PrinceHabib72 @ PrinceHabib72 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Ah yes, the two things- acceptable things and CASM. EVERYTHING IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS.

Yes, but I outlined my reasons for wanting no defederation. VLemmy was perfect- refused to defederate, actively moderated- until the issue with image federation spooked him. Also, saying "illegal content" is a bit meaningless on a globally distributed platform. On both instances- feddit.nl and VLemmy- many users outlined very similar rationale to me when the issue of defederation came up, and you and I both know that defederation is not used only for unmoderated instances. Lemmygrad is aggressively moderated and defederated from most instances because the owners find the political views expressed there distasteful, and that's not the only one.

It just introduces so much personal bias into the fediverse, where individuals who don't like Thing A defederates from instances that allow Thing A, cutting their entire instance off from it. Again, yes, you can join other instances, but that quickly gets annoying trying to find another instance that aligns with your Thing A-positive or neutral views. This is what I'm referring to when I say that it will kill the momentum- users getting frustrated and having to make multiple accounts to essentially dodge a completely unjustified ban (assuming they weren't the ones doing the Bad Thing that caused the defederation) will lead to burnout and lost user retention.

As I also said, there will certainly be an impulse to say "good riddance, we don't need them anyway", but I think it'll lead to more problems. The fediverse has existed as a small pocket of internet for a while. However, things don't shrink as easily as they grow. If lemmy continues to get time and money and resources poured into its development for an ever-shrinking userbase, it won't just go back to how it was. Growth is hard to undo.

I never said I didn't understand. I'm pointing out a problem that can, and I believe, will, lead to issues with user retention. If one is punished for the bad actions of someone on their instance that they have no control over, it will lead to frustration. I know this because it has happened to me twice now- once with vlemmy disappearing due to someone posting something bad that spooked the admin, and now feddit.nl because someone posted something bad that spooked these admins. I'm not saying it's not understandable, I'm merely saying that a problem exists.

I do understand. I'm expressing a worry that things like this will lead to trouble for the fediverse's user retention. Nowhere did I say that I didn't understand the reasoning. It's not a requirement to have a solution at hand when pointing out a problem. An instance as large as lemmy.world defederating from an instance as large as feddit.nl is a problem. Is the solution giving moderators better tools? Stopping the automatic proliferation of images? Removing the image hosting entirely to rely on external hosts? Or is this an insurmountable problem with no solution? The specific answer, or even existence of an answer, does not determine whether the problem itself exists.

If defederation worked more like a shadowban, I would agree with you. .world defederating with feddit.nl could result in no one from .world seeing any content posted by anyone from .nl, but .nl can still see the content from .world. It's unfortunate that .nl couldn't participate anymore, but it's better than that community ceasing to exist.

Defederations as they exist now are like being in a restaurant. There are two employees, one makes the food, the other makes the drinks. It starts out with being able to order either, or both, right from the comfort of your table. However, the owner of the restaurant decides that he just doesn't care much for drinks, and kicks out the drink-maker. The drink-maker opens a new store across the street, but he does not serve food, only drinks, and the restaurant you started at doesn't serve drinks, only food. Yes, technically, you are still free to go across the street to get some drinks, or stay here for some food, but boy, wouldn't it be nicer if that owner never decided he didn't like drinks? Sure, not EVERYONE in the restaurant cares, but a pretty significant amount of them probably would. They might just go down the street to McReddits. Sure, the food there is pretty bad, but at least they can get both food and drinks without having to go across the street.

Each user can block other users. Moderators can block users. It can be handled the same way that other sites (yes, like reddit) do it. I'm also not opposed to defederation when it is essentially a single-user ban- for example, if there is an instance with no communities, no signup requirement, and has nothing but malicious bots- that's banning a bot farm, not "defederation" as it's commonly understood. But with something like this- where feddit.nl is actually a rather large instance- so many people are essentially being punished for absolutely no fault of their own.

Stuff like this is going to kill the momentum of the fediverse. I'm a reddit refugee, my main account started on vlemmy.net (because it had a policy to not defederate from anything), and when that went poof, I moved to feddit.nl (because it has a policy to not defederate from anything). I believe it is MY prerogative, and no one else's, to decide what I am or am not allowed to see. I curate my own feed by blocking or subscribing to instances I don't or do want to see, respectively.

Regardless of any of this, however, I am now unable to view any content on .world without this account, due to actions entirely outside of my control. Since hosting my own instance is out of the question for me, my options are: find a third instance with a no-defederation policy that hasn't been defederated itself from major instances, have multiple accounts and browse each instance individually, stop browsing altogether, or go back to reddit. As distasteful as the last option is, it's tempting. I know the impulse will be to tell me "good riddance", but I am posting this because I know there are others like me that are tired of instance hopping and trying to find somewhere that doesn't try to police our browsing and also isn't defederated from major instances.

For the record, I don't want a no-defederation instance because I want to browse Nazi or pedo instances. I want a no-defederation instance because I have a principled objection to others telling me what I can or cannot view.