What is Defederation?
Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and users from our instance will no longer be able to see anything (communities, posts or comments) coming from it, and their users won’t be able to see anything coming from ours.
What will get an Instance Defederated?
Our goal is to avoid defederation, but we will do so under the following circumstances:
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The instance spreads overwhelming amounts of drama, hate or negativity.
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The instance is mostly made up bots, and or promotes spam.
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The instance allows the harassment or doxxing of others.
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The instance knowingly hosts CSAM or other illegal content.
Has FMHY Defederated Instances?
Only two, both for breaking the 1st rule above:
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exploding-heads
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lemmygrad
Things to Note:
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There are circumstances where we may block a specific community within an instance, rather than blocking the entire instance itself, but this is very uncommon.
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Remember that if there’s a community you don’t like, you can block it entirely in settings.
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Keep in mind that our goal is to keep this community safe, so if you see something that breaks our rules please don’t hesitate to report it.
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If its something urgent, you can always contact us easily via Divolt 💬. Its connected to our discord, so there are mods online 24/7.
I would have preferred to have a no-defederation policy (except for maybe threads due to EEE fears), but as long as it is not swung around constantly, I am okay with it.
The two that are blocked are political circlejerks that I personally dislike anyways. I am hopeful there is not more.
We want to use defederation as a last resort and hopefully when users are able to block instances themselves we’ll be able to use it even less frequently. I dislike defederation personally as well, and like Nbats stated here, if the community’s opinion of those two instances change and the instances themselves make their communities safer we’ll refed.
Good. Hell, once the user-instance blocking thing comes out, give people a list and instructions to block those political instances, porn ones, etc. etc. I always like it to be on the user level, rather than some over-arching force telling me what I can and can’t view. Freedom to make the decision for yourself should be a large priority.
There is probably some need for a default block list that the admin can set though… Otherwise new users would probably not have a really good time.
Yeah instances that post illegal content and bot instances would probably be on a default blocklist.
If Lemmy supported user instance blocking I would agree with you, but until then this is the best option available.
Does EEE mean embrace, extend, and extinguish?
Yes.
Just curious, how could Meta EEE in the case of the fediverse/ lemmy? As in, technically how does them joining as an instance affect others whether they’re blocked or not?
And what advantages would there be to preemptively devederating instead of waiting or leaving it to users?
I’m kind of hoping Threads can lend credibility/ momentum to the fediverse so if I’m missing something about how they could negatively impact it I’m earnestly interested.
Centralization. Meta will develop the fediverse protocol up with their own specific enhancements, locking most of us onto their version of the platform due to convenience given enough time. (Think RCS as an example, it’s technically an open standard but Google has effective control of it thanks to special features)
You might say “Well, if they are a better platform, so what, why not go there”, but the problem is that they can cut off the rest of the fediverse as “outdated” essentially privatizing everybody.