartender-nazi-punk-iamragesparkle/
The people that have been exposed to the meanness of the internet are trying to warn you about something. Please consider it.
aa
FediLore: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking
I have already seen anti-trans stuff from the instance owner.
I echo the sentiment that we should not take a wait and see approach to bigotry and anti-science sentiment. We should defederate proactively.
Chipping in to say I support defederation from exploding-heads. I don't consider myself someone who likes to go knee deep into what's considered "politics" either, but allowing known bad-faith actors to discuss anything is not a good idea, from my experience. Conversations go off the rails quickly. Especially when such actors discriminate against marginalized groups (as unfortunately politicized as they are in recent times).
On that note, I can't seem to block the following communities? Not sure if the buttons are broken, but it only allows me to highlight text.
I wonder if it's the same issue I posted about here: https://slrpnk.net/post/602890
Very helpful, thanks
I don't disagree, what I disagree is with a blocking action before they actually come and act in bad faith in a way that is difficult to contain. I see blocking an instance as an absolute last resort, after other approaches have failed. I do not want to block an instance because it has a potential to do something, a high likelyhood of doing so, or because it has done it to some other instance. I understand that this is an unpopular view, and that many prefer a proactive approach.
I can see that same issue when I clicked the link, I am not sure why. Worth looking into it. But refreshing the page fixed the button for me, does it do it for you?
I can see why you'd think that, and I'm also not one for knee-jerk reactions. I've moderated communities in the past where the rules insisted that heavy discussions and politics were to be taken elsewhere.
However, I think it's quite telling seeing how other instances have blocked them already, and, if you put exploding-heads into the search bar, there's quite a number of anecdotes of the damage they're causing. It's only a matter of time before they get here, and the damage may be subtle and insidious at first. :/
I'll put my opinions aside. Out of curiosity, what makes you think blocking is such an "absolute last resort" that it seems like too drastic an action? I don't really understand what value exploding-heads brings to us, and if it's truly, somehow, the wrong move (personally doubtful), we can always re-federate. I think prioritizing the comfort and safety of users who actually use mander.xyz is more important, since they're the ones contributing content to the instance.
Refreshing doesn't help for me, BTW. Still see the same issue on my end.
There are some practical reasons and some ideological considerations.
First, I want to point out that this is not about exploding-heads. I genuinely do not think that exploding-heads is a significant threat due to its scale. It has about 30 active users. I have had to deal with an orders-of-magnitude larger amount of disturbing material from users being created in the larger instances. If we are objective and serious about addressing the threat of disturbing content brigades, we should defederate with lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, lemmugrad.ml, and lemmy.world - because, due to their scale, they are overwhelmingly the worst offenders.
A practical reason for opting for a non-defederation strategy is that the userbase will disagree with what they want to federate or defederate with. I think that exploding-heads is an easy one to point at, because they produce offensive content, they use foul language, and spew racist/homophobic views. We can all agree that their views are harmful, so we defederate. Then, next week, users come in asking to defederate from lemmygrad.ml because the have a Death to NATO community, or from lemmy.ml because of one of the admin/developer's essays about the Uyghur genocide. Once I enact a blocking policy, this gives users the platform to fight for what gets and what doesn't get federated, and I am in the position of having to defend and justify every federating action. I do not want to be the person in charge of filtering what people can and can't see, and I also don't want some of the users to make these choices for other users. It is impossible to make everyone happy. Personally, I am curious to see any content that is out there. Yes, even if I strongly disagree with it, or if it is offensive. And so, why would I be the one to limit the network for myself and others? I prefer to provide a space where the admin does not choose limit what anyone can and can't access outside of the instance.
The ideological reason is that I genuinely believe that most people are good people. Yes, even communists, and the people creating offensive edgy-memes at exploding-heads, and probably many violent criminals as well. I think that most of these are good people, and that they genuinely would like the world to be a better place. More often than not I disagree with their beliefs, and their methods. And tolerance has some hard limits, but they have to be crossed. I don't believe in assuming the worst of people as a defensive action. I think that the hate that we see in online communities is in large part the result of polarization more than it is a function of our disagreements. Today's world is too polarized, and this polarization is the root of a large amount of society's problems. Some of this polarization is natural, but the media and politicians benefit from it, and they have agreed to amplify this polarization - either on purpose or through the structures that naturally arise. The action of defederating is a polarizing action, one in which we outright reject a group of people, and and contributes towards this polarization. That is why I do not think that this an action to be taken lightly. A network that I want to help build should serve as a tool to reduce, not to amplify, polarization.
Interesting points. I think you managed to articulate a POV I hadn't considered.
I think you make a good point regarding polarization. However, from my prior experience with extremists in particular, I cannot bring myself to give them the time of day. It is true that this amplifies polarization, but there is only so much time and energy I can spend dealing with such folks. Believe me, I have an ex-friend who was (probably still is) a neo-nazi, and the years I've kept them around felt like a waste of my time, and a drain on my spirit, despite attempts to be understanding.
I don't believe that it'll be a slippery slope in users calling for increasing amounts of instances to be defederated, either. It's not difficult to draw a line against extremists, and I think users can understand that.
At the end of the day I respect your viewpoint, but I may have to leave this instance if no action is taken because I simply do not have the mental energy to deal with extremist content, even if it's not an immediate problem. Thanks for engaging with my questions anyway, though!
I understand that. In my case, I grew up in a small city in Yucatan in a boys-only catholic school. I went to a boarding school in the US when I was 15 for a year, and I was a catholic extremist teen at that point. I had been indoctrinated with "catholic family values" and taught to reject multiple lifestyles and behaviors as sinful and unnatural. And what brought me out of my bubble was meeting people and making friends that were very different from me in the US, who espoused very different values, and reading about those values online (at that point the internet was still kind of being developed). It wasn't a fast transformation, it took a lot of self-reflection. I came back home to pretty much fight with everyone in my community next 3 years and used every opportunity to preach acceptance. I was the "extremist" once again in my community, but now fighting for the side of 'satan', 'sin' and the 'unnatural'. So I think that my experiences are what make me feel like it is important to allow people to connect, rather than forcing each other into their own bubble. But yes, maybe it is not what is optimal. And we will find out, as the network evolves. This strategy may be unsuccessful and through a process of natural selection this strategy will be weeded out. I do not intend to let the instance become a platform for hate.
I understand 100%!! I will do my best not to let it to come to this. It is true that not being so proactive increases the risk of this state being transiently visited. The way I see it is "Ok, let's first try to deal with this by taking atomic steps, instead of creating a community where the easy nuclear action is the default". But I fully understand the skepticism.
I have no issues when it comes to purging specific posts, comments, users, and communities that focus on hate. I visited the exploding-heads site and have seen some communities that I would purge if someone fetched them from this instance, but no one has fetched them, and no one has reported them. They don't exist in Mander. I am writing an actual policy now so that I can at least have a better framework to work with... Once I have that I might pull them myself and purge them. But I want to set the rules first. I do listen to everyone and try to make something fair, but it is.... actually a lot of work 😅 It would be much easier to block them and be done with it.
There are many comments on this issue. It is a bit fun and interesting, but it also takes a lot of time to think and write so much... I will focus on trying to write an actual policy instead of addressing individual comments.
If not here, I hope you do find a nice place to park in the fediverse! Thank you for giving it a chance.
Thank you for this. After a good, long think, this makes me feel better. I realise am noisy, but it's because I am passionate about good science spaces. :)
Thanks for this. Please don't cave in to those wanting to create another walled garden. Small groups of asshats aren't enough to notice.
Myself, I hope that general instances like lemmy.world eventually shrink and die as people migrate to instances with a theme or interest. That will keep the fediverse open and avoid one instance becoming too large.
This is really well said. I know you're in a difficult position here, but I do want to say that I really respect the approach you are taking.
Sometimes you have to interact with the community for those options to show up.
Egh, that just defeats the purpose of blocking, doesn't it? I don't want to get near those communities with a ten, thirty foot pole. Thanks for the input, though.
Technical question: while the instance is federated, its users can post here, right? Do you have any moderating tools that allow you to monitor incoming comments from users from a "fishy" instance as they come in?
My fear is that they have not accumulated enough of a mass of users yet, and enough of an interest in a "small" platform like Lemmy yet, but that the crowd will come once Lemmy becomes an established platform, which will make real infiltration efforts worthwhile.
And then we'll have to deal with the usual tactics: brigades organized offsite (on discord, telegram..) to drop on anything trans/immigration/etc. related like a plague of locusts. Teams of users posturing as the "sane one" and "crazy one" allowing the "sane" actor to push far-right points that "make sense" next to pure extremism. Threats sent as PMs to individual users. Doxxing, online stalking. And, behind that, their host doing nothing to prevent- or facilitating - the behavior.
I'm fine with you not taking action for now, but would you be ready to drop the hammer if they become problematic and user-level blocking of instances is not yet a thing?
Edit: I commented on the wrong account, but I also have one on Mander.
I was on Lemmy two years ago (or something like that), and I ultimately left because of the gore brigading that kept happening. Mods were unable to control it. Wasn't that a thing on Mander as well?
We haven't had anyone using Mander as their home base in a brigade yet, fortunately, and it would be nice if it stays that way. But I do remember multiple brigades, and I do not think that we are much better prepared today than we were back then in terms of the tools that we have to detect these before our users see them.
The users were being created in many instances, mainly lemmy.ml and new instances that were created for the brigades. Around then was when lemmy introduced the application for registering and recommended others to implement them too.
Defederating is not very effective against a brigade because new instances can be spun-up quickly. White-list federation with instances that have an application is a more effective strategy, but with white list federation you cut out every new person who wants to join the fediverse from their small instance. If an instance is used to brigade, I'll block it until the admin can get things under control (if ever), and then unblock it. It's as simple as that.
Yeah, I'm with you on this. I will probably go back to lurking* if this is how it is because I do not want a target on my head as a proactive poster. I would have instance blocked them ages ago, but Lemmy in its current state leaves us unable to defend ourselves in this way. By the time that hammer is dropped if it does, the targets will already have been made. Hell, I grew up in a place where a lot of these people come from and I left there too for a reason. We cannot build and be proactive if our base is undefended.
*If I start seeing it.
You're such an active user that at the beginning I thought it was your instance, and your presence here makes this place very active and interesting. I agree it'd be quite easy to associate you with mander as one and the same.
I used to revive old subs on reddit but they didn't get much traction and mostly ended up just arguing with anti-climate people and it sucked and made me unhappy so I stopped. I want to help spaces like this and invite others to, but not at the expense of exposure to harm.
I also thought it was your instance because you are so active, and, at that point I’m really enjoying the content you are posting. If you end up creating your own instance dedicated to science, with moderation for the anti-science harmful stuff I will follow you there! Just let me know
I wish I had the money and time right now to do so! :) Trying to limit my projects otherwise I overload myself. I'll continue posting because my brain loves filing things for whatever reason, but I will protect myself if I need to.
That’s fair, it’s the same reason I’m not making an instance also: time and money (we’ll mainly time). If you end up moving and trying to rebuild it somewhere just let me know!
Yes, that sounds really demoralizing. :( I don't know how you did it.
I'll keep going, here, by the way as I have time (a bit ill today) but if I get the ick again I'll need to bounce as I've been making my brain a priority. I still mod those Reddit subs and they just get spam these days.
I didn't. I stopped. I'm saying this as a warning because this place has potential and it would be a shame to stop it's momentum. People won't put up with it.
You are shifting responsibility of moderation onto users. What you should be doing for all of us, you are asking us to do ourselves. Each of us would have to moderate the same content, and with fewer tools to do it. Massive duplication of effort and needless exposure to harmful content (or perhaps you find value in that type of content?).
If this is your stance and you are done thinking about this, I mourn what this instance might have been.
I haven't reported because I don't even know how to. Consider this my report.
But this seems like a big inconsistence. Did you even see the posts? How's that for a case-by-case basis? What is a case bad enough? If this doesn't do it, I don't know what would.
It's a shame, it was such a nice instance for science topics. But the admin makes the instance. I will move elsewhere.
just fyi there should be a report button under the post or comment when you click the 'more' menu (looks like 3 dots) and then the button that looks like a flag.
This is on lemmy, might be slightly different on kbin
I disagree with defederation when it's due to non-illegal discussion, but I feel Lemmy (and kbin) should have more sane defaults. In a perfect world, no one would defederate but there would only be a whitelist of federated defaults on the main page for each instance so you have to actively go looking for the content in order to see it.