1y ago

Why is programming.dev federated with exploding heads?

52 comments

The instance is currently federated with every instance (including places like lemmygrad and explodingheads) as the current stance is defederation should be a last resort with users being able to choose what they want to see instead
Exploding heads has some very questionable content though so its status is currently being discussed by the admins
- I wish there were a way to block entire instances per user.
  
  It is an option in Sync for Lemmy at least.
  
  This is actively being discussed too
  
  Yeah it should be a per user decision..
  
  This would make my life so much easier
- Free speech absolutism is harmful. By remaining federated with them, you're participating in distributing their content and giving them a platform. People do have a choice of what they want to see, they can choose to be a part of another instance without morals. I would hope that a programming instance of all places would understand the consequences of propaganda given so many programmers work in data collection and targeted advertising. If you show an ad to 1000 people and one of them buys the product, the ad worked. It's no different for disinformation campaigns.
  It's not like they're just sharing differing opinions or saying awful shit, they're taking things out of context or making things up (or posting articles that make things up) and it's very easy to prove if you do a tiny bit of googling. One article listed off a bunch of climate predictions that were wrong along with sources to look credible. If you checked the sources though, they were all wrong. Some of the predictions were actually made by humans (but not the claimed academic institutions) while others were straight up made up.
  I hope the admins make the right decision here. Protecting free speech doesn't mean allowing people to say whatever they want on your platform. It means allowing them to say it on their platform without being fined or put in jail.
  
  My experience has often been the opposite. Programmers will do a lot to avoid the ethical implications of their works being used maliciously and discussions of what responsibility we bear for how our work gets used and how much effort we should be obligated to make towards defending against malicious use.
  It's why I kind of wish that "engineer" was a regulated title in America like it is in other countries, and getting certified as a programming engineer required some amount of training in programming ethics and standards.
  
  Yeah, the goal is mainly to get everyone in the fediverse able to participate in the coding chats as long as they're respectful about it rather than being a free speech absolutism instance. An ideal scenario would be allowing users to participate in here while limiting the posts in their communities to not show up in things like the all feed if their instance is problematic
  Decision should be pushed out soon, just making sure we get everything sorted out before we push anything and been a bit slower due to vacations
- I understand the reasoning but I think it's not the same situation as lemmygrad, which I feel is a normal instance with an ideological bent. Exploding heads is just violent propaganda. I hope you defederate.
  What about hexbear? Is programming.dev federated with them? Or are they intentionally defederated with everyone?
  
  hexbear split off and has been running their own fork for awhile separate from the rest of lemmy (so they couldnt federate with lemmy instances). They are coming back now though so lemmy instances will start to be able to interact with them soon
- I am not a fan of reaching for defederation often; I actually came here from beehaw because I felt like they just pulled that trigger too fast and too frequently.
  However, I do think that we should defederate from exploding-heads and hexbear. I don’t go looking for chances to be offended, but I do notice that when I see something truly distasteful on All it is almost exclusively from one of those two lately, and at this point removing them from All would make my lemmy experience just a bit more friendly.
  It’s not even worth reporting content about them because when you do it seems like a common theme is that they just tag you so they can harass you. I tested this myself recently by reporting obvious misinformation/propaganda and the next time I logged in there were indeed items waiting in my inbox calling me a coward, etc.
  Edit: fun fact, even if you block a user, and you block the community they are posting from, any time they mention you in a post you still get a message in your inbox, which seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight and a tool for harassment.

For those not aware of any drama, could you spill the beans?
- Here's the front page of exploding-heads.com. It has a picture of a trans person hanging themselves with slurs I censored with an emoji since it's probably against the rules to post here
  
  God, that is actively depressing. Why can't people leave us alone 😟
- There's a lot of disinformation and propaganda on it. They also used rammy.site to post exclusively harmful shit because it's unmoderated
  
  Thanks for the info
  Definitely looks like a place you don't want to interact with
- They are not left wing, mainly.
  
  A particular flavour of right wing though. One that goes out of it's way to say the most aboherent shit on people that are not like them.
  In France we've got laws to regulate this type of speech. Say that AIDS is god's punishment to the homosexuals -> get a fine (or if it's the twentieth time you do it, go to jail).
  I don't find it shocking that people are banning content that some countries judge so problematic that they are ready to put people in jail for it.
  
  No, it's that they're massive bigots that harass people
  
  Go find me a left wing instance that spreads hateful disinformation and incites violence and I'll ask to defederate with them too. Just because the right is the only side doing it doesn't mean they'd be removed for being on the right.
  If someone goes to jail because they murdered someone, it wasn't because of their political preferences.

For anybody that stumbles upon this post, pushed out our decision on it and it was talked about in the august newsletter https://programming.dev/post/1671024
The exploding-heads communities that break our rules have been removed from the instance (and if you find any more in the future report a post that shows it breaking the rules and ill deal with it)

52 comments