Update on federation

Hey hexbears just want to update everyone.

We took the weekend to properly consider and are removing: programming.dev , aussie.zone , and lemm.ee from our allow-list.

We will look at refederation with lemm.ee after local-only communities are developed. When that feature is available we would really like to consider changing every hexbear community to local-only except for chapotraphouse, askchapo, news, and the_dunk_tank. The final say on if a community is local only or not is 100% up to the mod team on that community.

The reason for this is that lemm.ee despite having twice our monthly active users has a 700k annual comment rate to hexbear's 1 million, in addition lemm.ee has very little active communities that do not exist on hexbear.

Resulting in lemm.ee benefit of federation being votes and views, with a secondary benefit of comments.

However, as expressed by users belonging to marginalized groups, comments from .ee users are often lib-shit and in some cases outright hostile. While many on hexbear love dunking on these lost libs the duty to protect marginalized users is much more important.

The end vote for programming.dev and aussie.zone was a tie, so we decided to break the tie in favor of defederation. The decision on lemm.ee was much harder as the average user did express desire to remain federated however the admin team decided that a temporary removal from our allow-list was the best option.

As an admin team we have never wanted to prioritize growth, and we wanted to give federation with liberal instances a try, however we consider providing a safer browsing experience for marginalized users more important than the opportunity to dunk.

While user side instance blocking and local sort are options, neither address the issue of federated instance users coming into posts in hexbear communities to make reactionary comments.

Thank you everyone who gave input and please provide any feedback, comments, concerns, etc in comments.

final vote count:

federation

all 32

aussie.zone 27

lemm.ee 41

programming.dev 27

lemmy.blahaj.zone 5

defederation

all 40

aussie.zone 19

lemm.ee 4

programming.dev 19

lemmy.blahaj.zone 43

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250 comments

Damn, this sucks ngl. Astonishing to me that there's still so much "defed all" bitterness. This place is much better when it's not a completely isolated island
- Some people don't enjoy transphobic harassment, but you do yo
  
  I've said as much in other places but as with other complaints, like the site culture being "ruined" post-federation, etc: I just don't see it. I don't see it happening in our threads, I don't feel the site is majorly negatively impacted at all.
  I've scoured the modlogs, I see a grand total of 1 account from .ee banned for transphobia in the past 2 months. 1 temp ban from traa due to a cryptic comment over the same period. Are there accounts doing this and going un-banned by our mods, or is this not a real problem of any reasonable scale? Or is 1 straggler every couple months simply untenable and too many? Because we see more wrecker accounts simply made directly here on-site than that...
  
  but nah we're just "bitter"
  
  On top of that, when no one noticed us the signal to noise ratio was considerably higher. You were more likely to be taken in good faith when people weren't sure. Not saying that was an overall good but hey, one website doesn't necessarily have to do everything either.
  
  That’s heavily debatable lol. Most of the nastiest moments on the site were pre-federation.
- Completely disagree, federation ruined the vibes of the site
  
  in what way? I browse Local by New/sometimes Hot and literally nothing has changed from my perspective
  Maybe Active threads have more off-site posters in them?
  
  There was an anti-ableist anti-bodyshaming push that seems to have been abandoned or stalled since federation. "lesser" ableist terms I mean. I love and respect them, but blame lemmygrad's slightly more abrasive culture mixing with our own. No, I can't point to any particular data beyond my own anecdote.
  *note, i said "Push" indicating *movement *not saying that hexbear ever had a particular issue with either from the start aside from the occasional reactionary breakdown by a user. 1 month pre-fed if you called someone an ableist term you would have had your comment removed, even if it was directed at a chud.
  This resulted in a higher signal/noise and a more chill atmosphere generally.
  None of this is a totalizing statement and makes no assertions beyond the scope of site culture pre and post fed. See bio for more info.
  
  Hmm, also nothing to back it up but vibes-wise you might be right, though I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out. I'd be 100% fine with a return to that level of moderation, I don't think we really benefit from people getting made fun of for their looks or anything. I don't have super strong feelings about it but it might be a good push to start back up. I think if anything the difference is probably coming from changes in reporting behavior, I don't think the mod team's changed a lot since federation
  
  Things are pretty much the same right now vibes-wise as they were pre-federation honestly. There were issues in the middle of course, as needed defederations were found, but like, right now, it’s about how it was again.
  
  I'd suggest that you factor in that site vibes (going back to the old sub too) correlate with the news cycle as well. If there aren't major global events unfolding to drive discussion, it gets pretty dry and stale till some place enters "the cool zone".
  Federation certainly has had an effect, but I don't think that you can pin all the site issues on that alone is all.
- I mildly agree with the decision to hold off until we have LOCs, but yeah the bitterness is lame. I wish we could actually put in the effort to do propaganda but people would rather dunk without any pushback instead.
  
  just make a lemmmmeeeeee account and "do propaganda" on that if you care so much lmao
  
  This is the kind of uncomradely, snarky energy that I'm referring to tbh.
  
  I would say it's more "uncomradely" to willingly put your comrades in the way of harassment. But I know dunking is more important than that.
  
  My whole point is that I don't like the "dunking", so it's obvious you're not really here for a conversation.
  I also said in my comment that I "mildly agree" with the decision to defederate in the short term. The source of my agreement on that topic is primarily driven by other users' experience with harassment.
  
  I didn’t want to stay federated because of dunking. You’re being a bit reductive.
  
  it's not "holding off" though, we already did the federation and that status quo didn't seem particularly untenable to me...
  
  They are going to refederate after LOCs are implemented, is what I meant.

250 comments