See longer post (not by me) there, if all is true then they should fall under both the spam and mass lemm.ee rule breaking defederation rules, both bigotry and abusive language, though not always in combination.
Also the covenant thing Mastodon has would probably be a good idea.
I would ask lemm.ee users to please use the report function whenever you see our rules being broken in any of our communities! A large volume of rule breaking users from a single instance would certainly push me to defederate that instance, and reports would be the main signal for me to gauge that.
I don’t have the capacity to go out and vet content on other instances in general (as all admins, I am running lemm.ee as a volunteer out of my free time). I want to be upfront: I am not providing a curated service in terms of who we federate with. This is why I wrote todays post about administration and federation on lemm.ee. So please bear in mind that as a user on lemm.ee, you are expected to share some responsibility for keeping our communities clean, by always downvoting low quality content and reporting rule violations. In addition to downvoting and reporting, I personally also am a huge fan of people who have the energy to respond to bigots, explaining why they’re wrong (in civil terms) - even if there’s 0.001% chance of getting through to the particular author of a horrible comment, there is still a chance that a rebuttal in the response will be seen by someone else who will be affected in a positive direction.
To be clear, I am not somebody that believes that all ideas should get a platform without exception. Quite the opposite, I am super happy to shut down hateful content. It’s just a matter of putting my energy where I think it is most useful. For example, I would rather spend a week worth of free time working on better moderation tools or better self-service tools for users to curate their own feed, than spend the same time going through external instances in order to figure out how many racists they have and how well are they moderating them. That is why I have made the decision (for now) to focus most of my moderation efforts on things that happen within lemm.ee, and not externally.
I also want to say that I do not want to act hastily based on little information. I’m sure this will frustrate some of our users (and I’m very sorry about that), but I have not had time to research the Exploding Heads situation, and I don’t want to effectively create a new rift in the federated network, without first being absolutely sure that such an action is really necessary to protect lemm.ee users.
By the way, regarding this the_donald situation on sh.itjust.works, the OP of the linked post said this:
Since The_Donald was removed, I did not find more racist content on the mentioned servers. That is part their tactics.
This seems like a great outcome to me - the_donald was removed and there is no more racist content. I would not think this is a good example of a reason to defederate another instance. I understand that part of the complaint is that the admin of sh.itjust.works took too long to respond to the situation, and as a user I can see why this would be frustrating, but as an admin, I can tell you that I can also see why he wanted to see evidence before acting. In the end, I really like that he removed the community as soon as he saw evidence of it being awful.
Just to leave you with my main point, I do not want to federate with instances which aim to hurt our communities or users, but I need concrete and specific evidence of this before I take drastic action. So please report rule violations, and if I see that banning violators does not work, then defederation will certainly be the next move.
I do not want to federate with instances which aim to hurt our communities or users, but I need concrete and specific evidence of this before I take drastic action.
Acting based on evidence is always good and proper. As to relying on reports for that I’m sceptical, though, or better put things aren’t quite there yet: A toxic community might be raiding some instance somewhere, that instance’s users are reporting like crazy, and you see none of it, consequently they could focus on one instance after the other, then change domains, rinse and repeat. Or at least that’s how I think it works (excuse my ignorance), there’s no global space where admins could see all reports. Would you even see a report from a lemm.ee user made in a community of another instance?
It might be a good idea to have more options in the report dialog, not just because of this, regarding whom to actually report the post to, as well as a drop-down for reasons – a post on beehaw that I report might violate beehaw “be nice” rules, but it might or might not also violate lemm.ee rules so I may or may not want to report it here, too.
It might also make sense to be able to report not just to mods/admins but specific communities who can then collate evidence and present it to admins (essentially /r/shitXXXsay but better), collating will be important because the harassment can be in the overall interaction pattern of a community, not just individual posts.
All in all though, to get my head out of the clouds and back into the here and now: Please don’t be too principled as long as the tools and community to back up those principles aren’t in place. That is, err on the side of the banhammer if you see a preponderance of evidence because if you don’t those people are going to strategise around your principles, rules of evidence etc. to do their thing. We’re already seeing that with the “block users who want us gone so they can’t report us” type of tactic.
Actually that looks like quite a misfeature: Someone blocking me shouldn’t preclude me from seeing their content. Another thing reddit got wrong.
Please don’t be too principled as long as the tools and community to back up those principles aren’t in place.
I very much agree with this, @[email protected] - your stance above is, I think, exactly as a stated policy should be, but please do remember that plans and reality must meet somewhere along the way. If you overthink things or cleave too religiously to the rules you’ve set yourself, you risk taking too long to act, and it’s exactly this delay between problem and reaction that bad actors exploit.
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, basically. Lemm.ee is a great instance, and we’d all, I think, love to see it stay that way 🙂
If I reported hate speech advocates on this instance (I am writing from kbin) will my report go to you or to ernest ?
Almost certainly to ernest. Anything you see or interact with while the kbin.social URL remains in your browser bar is coming from kbin.social. It may be content that originated elsewhere, but you’re always engaging with a local copy. So, that report button is on k-soc, and it reports to the k-soc admin.
I don’t even know if kbin has a way of knowing who the remote admins even are.
Ah, I was wondering where the reports go. Mastodon has an option to forward the report to the remote server admins too, maybe kbin/Lemmy will get something like that eventually.
That would be a nice feature, yeah
Sounds reasonable, as always.
I just wanted to say, the high degree of federation was a big reason for me to join lemm.ee. I generally like to decide for myself what content I want to see or engage with (which does not mean I endorse it), and am grateful this instance allows me that.
However, like OP, I also cross-posted the post to other communities since there are limits to tolerance. Some folks just love to push the limits, using “free speech” to push agendas which I cannot condone.
For the time being, I’m happy the issue received attention and hope defederation will be used carefully as a measure of last resort.
as long as defederation of any instance is announced, folks can just leave to a completely federated one
I wish us users had the ability to block entire instances. I don’t buy the argument that people are “too sensitive,” nor do I buy the argument that defederation from instances that platform things like Nazis (exploding-heads, shi.itjust.works) and/or bestiality/pedophilia (burggit) is a bad thing. If we want a platform for all, then there are certain worldviews that are just not compatible with that.
Do we really want another reddit? Reddit sucked. Bad.
I wish us users had the ability to block entire instances.
This has come up several times and is something I am interested in as well. It’s a feature that I would be interested in tackling at some point.
Lemmy has a github, right? Would it be helpful to submit a request for this feature?
There is an issue already, feel free to add your thoughts or just thumbs up here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2397
Will do, thanks 👍
When did sh.itjust.works platform Nazis?
They initially allowed the_donald, and they only removed the community after receiving significant backlash from other instances
I think they may also not heavily vet registrations, but perhaps you could correct me if I’m wrong about this
One dude makes a community doesn’t mean the instance platforms Nazis. Let’s not spread lies now. Just gonna add the discussion link here
They platformed the community, so it is not lying to say they supported Nazis since that is literally what they did
i mean if it was one guy saying ‘nazis’ literally is lying
which is besides the point, because saying they platformed nazis because the single-user, non-issue community that no one even noticed except for the person that made a post calling attention to it, on an instance that allows anyone to create a community, was deleted after a day is so ridiculously misrepresentative of reality that its practically a lie anyway
Big respect for lol.lamp.wtf and their reasoning.
What’s the big deal? This sort of thing happens frequently. That’s why you have moderation and rules.
Lemmy is a confederation of (ideally) self-moderating instances, individual instances can’t be expected to take up moderation load that should be covered by other instances – like the home instance of notorious brigaders like /r/the_donald folk.
Or, differently put: See this post by our god emperor sunaurus.
What about the moderators of the forums themselves? I would think that is the first line of defense. Instance moderators then step in if necessary, but that will only affect what happens at that instance?
Front lines are only as strong as the artillery backing them up.
This should be a safe place where we can all discuss our belief. Hateful disagreement must not be allowed.
undefined> safe
That’s a slippery slope. I say anything goes as long as it’s on topic and does not break the rules of the instance or specific forum.
Why does the top part look a crazy wall of text
Because lemmy turned the contents of the link into a crazy wall of text.
Exploding heads? Like the old GamePro reviews?
I still mandate that people are far too sensitive - stop with the victim mentality or go join an echo chamber like beehaw (or go back to reddit).
“Stop your whining” - Someone who is whining.
lol bunches of folks here can’t handle dissent
You mandate it, do you?
We have no choice but to bend to the views of our mandated lord emperor
I think users being able block instances will help ease the pressure and calls for defed.
you’re probably right. time will tell, I suppose.
