I just had my first experience blocking an instance, and it made my realize now nice the lemmy content curation experience is vs the centralized model.
Recently I started noticing a lot of posts from that I just found annoying. There was nothing inherently wrong with them, they just came from a culture I don’t understand and so I found them cringey. Since they all came from one community, realized most of them come from the same instance. I just added that instance to my blocklist and the problem is solved!
Now think about in the centralized model. I would be forced to either just accept that these posts are in my timeline, or block each community and user individually. The instance gave me an easy way to manage my content.
I also appreciate that instances can manage the blocking for their users. So the most horrible stuff I don’t even see. But it also preserves free speech, as those users who want to say horrible things can do so in their own instance, and most people will just block it.
Anyway, just impressed again by the fediverse!
Unfortunately it’s still a very weak type of blocking, for you on Lemmy.ca unless you are using an app like Sync or Connect. It’s basically a “community mute”, equivalent to unsubscribing from all the communities there individually, but unlike user blocking, the users from that instance will still show up in other communities, they can still send you replies, which will trigger Notifications, and therefore they can harass you by continually sending you replies for WEEKS and WEEKS at a time (this actually happened to me twice, once with hexbear.net and another time with lemmygrad.ml).
Anyway, it’s better than nothing!
You may be interested to read some of the ways that PieFed is advancing democratization of moderation.
they can harass you by continually sending you replies for WEEKS and WEEKS at a time (this actually happened to me twice, once with hexbear.net and another time with lemmygrad.ml).
Honestly you really shouldn’t be on an instance that federate with those places to start with.
You may be interested to read some of the ways that PieFed is advancing democratization of moderation.
Personally I’m not a fan of the way PieFed uses upvotes and downvotes to basically do statistics on users in order to profile “bad actors”. That feels like karma from Reddit all over again.
There can be many legitimate reasons why a user might downvote a lot, and a user being downvoted a lot is not necessarily problematic. They may just not be following the “hive mind”, and honestly we could use more of those users.
After kbin.social went defunct the smaller instances I kept moving to (StarTrek.website and discuss.online) had not defederated from those two instances yet at that time. They do now, but a year ago it wasn’t as prevalent a choice to protect people from such things happening to their users. The Lemmy community has matured a bit, the word has gotten out, a case built to do so, and admins became receptive to what they had once spurned - e.g. I petitioned discuss.online to defederate hexbear.net after it was revealed that the admins there were caught lying to admins of other instances. But it took a lot of effort and time to get to this point, and still today most instances remain federated with lemmy.ml, which is where a bunch of Hexbear alts (e.g. Cowbee) decided to continue their trolling efforts after so many other places defederated from Hexbear itself.
I hear what you are saying about PieFed, especially from just what is mentioned on that page regarding tools that community mods would have access to, but in practice what I’m seeing so far really is tons better. For one thing, mods on Lemmy right now have to choose between the binary options of removing content vs. allowing it to remain (similarly at the instance level it can either defederate from another instance vs. not do so), whereas PieFed offers additional options that will allow the content to remain and then place the choice of what to do into the hands of the end users. Some users may e.g. want to avoid controversial content, and so like a spam filter automatically collapse content with a certain ratio of downvotes to upvotes - which preserves the ability to see it, but putting it one step away exactly like a spoiler feature for the post. Or maybe the user will instead choose to have the content removed altogether, with the auto-hide feature? Some of my own content would have gotten removed this way, and I definitely see how things can get misunderstood by downvoters, but at the end of the day, it still gives choices to the user that otherwise would have rested solely in the hands of a moderator. Personally I have both the auto-collapse and especially auto-hide options turned off, but it’s worth noting that they are there if people want them.
There are also other niceties such as keyword filtering - so e.g. if the user wants to remove all posts with the keyword “Musk”, then they could. Perhaps they shouldn’t, but they can, if they wanted.
I find that user labelling really is different though, than any of the filtering options above. Examples include new users with accounts newer than let’s say a couple of weeks, a user who almost exclusively posts but never comments (likely an unregistered bot?), someone who downvotes 20x more often than upvotes, or receives 50x more downvotes than upvotes - again, their comments aren’t removed (currently I am not aware of a method to even make that happen), just labelled with an icon next to their name. These icons can help someone decide whether or not to respond, or how much detail to put into it if so. Essentially these are just measures of a user’s “reputation”, so this is the numeric version of the type of info that people use anyway? But at each moment the choice lies with the user to either pay attention to or ignore those icons. And yeah the precise formulas to determine these icons are constantly tweaked to improve them, so that’s a thing, surely.
Ultimately though, whether the end-user makes proper usage of the tools given to them or not, either way, I think it’s awesome that these tools are given to the regular users, rather than constraining them to work solely when in the hands of a mod. That’s “democracy”! I guess whether democracy itself is a good thing or not is a whole other discussion altogether…🤣
Edit: also the tools are definitely in their infancy - e.g. to avoid karma farming, communities should be able to use community-specific metrics so that actions taken outside of a community do not necessarily affect filtering options inside of one. Which iirc is coming or at least people are aware of this issue. PieFed itself is still mostly in the works:-).
I don’t think there’s anything democratic about publicly singling out some users as pariahs. If a user is disruptive, just get rid of them. If they’re not, leave them be. If the jury’s still out on this one, well, don’t bias the jury against them.
I think you’ve just (perhaps independently) discovered the (in my mind very important) idea that moderation is different from censorship. I think the fediverse structure implements that distinction a lot better than most other platforms nowadays do.
Good to hear!
Never had a reason to block an instance, here or in mastodon.
I blocked lemmynsfw so that I don’t see straight up porn in my feed but can still see posts labeled nsfw from other instances because a lot of posts that get labeled nsfw are just things like explicit text or the OP labeled it nsfw because it’s not exactly nsfw but also not completely regular either.
You can avoid seeing posts from lemmynsfw by just… not subscribing to any communities on lemmynsfw.
From what I understand the default behavior of NSFW communities is that remote posts are effectively treated as hidden and don’t show up unless you’re subscribed or directly access the community. However, Lemmynsfw explicitly altered this behavior such that their posts go into main feeds and were treated as normal (though marked as nsfw).
I was never subscribed to any lemmynsfw community but would routinely see their posts scrolling through top day, so I blocked the instance and now I don’t. Very useful feature.
It used to appear in the “all” feed like every fourth post a while back. Dunno if it still does.
That is not the point, the point is that you can. You can curate your feed yourself instead of relying solely on an algorithm or a curation team
On mastodon I follow a lot of hashtags and so I will mute foreign language accounts so they don’t show up in my home feed. Thankfully I’ve never had to block an entire instance but I chalk that up to troublesome instances already being defederated from my instance
I agree. It also works the other way in terms of censorship.
My original account was on an instance that once censored one of my comments. I don’t remember if they deleted my comment or banned me from the community.
On reddit, I had come to just accept that as a fact of life and every few years I would delete my old account and register a new one.
On Lemmy, I just switched to a different instance which is much more tolerant of free speech and I haven’t had issues since.
The irony is, my comments on the old instance can still be deleted, but only for users from that instance.
I don’t know the full details, but Lemmy definitely has the more 2000-2010 type of culture that allows people to speak their mind freely.
What if OP just blocked feddit.org because they don’t speak German ?
They have that luxury.
The least obvious Hexbear’s user alt:
Actually……
If I were a true hexbear user, I’d be glad to be defederated from lemmy.world. But I’m not.
I think that defederation is a bad idea. That’s why I joined an instance with a relatively hands-off approach to moderation.
You see, I’m an anarchist. I trust in the power of people to self-organize, self-regulate, and self-police. I am philosophically opposed to whole instances making the call to defederate from another no matter how Nazi or capitalist that instance is.
I trust in the power of people to self-organize, self-regulate, and self-police.
Isn’t someone deciding they don’t like an instance’s content and blocking it themselves exactly what you’re describing?
The irony right?
This is what I love about the fediverse. It is the closest to actual anarchist communities I’ve seen and it works great.
Good point! You’re right. My meme is more to poke fun at the victory lap the user decided to take here to try get a high five for putting on blinders.
A well-executed rebuttal.
What if I told you anyone can run their own server and consequently have the freedom to federate with who they wish?
The value of the Fediverse isn’t just freedom of speech. It’s freedom of association.
I’m a big fan of that option. Did you think I’d be against it? 🤔
Well, you seem to be upset that people are able to block entire instances. That’s just a weird stance for an anarchist to have.
Yeah because it shuts out everyone on that instance.
I’m happy this post isn’t from an instance admin, deciding that their users aren’t allowed to see ANYTHING that originated on an instance that they deem unsavory. I’m just disappointed in OP thinking that shutting all people out from a particular instance regardless of their actions is an act worthy of a victory lap, talking about how great the fediverse is for ignoring people.
Also: Just because I am an anarchist doesn’t mean I have to march in lockstep with what you expect an anarchist to do and say. This is the very crux of my point: that opinions vary wildly and shutting out your ability to even see those opinions is a negative thing for society as a whole.
On the Fediverse, no admin decides anything a user does. If you don’t like your server, you can just walk over to another one. Most software even makes account migration between servers super easy.
Or if you don’t trust admins at all—and I don’t—you can run your own server and federate with who you please.
This is not Reddit. Admins don’t hold ultimate power of what does or does not get seen. However, you do—and you can mute, block, or defederate as you see fit.
because it shuts out everyone on that instance.
But it doesn’t. Unless they’ve changed the functionality in the last 3 major revisions or so, a user blocking an instance blocks all posts from that instance. Not the users or their comments on other posts.
It’s an easier way than blocking each community from that instance individually.
I generally prefer to federate with as many communities as possible, but federating with fascists is a terrible idea. You’re just making people in your community vulnerable to harassment.
People are self organizing onto these instances, and if they don’t like their current one it’s not hard to move. Most people won’t move to one that allows nazis in.
I see nothing wrong with it. But let’s not pretend that it is some badge of honor. We should be ashamed/disappointed that we were forced to censor our feeds rather than finding some better solution to the disgusting Nazi toxicity encroaching on our minds.
I’ve heard the Nazi bar analogy a lot and I can see why people say it. But I have made so much more progress with conservatives when I actually talk to them than when I blindly shut them out. I guess it’s just the tendency of perpetually online anonymous people to get ugly beyond what they would be brazen enough to do without anonymity.
Fascist ideas don’t spread because they make good points. They spread because they get repeated so much. People who don’t know any better believe it because they’ve heard it so many times, or from someone they trust. Federating with fascists gives them more people to spread their ideas to.
Talking to conservatives can definitely help, but it really depends on the context. Just having people who they disagree with in their lives can can be helpful. If you’re someone they trust you might get them to work through some things. Or if you know a topic really well and know what talking points they’re likely to bring up. But it’s nearly impossible to get though to people who already hate you.
Everyone is at a different place with what they want to handle. Some people just want a small friendly community where they have a chance to relax. Others want a more open communities that only keep out the worst. And some are okay with putting up with harassment to reach more people. But generally we shouldn’t force others to put up with that harassment along with us.
You see, I’m an anarchist. I trust in the power of people to self-organize, self-regulate, and self-police. I am philosophically opposed to whole instances making the call to defederate from another no matter how Nazi or capitalist that instance is.
That’s great, but it’s not for everyone. What you’re saying here is that when bigots appear, every member of the minorities they target needs to individually block the troll, which they can only do after they’ve been exposed to the bigotry, and which doesn’t help them at all in the future when the troll moves to a new throw away account.
Counter intuitively, what you’re asking for is exactly how you create spaces that actively discourage diversity.
Why not jut have shared block lists that anyone can apsly at their will?
That’s interesting, I assumed so because:
- It’s known, that some Hexbear users create alt accounts on other Lemmy instances, because they’re mostly defederated to “spread their message”
- Your account is pretty new
- Because you’re against the defederation, I assumed that it’s because you have came from an instance that gets defederated often
But seems like your opinion actually something consistent and not trolling, in that case I respect your opinion, even if I personally don’t agree with your philosophy I can understand it. It’s good that in the Fediverse you can choose an instance that aligns with your philosophy (Like lemm.ee) and I can choose the one that aligns with mine.
Here’s a big hug for you, intellectually honest fediverse user. 😊
No one is entitled to attention, and sometimes people need to take a breather for their own mental health.
So block the communities instead of the ENTIRE INSTANCE.
Smug libs keep shutting out their own neighbors without realizing the disastrous effects of siloing large swaths pf vulnerable people from reaching ANYONE. Tribalism has had such a terrible effect on the world yet I see smug otherwise very intelligent people climbing over one another to engage in it.
IMO, the only way to stop ignorance and hate is to actually know people from MANY walks of life and face those differences head on. If you dismiss every last one of them wholesale at the slightest sign of differences, you are intellectually weak and deserve the dystopian future we are all being herded and astroturfed into.
That’s the same talking points the alt-right uses and we don’t tolerate it.
And I’ve been on the Internet long enough to watch so-called “progressive” spaces get hijacked by the right wing under the guise of “free speech”.
When a culture grows toxic, it’s simply toxic no matter their talking points.
So the fact people have the power to block entire instances at their discretion, this is a good thing.
You are not entitled to my attention, nor am I entitled to yours.
I do not think it’s a good idea to isolate people in cults in their own echo chambers… although my faith in humanity and basic decency has seen better days, I still believe good examples matter.
A user blocking an instance does not block the users from that instance from interacting with the user who blocked.
It’s not well explained, but my understanding is that an instance block just prevents communities from that instance, and posts made by users on thay instance, from showing for the user that blocked the instance. Comments from users of that instance still show for the blocking user, and the block is one way anyway.
Cults aren’t isolated by others. They self-isolate.
Freedom of speech is an “alt-right” talking point?!?!?!
Are you listening to yourself?
To illustrate my point: I heard Elon is against the obvious CIA front organization USAID so I 100% guarantee you’re now pro CIA.
Rachel Maddow: if you castrate yourself the alt-right will crumble overnight.
You: Where’s the knife?🤣
You have freedom of speech. I also have the freedom to walk away from your speech and listen to someone else.
And that is a wonderful thing. Use the town square analogy and you’ll see that I’m not against THAT. I’m against victory laps advertising the blinders over a whole instance.
People need to know this feature exists and that it’s a good thing.
Freedom of speech is an “alt-right” talking point?!?!?!
They’ve literally been banging the freeze-peach button constantly. Every single time there’s consequences for their actions for a decade or two now. Where have you been?
I hear they drink a lot of water too. I think we should give up water to own the nazi’s.
It’s not my concern if you decide to continue self-sabotaging. That’s on you. You’re definitely not helping yourself and not fostering any actual discussion that’s for sure. You must be an Anarchist ironically. Just out for chaos. And not for Mutual Aid and understanding.
This! I hate that LW defederates from Hex, and Beehaw and any others. LW needs to update the Lemmy version and federate with all.
Open debate is critical for ethics and intelligence. I wish we were much more capable of open minded debate here. I would totally play the role of high-Mach devils-advocate to get people talking about controversial and high tension subjects while being abstracted and attempting not to offend as best I can while playing the role of the bad guy. I’m afraid users here are totally incapable of this level of engagement depth. The concept of a safe place to take such a controversial position of true free speech seems beyond the capability of most here. Like a transgender person should have the opportunity to debate their politization issues from both sides. Or like, I hate what has happened in Gaza, but I also hate a culture that coexists with honor killing without absolutely reforming purging the practice with distain. I should be able to argue as a devils advocate from many angles even when I find them repugnant. I am very good at this kind of debating. I have my own issues with my life situation where I would need people to understand the scope of such a community and participating users. It is a difficult balance to argue hated positions and others understand that those positions and ideas are not your own. When such debates are had, it leads to a much deeper understanding of issues within a community as a whole.
The high school I went to was in a very poor all black community and was designed to uplift the best and brightest of that community while drawing in similar students from the surrounding region to make up around 20% of students. There were some very racist views and tensions at times mostly from black students towards white. The Wednesday seminar/debate classes from start of the day until lunch were the ultimate solution. We debated politics, religion, racism, rape, authoritarianism, communism, anarchism, and a bunch of other stuff. It got super heated at times. When no one wanted to take the negative interlocutor perspective, the teacher would try but I quickly learned I saw the situation more clearly than them and was good at being the bad guy (or the good guy). By arguing the opposing perspective it reveals much about what one believes and how to argue it effectively.
I have an entire framework for such a community saved in rough drafted notes on my phone that I made weeks ago but I don’t think Lemmy is capable of this in practice.
Folks like you and the hundred other people also “just asking questions” or playing devils advocate" and expecting trans people to engage in a debate as to whether or not we actually deserve equal rights is exactly why this shit never works.
It’s interesting to you because it’s purely intellectual. To the person having to endlessly argue that they do in fact deserve equal rights, it’s a shit fucking experience that we actively seek to disengage from when possible, because it’s all around us, all the time.
I thought about you, moss and sunshine as who I would reach out to before starting a community, if I were to do so. I have no intentions of hurting anyone ever. I understand better than you might think. I grew up a Jehovah's Witness which is quite the outcast way to live. I only ever had a few friends and my closest literally traumatized me by deciding we weren't friends any more one day without a reason or care. Now I'm atheist and stuck living with JW parents and have a sister that is determined to see me homeless and dead. I had a shit social network turned to none. I've never celebrated a holiday or a birthday. I'm always in this world within a world. I can never be myself. I can't have a conversation IRL about any of my interests or who I am without getting preached at despite the fact I know the bullshit far better than the people preaching it. I only get what I need to survive most of the time. Despite spending all of my time in bed, I'm constantly berated like I am just fine when any of my needs are inconvenient. I'm mentally soup after doing anything and I tend to get so little done each day that it is hard to tackle much in the way of projects any more. I'm worn down to the bone. If you knew the slightest about my love life and history OMG is has been my hurricane against a cult like religious hailstorm. I adored my highschool gf, the forbidden outside of faith "worldly" love. Like I moved 2k miles back across the country for her. She was my key to escape the mental cult like prison. There were many more, and stories... I have always had to be closeted about love and interests despite being cis just because I was the wrong kind of cis and even when I was right I was fucking them which was wrong.
Anyways, what I would have looked for in reaching out is where to create safe boundaries because there are so many diverse people here. Maybe it is post tags, maybe it is a ban on certain topics and subjects.
I need people to speak up for me IRL when it comes to some things like disability or to be understanding here because I may not have slept much at all in several days at times and it can be difficult to know how I am doing under that circumstance. I will gladly speak up for you or anyone else and have tried to when I see the chance. I won’t be melodramatic, but I will make a dominant argument.
In my personal style, if I play devil’s advocate, I enjoy taking the plausible argument that fits the flawed narrative as I see it. Then I take that narrative to the extreme of a systems thinking approach and show where it really leads. I want to make the people who think I am supporting their disposition repulsed enough to second guess themselves not by arguing against them, but by taking their hand and then refusing to let go of their dogma until they are releasing the gas valves in the concentration camp and hate themselves for it within that metal exercise.
If we’re going to talk about abortion, then the subject is your own mother with a terminal fetus and you are given the choice of killing your mom or the unborn child and I will make that story vivid and personal.
There are many little details about transgender stuff I would like to explore more in depth without polarity in a safe space. Like where should we completely eliminate gender dichotomy. I think cycling as a sport should be integrated completely because there are niches for every body type. Most sports probably should be integrated. The whole restrooms thing would have bothered me before cycling and atheism because I was insecure. Now I wear my tightest undies in public daily so IDGAF in the slightest.
Also BTW, I say a lot about being very liberal as a mod and trying to get others to do the same. I am a quiet mod with a big stick. I have not and will not be passive about standing against bigotry. I’m for free speech but only in the context of debate with some very clearly defined limits to what that means.
If anything I want better arguments and understanding when I have the opportunity to speak up. I don’t want to be the person that argues. I want to be the person that asks the one question that destroys a bigot’s confidence. I need a deep intuitive understanding of the issues for that kind of insight. I don’t want that at a cost to you or anyone else. I will find other ways to learn over time if need be.
Like I said, I don’t think Lemmy is capable of this at all anyways. That is why I did not reach out, that and there is too much tension already on Lemmy right now. When I make debate like discussions or philosophical posts, I mostly get dumb responses and negativity in reply here.
Anyways, I’m trying to say, I understand, and genuinely care more than you may realize. - with love from an internet friend
Beehaw defederated from LW, not the other way around IIRC
Yeah but it was because of issues on LW that went unresolved. It is very likely that the problem individuals are not even on LW any more. Plus the user tools have changed. Reaching out to mend the bridge should be a top priority for the top instance as should unbanning any and all possible. Such behaviour is the only respectable way to stay at the top and grow Lemmy. If bridges can’t be mended, at least document that the effort was made so users of both instances are aware.
Thank you so much!!!
I couldn’t have said it any better. ✊🏽
What? what does this even mean, is there an instance dedicated for victims of fascism or something?
That seems like a huge leap. Who knows they might just be blocking an instance that only speaks a language they don’t understand.
