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Will lemmyrs defederate from controversial instances? (lemmyrs.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The apparently-close connection between the primary lemmy devs and the lemmygrad.rs instance (as well as other potentially problematic behavior/associations) has been a major point of discussion in recent r/rust posts about trying to move the community somewhere off of reddit. One common recommendation in these threads is that the community should adopt/recommend an instance that has defederated from lemmygrad.rs (See for instance here.)

I've only just joined (as part of the reddit exodus), so I don't feel comfortable making this as a recommendation or even a request, but I do want to know: is this something that the current lemmyrs administrators are interested in and/or already planning? Personally, I don't mind either way (I understand there are pretty good tools available to users to "self-isolate" in this way). I do think, though, that it would be reasonable for special-interest instances like lemmyrs to defederate from all instances that aren't specifically related to the special interest; i.e. lemmyrs could defederate from every instance that isn't programming or at least technology related. That said, the obvious reason not to do so is that we'd lose access to programming communities hosted on general-purpose instances.

Again, I don't have a strong personal stance here, and I realize the answer could change over time, but I think it would be good to have an explicit stance on this given that it has come up several times on reddit already.

P. S. I was surprised not to find an existing thread for this, so please forgive me if there actually is one and I just missed it.

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

Hey, thanks for bringing this up. I completely agree that this is indeed something that we should discuss as a community. I haven't had the chance to make a thread about this yet, so we'll use this one :)

I have been keeping an eye on the de-federation of some instances but afaict the primary reason they did that was because of the open signup nature of those instances resulting in a flood of potential bot/troll accounts which the mods couldn't keep up with (understandably so). LemmyRS is (and probably will be in the foreseeable future) an application only instance. We just don't currently have the infrastructure or the manpower to deal with a completely open instance.

Any user who signs up using this instance presumably understands the target topic is Rust (and we have communities on this instance to cater to those users, so it's already pretty self-isolated in that sense). If someone wants to subscribe to communities on other federated instances they're completely open to do so. While things settle I think this approach should serve us well (please feel free to disagree and provide any counter arguments).

But again this isn't my unilateral decision, I would simply do what the users of this instance want as a group.

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

I agree that we are already pretty self-isolated. And I don't think it makes sense to defederate before we actually have a concrete problem. Defederating from other instances not only limits the users on lemmyRS, but will also limit users on other instances to discover and learn about Rust from this instance (which I see as the main downside).

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

I think as long as lemmyrs is federated with other instances, accounts from those instances can freely post or comment here, right? E.g. with the account I made here, it looks like I can post on beehaw. So I think there's still a potential risk of bot/troll posts from accounts that are registered on a different instance, right?

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

Right, that's certainly possible. Is it enough for us to start thinking about de-federating, maybe? Arguably this has been true since forever on any public forum. I think what's needed is better mod tools on Lemmy in general.

Personally, I think it's best for us to be patient while things settle before we consider any action. FWIW, we don't see much incoming traffic here anyway since the subreddits started coming back online after the 48 hr blackout.

If things start getting out of hand and this instance starts getting bombarded with just bots/troll, we will likely have to consider de-federation (or some other alternative).

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

I don't think that lemmygrad is particularly problematic as a federated instance and I would be disappointed if I could no longer access it. I'm also a newcomer but I haven't 08heard of them brigading or trolling other instances. Although I don't know that I've seen any posts on it or comments by its users, the fact that other instances aren't defederating from it makes me think those aren't issues that they have.

They're views are pretty radical, but I just briefly skimmed their front page and I don't see anything that makes me want them inaccessible.