If I were Reddit or Facebook I would divide and conquer the Fediverse

The only threat to this burgeoning community is the same old divide & collapse nonsense that separates citizens under their overlords everywhere.

I would create accounts and start calling to defederate instances which allow non-polite (or politically incorrect or otherwise offensive) communities.

We didn't just survive the trolls on reddit. We thrived amongst them. We can handle them. We can block them.

I want curatorial tools to curate my own feed. I absolutely 100% do NOT want any admins telling me what I can't read. And going to another instance is no solution if that instance is blocked.

I don't want to be on a purely polite ecosystem, or a purely right-wing-idiot ecosystem. I want access to everybody, and the tools to curate that experience.

The trolls do NOT have the power to take us down. But the admins definitely do.

Welcome to the Defediverse.

82 comments

I'm pretty sure this is what caused beehaw to defederate lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. Several pro-reddit people posted to reddit (on a sub that is now private) about doing just that. It worked and took 48 hours or less for beehaw to defederate them. But there was a lot of discussion about the situation across several servers and it doesnt really seem to have worked to fracture the community other than isolating beehaw which already wanted to be fairly isolated to begin with.
- Do you have a recommend server? I just joined the latter one, does that mean I won't be able to participate in certain communities?
  The first thing I saw on this site was "you're a N*"** F***" which isn't a great sign..
  I tried signing up to multiple different instances I guess? The first few were full. I'm new here and just want to make sure I'm at the right place, not loving that the first thing I see is pretty racist and homophobic
  
  Try joining smaller instances. It's nice if they are run by people with good reputation in the libre world. I'm in lemmy.sdf.org and it's pretty good.
  
  If you don't want to see any kind of offensive content, I recommend signing up to Beehaw. It's a self proclaimed "safe space". This means that they actively delete offensive content, they do not allow nsfw, and they defederate from any instance they see as a danger to this safe space.
  You can also browse instances from join-lemmy.org and look at their blocked instances. If you see instances that block many or some major instances that are right wing or promote things you don't like, you'll know you found the right place that will disallow offensiveness in your feed. :)
  
  If you scroll to the bottom of the page there is a link called "Instances", there you can see all the federated and defederated instances of the instance you are currently on.

Instead of defederating whole servers, I would like admins to have an “opt out” or “un-default” button, then each user can browse the list of servers that have been opted out and individually opt in again instead of having to move their username to a different server.
- I would grudgingly accept having the ability to op-in to "problematic" instances or communities. As long as I'm not denied any functionality. It's an acceptable compromise.
  
  That's much better than opt out, the default shouldn't direct you to hateful communities
  
  this
- instead of having to move their username to a different server.
  IMO this is a separate problem; I'd like the ability to move my account between servers and preserve my comment history and subscriptions.
  
  The comment history migration will not happen. It's not feasible with the way fedi software works. Subscription migration tools exist but are limited, and I am sure they will grow more prolific in the future, because the tools for it are getting better.

We did not thrive amongst trolls on Reddit. Reddit banned and contained certain subreddits. It works. It made the platform a better place for everyone else. Defederation accomplishes the same thing
- defedrate until mods catch up with the task of cleaning rancid human waste, then refederate again, no problem. things shouldn't be rushed. take the ukraine war for exemple, the enemy is slowly but surely weakend to its death. also if an instance gets to be defederated, their user base have to be aware that there are trolls among them, and that they need to learn manners and behave, while instance admin/mods have to block sign ups and ban the culprit usernames. once the sanitation work is complete, they could reach out to the instance that got defederated from them so they could refederate, and from then on its a matter of credibility and trust. if an instance admin isnt serious about cleaning his intance he could stay locked out to oblivion and the unfortunate users could blame their instance admin for its demise and not making their time spent there worthwile.. and from then on it is just survival of the fittest: whoever get to maintain his instance will rack up a healthy userbase.
- Defederating instances doesn't just block a hateful subreddit. It blocks all the communities and members.
  Also, we totally 100% thrived among them before they were banned.
  Also, they didn't always ban them. They sometimes just blocked them from /r/all but we could still go read them and interact.
  Defederation is unhealthy and gross.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but this whole thing is starting to sound like "don't interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." Was it rigged from the start? For a couple of days everyone was civil and in less than a week, "Let's Get Ready toooo RUMBLE"!
Was there another way?

a decentralized platform (aka fediverse) is already divided, that's just the nature of how it's set up.
the real issue is that, by trying to create "safe" spaces (as beehaw did), defederating all instances that challenge that mindset just creates insular and rather meaningless echo chambers.
ultimately, this platform will devolve into close minded communities

I understand that it's a technicas issue that we have to have instances with a lot of people on them right now so that the more technically inclined people can set up the software so that the others can just use it. But the problem is that when it is like that then there are two sides of the problem, users have no control over their content and what they can consume and admins can be responsible for things the users do/post.
I really hope that in the future there will be some technology which would be able to live without central sevrers but instead it would be a p2p sollution which would replicate itself onto your devices where you want to have it. Only then we'll be able to be autonomous enough.
We have bittorrent with the magnet links which are only a couple of bytes big, back in the day I kind of suspected that on top of something like that we would build p2p social networks, but it never happened, I'm not sure why.
- It’s data cost. Private torrent sites are the exception, but most people who torrent don’t continue to seed for a long time, which means that availability is low and the bandwidth cost is usually split among just a handful of users with a seedbox, which is basically getting back to the idea of a server. How do you motivate people to use up their bandwidth and pay for the extra electricity to keep the availability and speed reasonable?
  The most similar thing I can think of to what you’re talking about is i2p, but that comes with all the speed and connnectivity problems that are commonplace for the dark web, and the vast majority of mainstream users have no interest in engaging with a complicated P2P network that serves content at speeds that make you feel like you’re living in 2003.
  Unless the mindset of the general computer user changes, we are unlikely to see any system take off that doesn’t rely on a central team of motivated people to do the backend work that the users simply don’t want to worry about.
- I would love to see an actual protocol like email or torrents replacing all social media. Then we wouldn't have to rely on admins to protect us from the baddies, or graciously allow us access to each other. We could just block rude people, and subscribe to interesting people.
  
  Wait, email is basically exactly lika ActivityPub, it also relies on servers like outlook, gmail and so on. And those servers have to have admins and those admins do block other servers because of all the spam.
  
  Email is probably the technology where admins have to do the most to protect you from the baddies.
  The problem is really inherent in any technology that allows anyone to contact anyone else without pre-screening (like an add to friendslist feature most messengers have).

How about embrace and enshittyfy like Google Talk did with XMPP?
- Porque no los dos?
- I'm okay with blocking corporate instances because they'll find a way to do top-down domination. But I don't want some admin stepping between me and other posters.
  
  Now let's have a good and narrow definition of corporate instance and we might agree on that.

the whole point of fediverse is that everyone should spin up their own instance. if everyone just joins someone else's server, it kinda defeats the purpose.
and yea, if i was them, i would also create a bunch of accounts to spam non-leftwing-moderated instances with racist and nazi stuff to give them ammunition for defederation, just like they do on 4chan
edit: addendum: activity pub sucks

I agree.

I imagine the Fediverse isn't really a threat? They can play the long game and probably don't care about the amount of people who left. There's not much to gain bringing us down either since we'll just migrate somewhere else.
- It's more of an opportunity than a great. More avenues for data collection and control. If we migrate somewhere else then they will follow. They're not going to stop wanting our data, and controlling our interactions, and manipulating our behavior.

So you're pretending that users who call for defederating an alt-right instance are basically trolls that created their account just for that and to divide users? When it's well known that it's alt-right communities that are filled with bots and foreign troll farms?
Ok.
At the same time "people" against it keep recreating new discussions about being against defederation... Seems pretty sus to me 🤔 You're sure you're barking at the right tree? I'm starting to suspect that you guys are just a bunch of EH (or whatever) users coming here to cause trouble... It would fit with the fact that a whole bunch of anti-defederation users were also hanging around or moderating on the local T_D community until it was banned.
You know you can create your own instance and you can be its sole user so you get to chose what you do with it? The admin here decided to give users democratic control over the instance and contrary to a Nation, it's very very easy to move to another instance if your disagree with the will of the majority so much that you don't feel welcome anymore.
- I think I get where they're coming from, it's like how sometimes how I'll pop on over to /r/conservative every now and then to read through some of the posts, although the majority is "the schools are turning our kids trans"
  I like to see things from other people's perspective, despite how Internet opposed to it I may be. When I hear a new story for example, there's typically two versions of it. One from a voice that seems reasonable and well tempered and one that's rash and unhinged.
  Often I'll find that the truth sometimes lies somewhere in between, not saying it's right in the middle, but having a fuller perspective helps me come to own conclusions.
  With that said, I don't think this way of consuming media works for all people or even most people. I'm a pretty objective person, maybe even to a fault. I'm not offended easily, which makes viewing communities that many would find delusional and offensive not an unpleasant experience for me.
  
  Again, people who don't agree with the way an instance is managed can just take their luggage and leave for an instance they prefer or they can create their own instance. That's decentralization baby!
  Feels like the crypto crowd, people complaining about management because they don't understand what decentralization means.
  Not happy? Create your own project and manage it however you like. Be the change you want to see, that's the power you're given here and that you don't have in the real world!
  
  I think I get where they’re coming from, it’s like how sometimes how I’ll pop on over to /r/conservative every now and then to read through some of the posts, although the majority is “the schools are turning our kids trans”
  I like to see things from other people’s perspective, despite how Internet opposed to it I may be. When I hear a new story for example, there’s typically two versions of it. One from a voice that seems reasonable and well tempered and one that’s rash and unhinged.
  But this can also be done by going to the defederated instance directly. Just like you would visit the subreddit directly because it would rarely show up in /r/all
- So you’re pretending that users who call for defederating an alt-right instance are basically trolls that created their account just for that and to divide users?
  Nope. I'm saying defederation plays into the hands of BigSocial. They're laughing as we divide ourselves so they can easily conquer.
  When it’s well known that it’s alt-right communities that are filled with bots and foreign troll farms?
  Many troll farms are not foreign, you xenophobe!
  And are YOU "pretending" that every shitposter and non-politically-correct interlocutor is a "foreign" (??) troll bot?
  Remember, we didn't leave reddit because of trolls. We left reddit because of overbearing admins. I don't want to also leave lemmy because of overbearing admins.
  
  Bot confirmed
  
  Many troll farms are not foreign, you xenophobe!
  It's a Canadian instance so yeah, troll farms are foreign.
  BigSocial
  Alright, you're just pissed because it's your friends that are getting deplatformed, you just made that pretty clear.
  And are YOU "pretending" that every shitposter and non-politically-correct interlocutor is a "foreign" (??) troll bot?
  No, I'm just stating a fact, the majority of troll farms are impersonating alt-right people, not people on the left and it's an alt-right instance people are asking to see defederated because the extremes left instance is already defederated anyway.
  Remember, we didn't leave reddit because of trolls. We left reddit because of overbearing admins. I don't want to also leave lemmy because of overbearing admins.
  I just gave you the solution, be your own admin, create your own instance, shitpost wherever you want and let this instance be managed the way the admin decided it should be.
  Edit:
  That's fucking rich!
  In your history:
  https://sh.itjust.works/comment/449630
  So you just proved that you don't mind defederation as long as it suits your interests. How hypocritical of you... Which is funny because that's always what happens when looking at the post history of the anti-defederation, they have a comment somewhere about them agreeing with censorship of some sort but are screaming that all censorship is bad if it concerns something they're attached to.
  F off back to exploding heads you troll.

dis gon be gud

82 comments