This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It’s about how the admins informed their users.
A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn’t very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.
Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.
I don’t agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn’t really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).
Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.
Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.
An instance with no defederation policy is going to end up exactly like an instance with no moderation policy. It’s going to become Voat or whatever the latest far-right website is these days.
You might be better served to seek out an instance with a transparent defederation policy, and admins that use it as a tool of last resort, instead of first resort. I was, perhaps mistakenly, under the impression that lemmy.world fit that bill, but maybe not so much.
This isn’t true, I think. You can have an instance that federates with nearly everyone but which still has a higher standard for behavior for its own users. This way, users on such an instance can see all the problematic instances but are not permitted to be problematic themselves. It’s an option.
(Even still, I think you’d find yourself de-federating from someone eventually for spam or other technical reasons if not due to objections over content.)
It’s a problem of scale. If you don’t defederate from a racist-focused instance (for example; hypothetically speaking), then you need to devote resources to moderating those users who make racist comments, as allowed by their instance, but directed at your users. Sure, you could do this, but it’s probably smarter to just defederate and save the resources for other uses. And no moderation team is going to be flawless, so racism will still creep in and be missed by the mod team.
It might be a different story if users are given the tools to block entire instances (like kbin has) but even then I think the ROI would be low.
It’s also likely to get into legal issue. I like sdf but the fact they aren’t defederating from the pedophile instance is really really bad.
Which instance is that?
Lemmy.sdf.org they are a very very very old internet tech focused community that’s been since the late 80s. They’ve been pretty much everywhere on the internet as it’s grown
I think they meant which instance is the pedophile one haha
I know what sdf is, what is the pedophile instance you’re referring to?
Ah my bad. I don’t really feel comfortable saying their name completely openly because they are very aggressive to any and all people who point that out, but they allow loli/shotacon and attract a lot of open pedophiles. Wont say the name outright, but if you go to https://lemmy.world/instances and scroll down to “blocked” and look at the first one, that’s it. Do not go to that instance. I’m serious, the content they host is illegal in many jurisdictions.
Not at all. I mean maybe if you only look at the local feed. But this is the Fediverse, I can still see every other instance.
I don’t need anyone choosing for me what I should and should not see. I can (and do) do that myself, thank you.
I see this a lot, and first off, it’s not true at the instance level, for lemmy-- unless there’s a new option I didn’t see. Second, having to block someone that suggests you should die for your skin color, after reading the comment, is not without harm. There is value in preventing the speech from being seen at all, versus blocking people after the fact.
It’s obviously a generalization, but generally the people who say “just block them” are also people that haven’t lived with systemic bigotry directed at them for their entire lives.
And for the record, I don’t think piracy falls into this category of speech.
I promise it is true. I’ve been doing it for months.
Speak for yourself. Doesn’t harm me.
You haven’t been blocking instances with Lemmy because that option doesn’t yet exist.
What do you mean? Are you saying that because you aren’t affected that no one can be?
Again, yes, I have.
…no. I said the opposite of that.
How do you block a whole instance in Lemmy?
Depends on your client
Ah I think Connect allows it? Is there any other?
Voyager
That’s incorrect. Mods need to moderate the content hosted on their OWN instance. Not stop the people on their instance from having access to outside information.
I think one of us doesn’t understand federation-- and to be clear, it might be me.
This is my understanding:
Every instance is like an email server and every account is like an email address. I’m NAME@lemmy.sdf.org and you’re NAME@lemmy.world. I think where people (and I used to) get confused is with how Communities play into this. Both of our instances have a “cats” community. And we both can see and post to each others “cats” communities. Our community could have a rule that also allows dogs, and your community could prohibit dogs. So, when you post you have to follow the rules of the community that you’re on, and those rules could be influenced by the instance admins themselves. So, kind of like how subreddits operate. So, the instance and the community moderators can control the content that is hosted on their own instance. So, you can have an instance that moderates only what’s happening on their own server, and that’s it.
Now, if lemmy.world decides to de-federate from lemmy.sdf.org, then as far as you can see, the other “cats” community doesn’t exist, I don’t exist, I can’t communicate with you, and you can’t with me. And the only reason you would do this is to make the moderating job easier. If you want, you can disconnect from from every other lemmy instance and then you don’t have to worry about outside people coming in and having to also moderate what they say on your forum, but then it changes from being an open forum to just being a “friend group”.
Also, I think the problem of “reddit supermods” is repeating. Lemmy.ml and lemmy.world are the two largest instances and at this point if they choose to de-federate from a smaller instance, it can basically kill that instance. And it can also be used to control the narrative. There are a few people making choices for many.
You can block users and communities yourself. Go sort by “All” and start blocking everything you don’t want to see again. After a short time your feed will be cleared up.
I thought we were discussing defederation. You cannot block entire instances on lemmy, that I know of.
Blocking a community does not block the users of the instance. The type of people that would naturally gravitate to, for example, a far right instance of lemmy.
I know you can’t block an instance as a user. I understand why you would want to. It would make things easier for us and I think it would be a good feature to add on the user side. Or perhaps an “opt in” to a block list that is kept by your instance.
In my opinion, blocking the individual users and instance communities is good enough for now. If a problematic member of another instance starts causing trouble in a community on your instance, then I believe it’s the job of the moderators to block them if they’re breaking the community rules, and outside of that it’s my own job to block individuals I don’t like.
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I apologize; I don’t know what you mean in relation to what I said. Do you mind elaborating?
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Copyright (not “copywrite”, btw) law is batshit insane, but somehow people believe it to be even worse than it is.
Your browser makes copies of every image you see, but this doesn’t violate copyright law because it’s automatic and necessary for the browser to function. Does that sound familiar?
Also, for like 2 decades the standard action is just a takedown request that threatens legal action if ignored.
And to be clear, the admins had no actionable reason to block the piracy communities. They did it preemptively.
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This is not correct.
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You might want to reconsider the iamverysmart routine since you couldn’t even spell copyright correctly one comment ago, yet I assume you expect me to believe you have some knowledge of the topic.
However, your point is my point. There was no risk of a lawsuit; they’d just get a takedown notice.
Though, now that I scroll up, what does this have to do with whether or not defederation is sometimes warranted? Did I get mixed up, or did you?
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I know reading comprehension isn’t much valued in some political circles, but I didn’t say what you think I said, so I’m not sure you really mean “agreed”.
Some moderation is required because an honest dialog cannot happen if all parties don’t feel safe. This is not the same as “no moderation”, but it’s also not the same as what you pretended I said, which is “heavy moderation”. I don’t understand why you think this discussion in any way translates to a government, but generally speaking, the US government has less ability to “censor” than a non-government entity.
And, as I already alluded to, the result of lax moderation is bigotry and hate, every time. If I had to pick between heavy moderation or voat, and to be clear, I don’t have to make that choice because there is nuance allowed, then I’d pick heavy moderation over a site infested with redhats and the like.