1y ago

Why is defederation an option when Limit/Mute exist?

In short i just jumped into the whole Mastodon blocking drama and am somewhat disappointed to see it as childish as reddit's power mod drama. Accelerated by the fact that a Limit/Mute option exist just fine, i wonder why Block/Defederation is an option at all. It only moves power from the user to admins without anything in return. With just Mute, as far as i can tell, one still wouldn't have to look on certain instances, but could interact/whitelist certain individuals and we'd get rid of the multi account requirement overnight. So why isn't it that way?

Edit: For those annoyed by the same siloing issues, look into ATProto. Bluesky may be a big unknown, but the protocol itself looks a lot more promising in terms of user freedom.

47 comments

because whole instances could suck, and admins need an easy solution.
dont like it? switch instances or setup your own. that is the beauty of the fediverse
- Moderation tools on Lemmy are supposedly seriously lacking. Defederation may sometimes be the only practical option even if it's not ideal.
  
  Even they can't easily delete pictures? Or has that been fixed since that big story?
- Readers: can somebody who sets up a no-block instance let us know when the nazis plan a bombing?
  I kinda want a representative experience on here. If 3% of the world is discussing racist evil stuff, maybe I want to see that evil in 3/100 posts. A dark reminder. An opportunity to inform others of what’s going on in the peabrains.
  I think that’s what I want. (Maybe I’ll register for an instance which hasn’t defederated from anywhere, see if I’m wrong.)
  
  https://defed.xyz/
- Don't you think it's an inherent problem if the general solution is terrible UX?
  
  no, i don't believe blocking whole instances is a problem. i think you're struggling to find a problem where there isnt one. there are thousands of instances over dozens of different platforms that all intercommunicate. this idea that servers cant block other servers is shortsighted, insecure and frankly, brought by someone who apparently doesnt have experience managing servers or large volumes of humans.
Gotta be able to boot Nazis. Otherwise it'll be Nazi bar.
- I always suspect the people who don't want defederation to be a thing kinda want the nazi bar. It's always the lead into the freeze peach bullshit.
  
  I often say, "Free Speech doesn't mean other people are required to provide you with a soap box and megaphone."
  
  Sounds like it. Anti-defederation is the lead to freeze peach bs, which in turn is also the lead to Nazi bars. It's leads all the way down to Naziland!
  
  Right there with you, I've actually found that it very often is the case.
  
  We don't want defed because it's a sledgehammer 'solution' that immediately denies us agency and reeks of Reddit-tier pre-emptive sub banning.
  The Nazi Bar idea is for the most part a boogeyman.
- Dont see how it will become a nazi bar if u can personally delete them from your existance.
Server admins are just people, generously running a server, for you. This costs them time and money to do. If they don't want their server amplifying the content from some other server that they see as problematic, they absolutely should have that option.
- And if I as a user want to join a service that does not feature nazi content at all, I should have that option as well.
  I don't want to have to handle this shit on my own: I want admins and mods to do it for me. If I'm not happy with their work I'll leave for another instance. But if I have to block the Nazis myself I would consider that a huge problem and probably wouldn't use the service at all.
Defederation is an absolutely necessary tool. There are instances out there you don't want any part of, with CSAM etc. But with that said I think defederation should mostly be used for such things. Block lists (containing instances, users, hashtags) that users can subscribe to would be a better way to handle the rest, and instances could recommend and/or curate lists for their users and maybe activate them by default.
Instances defederating from another instance because that second instance hasn't defederated from a third instance is a good way to ruin the future of the Fediverse I think. It's just an immature and destructive behavior leading to fragmentation.
If a user mutes an instance you still have to worry about a poorly moderated instance that federates illegal or harmful content to yours or worry about harassment to other users,etc.
Defederating should not be used nonchalantly but it has its place.
How has the user lost any power? The user is always absolutely free to move to another instance. Hell, the user is absolutely free to run their own instance.
- A better question would be what power does he have left? Either he's dependent on instance administrators to be able to interact, or merely follow other users, or he's dependent on instance administrators to not get blocked before the fun even starts. It's inherently undemocratic.
  
  He has the power to create his own instance with his own rules; he has the power to leave for an instance run by like-minded people.
  And other people have the power to block that instance should it poison their internet experience. :)
  
  I told you what power the user has. Is it not undemocratic to expect instance admins to associate with people or instances that they find repugnant? Seriously, start your own instance. The barrier to entry is lower than you might think, but you may gain some appreciation for the people who run public instances for free.
The reason is the same why ad in public spaces are bad.
„People can just look away!“ I hear you say but all you display is a lack of knowledge about how the human mind works and why advertisement is nearly a trillion dollar business.
Blocking known bad actors (meta) is indeed taking action for a whole community and should not be done without democratic vote. But once done, people who are unhappy can just leave.
- "People can just look away!" is a terrible analogy cause they wouldn't have to look at an ad if it is hidden. Yet at limiting they would still be able to walk into their store and buy something. Right now blocking is removing the ad, the store and all its personal altogether.
  "People who are unhappy can just leave." is the same argument you are trying to impose. To where, i ask you. Nevermind needing to leave your current toots all behind, it's a terrible suggestion and horrible UX.
  
  They absolutely have to look at the ad first, then even introspect enough to understand what it does to them and then have the mental capacity to hide it.
  Its the same reason we have billion dollar corpos in the first place: the amount of people with the capacity to see that its a bad idea never reached critical mass so it never got prevented/stopped.
  Now we start to gain on those companies and some people still try to kumbaya their way to peaceful coexistence with them. There is no coexistence with psychopaths and never will be.
  Looking away is exactly the analogy that fits and you know it.
  Would I like to nuke meta? Absolutely! But I cant so I do the next best thing.
  They can leave to one of the other thousands of fediverse servers.
  I‘m not sure if you‘re oblivious to this by design. Its the same issue with leaving a country or state that imposes laws you dont like. Does it make more sense to vote? Absolutely.
  I‘m not going to school every one person on a server that „ads are bad for you because…“. Thats ridicolous and one major reason I left corpo media. No idea why you are here though. You‘d be very happy on the threads side of federation from what I hear.
  You’re welcome to make your own instance that is totally free for all corpos to exploit and show us all how great that works.
  Good luck.
Defederation is an administrative solution, specifically for when the user-facing tools like muting and blocking aren't enough. It's the solution against instance admins that aren't capable or willing to moderate their users, or that are actively malicious.
I do think there could be some features added to help avoid full defederation. Like if instance admins could set a default list of banned instances, and the users could choose to unban those instances for themselves. Of course defederation could still be necessary sometimes like for illegal content, software bugs, or malicious attacks.
- Or because the other instance's users keep breaking rules. I guess even then there could be an option to ban them from all your comms but still show their comms.
- "Like if instance admins could set a default list of banned instances, and the users could choose to unban those instances for themselves.”
  Which is exactly what a list of limited instances would allow the user to do.
I think fediverse platforms could have the option to call for a vote in defederating.
Meaning, idk, users who have been active for the past X months on the instance get notified about the admins wanting to defederate from some instance, then the users get to check out the instance themselves and vote yes or no to defederate.
To be clear, I am not saying this should be "mandatory", I am saying instance admins could have the option to call for a vote if and when they want to.
So you could decide to join an instance that vows to go the democratic way if you want to. Nothing would bind the admins to always call for a vote except their own word tho. Or you could not care about it at all and join an instance that also doesn't care.
I also would like to get notified whenever the instance I'm in defederates from another instance, and have an easily accessible list of all instances that we have defederated from.
- That easily accessible list exists, at least. For you it's part of lemm.ee/instances
  
  Cool, that's good to know. Thanks!
- That would be nice, but as long as you don't make it mandatory it doesn't resolve bad actors.

47 comments