Exploding-heads.com is another instance on Lemmy where alt-right MAGA types tend to reside. Some people on this server want us to defederate from them immediately, some people want to save defederation as a last resort. They have 104 active users (more stats below).
It seems that exploding-heads has also experienced a recent botswarm invasion. This is obviously another point in favor of defederating them, assuming you are worried about botswarms, which is currently being discussed here.
My advice to you all is please try to discuss this in a civil manner, we need not allow them to create divisive conflict inside our communities. No matter how the vote turns out, you’re not going to be able to defederate from your fellow sh.itheads so be nice.
I’ve linked many of the previous discussions below so people who are out of the loop can get a general sense of the situation.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714 https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126 https://sh.itjust.works/post/410325
Lemmy.world just recently defederated them.
https://lemmy.world/post/747912
https://lemmy.world/post/577526
Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.
Ensuring diversity of servers is beneficial to the platform as a whole, but it is also not our responsibility to bear that burden.
TLDR, just wrap up any last points in this thread before we open the vote tomorrow. Please be civil.
EDIT: To clarify, this isn’t the official vote, this is the final discussion. The vote thread will be posted tomorrow and you will only be allowed to make a single comment saying Aye or Nay.
EDIT2: Vote thread is up, this thread is now locked. Very lively discussion thread sh.itheads. Please try to be more respectful next time.
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That’s a big yikes. I’m usually one of those “but what about the randos that unknowingly signed up that will end up in an echo chamber of hate” but if that’s on their main community then there’s not much of a chance or randos joining without knowing their MO.
I also think with federation it’s different than with something like a small local subreddit. On the sub for my (small, racist, generally regressive) country, I reveled in seeing smug assholes get voted down to hell for saying something that suggested that not only were they justified in saying something bigoted, but that they were above some “trend” of “pretending” that “things were not how they really were”.
I think that kind of reinforcement also helped form an identity for that community, that we were all together in fighting bad ideas.
I don’t know how that applies to federated communities, I’m even commenting from another community so I don’t know how welcome my feedback would be here. But that’s my $.02
Insights and thoughts from people on other instances is explicitly welcomed. Members of this instance will be doing the final vote, but the discussion is very much open to all.