I haven't seen anything from Hexbear since they defederated from us. Are they such a nuisance?
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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The users on .ml are fine. The proportion of mellow to overtly politically hostile is about average. Maybe a smidge higher than average. Unlike some instances, .ml is still general purpose despite its admins attempting to steer it elsewhere. In my opinion, users and illegal content are about all that should be considered when defederating. Nothing illegal and users are largely acceptable. I say this despite having been banned from .ml.
I would also defederate from an instance if they send lots of heavy ad spam (like, if spam.world has bots that post about hot offshore pharmacies in your area into sh.itjust.works communities. Let them fill their own communities with shit. Not my septic tank, not my turds) or DDOS behavior, stuff like that.
I mean, I am not fond of the head admins running Lemmy.ml, but you should just do what I do and block the instance. Don't know what you use to browse Lemmy but I use Connect for Lemmy on Android and it supports instance blocking.
No reason to prevent other people on your instance from interacting with instances they want to. Not everyones ideologies have to match your own, and different people want to see different content.
I mean, I am not fond of the head admins running Lemmy.ml, but you should just do what I do and block the instance.
I always say this and I'm going to keep saying it until people get the memo, instance blocking doesn't work the way people think it does, it only blocks out communties from appearing in feeds, it doesn't do anything for spam and bad faith actors:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
For that reason it should not and cannot be used as an alternative to defederation.
Instance blocking in Connect for Lemmy also hides all comments from all people in the blocked instance. It doesn't make them disappear like blocking a user does, but the comment appears with the body text replaced by a button that allows you to optionally unhide the message (like how Discord used to hide messages from blocked users).
Defederation should literally be a last resort option IMO. Otherwise you end up like Beehaw: isolated on an island away from like 90% of the Fediverse. Great for moderation but terrible for discoverability and growth.
Lemmy is pretty much the Linux version of Reddit, and as someone who has used Linux before, it is up to the end user to do all the legwork with Linux as opposed to something like Windows which is pretty much plug and play. Lemmy does best when it gives as many options to its users as possible, including preferring local user instance blocking as compared to defederating.
As an example, I like anime. Let's say hypothetically that you don't like anime and that I have an account on your instance. And let's say you hate anime, actually. You want your instance to defederate from ani.social (and any other instance that hosts anime content) because you hate anime, but I don't because I like the memes and discussions from there. How do you resolve this? Now think about what happens with an instance that hosts content that is of a different political ideology than you. Its really the same problem. By calling for defederation you effectively say that your opinions and viewpoints are the only correct ones, and that everyone else on your instance of choice needs to align to your viewpoint. In this case, this is why it would be better for you, the user with the problem with those instances, to locally block that content.
I can understand if a particular instance is so full of spam bots or people that attack the instance with illegal post content, such as posting CSAM anywhere and everywhere, but in those cases it would be up to the instance admins, and a responsible admin will make a post explaining whats going on and in some cases even ask for the community to give input on it.
Instance blocking in Connect for Lemmy also hides all comments from all people in the blocked instance. It doesn’t make them disappear like blocking a user does, but the comment appears with the body text replaced by a button that allows you to optionally unhide the message (like how Discord used to hide messages from blocked users).
I never used that app but I can tell that it absolutely is not how blocking in the Lemmy back-end works, I'm not even sure if it adds insance blocks to the user's account when using the feature or if it just keeps them client-side, since that feature existed long before Lemmy itself had the option. Regardless many people don't use connect, especially desktop users (connect is a mobile app) so for them it won't work the same way.
Defederation should literally be a last resort option IMO. Otherwise you end up like Beehaw: isolated on an island away from like 90% of the Fediverse. Great for moderation but terrible for discoverability and growth.
I would agree but it's important to realize where that line is, and to make sure it's reasonable. Defederating Lemmy.world because of their bad users isn't reasonable (just ban those specific people) defederating hexbear is, because their instance is entirely dedicated to spam and trolling, it's a matter of community health, it's not just because they're annoying or we don't wike them.
As an example, I like anime. Let’s say hypothetically that you don’t like anime and that I have an account on your instance. And let’s say you hate anime, actually. You want your instance to defederate from ani.social (and any other instance that hosts anime content) because you hate anime, but I don’t because I like the memes and discussions from there. How do you resolve this? Now think about what happens with an instance that hosts content that is of a different political ideology than you. Its really the same problem.
I don't think this is really a good comparison, you're framing it like every call for defederation was founded on personal opinion as opposed to said instance's impact on community health i.e. Hexbear's tendency to spam and harass people, or ExplodingHeads and their tendency to attack users of minorities (particularly gender diverse folks). Lots of people will feel these bans infringe on their freedom, yet these are for the good of the community. It's important to remember that most lemmy instances (the ones still in the main network) are not and have not been free speech havens. When these types of guidelines aren't enforced you get communties very similar to 4chan and gab, where the loudest ones rule and push out everyone else, it's the Nazi bar problem. This isn't really comparable to admins blocking instances out of personal preference, which is in a sense a form of malpractice, this is a form of moderation meant to keep spaces sane and normal, otherwise people won't want to be their and it'll become a Nazi bar (or Tankie bar in the case of Hexbear).
Lemmy does best when it gives as many options to its users as possible, including preferring local user instance blocking as compared to defederating.
I think you're thinking of Nostr, Lemmy is very much a power to the site/administration type platform. They're the ones that have the final say, they can literally ban your account from the entire network and prevent you from even logging in (on your Homeserver). The big difference between Lemmy and mainstream centralized sites is that there's more than one of them, so if you do get nuked on one you can go elsewhere, or even start your own. Same thing when it comes to instance defederation. The user options are the servers they can choose to home themselves on, not being exempt from moderation requirements or overriding admin's decisions. If a person doesn't like that aspect of mainstream media, they're going to hate Lemmy just as much. Lemmy isn't a free speech user choice haven, it is social media free from central corporate influence (for the most part, corpos can start their own, whether instances follow them or block them is a different story).
Once instance blocking is enabled here, I fully intend to
I just want to say in case you didn't see my other replies, that probably won't work out as well as you think, because the way instance blocking works it only blocks the communities. User content still comes through.
From Join-Lemmy:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
So regardless of the uninformed people suggesting this, it isn't a solution to this issue, especially the hexbear spam problem, it's not an alternative to defederation, and it never was, fact is Lemmy isn't a free speech platform, people and instances can and will be banned and moderated, people who don't like it just need to either deal with it or go elsewhere.
There are several apps that do that i know jerboa does
I have Jerboa myself, and have no ability to block instances as of yet. It is not enabled in my instance.
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