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1y ago

Lemmy.world Admin Response to Defederation from Exploding Heads

We're closing this thread. Everything that could be said has been said. Thank you

Original Post:
Today, we want to inform everyone that we have decided to defederate from https://exploding-heads.com/. We understand that defederating should always be a last resort, and individuals can certainly block communities. However, blocking alone does not prevent potential harm to vulnerable communities.

After carefully reviewing the instance, reported posts, and multiple comments from the community, we have concluded that exploding-heads is not adhering to the Lemmy or Citizen Code of Conduct. Therefore, we cannot, in good faith, continue to federate with an instance that consistently promotes hate, racism, and bullying.

Examples:
https://lemmy.world/post/577526 - Community Moderator Harassment
https://exploding-heads.com/post/92194 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/90780 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/91488 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/93725 - Community Moderator Post

Again, deciding to defederate from an instance is not taken lightly. In the future, we will continue to review instances on a case-by-case bases.

As for our community, please refrain from posting or commenting with hateful words as well. Arguing back and calling people names is not the solution. The best course of action is to report the posts or comments violating our server rules.

Lemmy Code of Conduct
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
Citizen Code of Conduct https://github.com/stumpsyn/policies/blob/master/citizen_code_of_conduct.md

“We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.”

446 comments

I'm no fan of defederating over minor disagreements but yeah, some types of people are just incompatible with building a welcoming space. Good choice.
- I agree with you that it was a good choice and that it's necessary to foster a friendly online culture.
  I haven't seen any calls for defederation over, "minor disagreements," though. I have seen lots of people saying that we should defederate from places like exploding heads so that we dont allow them to get bigger and then those people being told that they shouldn't call for defederation over minor disagreements.
  
  I've seen a few around the place but they tend to get shut down pretty quick so I guess that means most of us are on the same page, which is nice.

Everybody crying about free speech because they got cut off from the nazis are very welcome to go sign up with the nazis and let the door hit you on the way out.
- Exactly, instances are like countries. Alliances (federations) will be formed. It will be an organic process. Instances that promote Nazi content will form alliances with each other, and our instance Lemmy.world will form an alliance that has the same values of respect.
  
  And it's not even always those extremes. Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world is fine, because they clearly want to keep things more tightly moderated than we do here. They've made it their objective to be a very safe place for LGBT folks. There's nothing wrong with that at all. We're going to see a few different universes start to form within the Fediverse and that's not a bad thing. Invariably there will likely be a largest, main one. I think lemmy.world is set up to be part of that. But if people want spaces that are more closely curated or more aligned with a certain ideology, they can have their own separate universes. It's not the end of the world to have different flavors of Lemmy.
  
  Everyone over there crying about their free speech absolutism to call everyone retards and n*****s like they aren't going to speed ban anybody who comments that that's dumb. lol
- 100% this.

That seems like the right choice. Those seem to be some pretty vile people. They can have their free speech, but it doesn't mean we have to listen to it. Normally I'd not be in agreeance about defederating, but hate speech shouldn't have a safe haven among us. Thanks, for defederating from them.

Thank you for your diligence, transparency, and for being proactive about this. I, for one, am glad to see that racism, bigotry, and homophobia are not welcome on lemmy.world, and that the admin team takes that seriously.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. Good for everybody
- I love the "freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend" crowd because like, of course it does, but don't be surprised when nobody likes you because you're being a dick to everyone.
  
  I love that the underlying implication of "freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend" is that you presumably aren't free to respond to things that offend you by electing to not expose yourself to it any further. Like, you apparently aren't allowed to say "oh, that's really gross. I don't like that and am not going to voluntarily expose myself to it any further and when someone asks me my opinion I will indicate that I dislike it." You have to sit there and take it. Honestly, defederating is a great choice for lemmy instances. What's the alternative? Trying to convince whatever service a lemmy instance is hosted on to deplatform them like people did with Amazon and Parler? I think the posts linked here about exploding-heads are vile, but I don't want them or any other instance to be subject to the whims of some kind of internet police force, and especially not to whatever service or services are used to keep them up. Just leave them in the dust and be done with it, I say.
  
  Freedom of speech might include freedom to offend, but it doesn't obligate anyone else to listen or let you use their soapbox.
  
  It also includes don't engaging with people that offend you. But when you do that they claim that you are the offender
- One thing that bothers me is that "freedom of speech", at least from an American perspective, just protects someone from retaliation from the government. That means that you can't go spouting off garbage and expect people to not call and/or kick you out for being a turd.
  Instead, the point was that you could be critical of the governing body without fear of being locked up. Good examples of this would be what's happening in Russia.
  
  at least from an American perspective
  In EU as well, freedom of speech means they can't arrest you for what you say, it's about the government, not private companies/entities.
  
  Freedom of speech is not the first amendment. The first amendment is a protection of that right in the US legal system, limited in scope to actions of government agencies.
  That does not mean private citizens or corporations (which are actually not the same in reality) cannot infringe of free speech with harmful consequences. It's just legal for them to do so. Corporate social media do it all the time.
  So you have a system where speech is regulated not based on it's merits (or harm caused in case of hate speech) but on the whims of whoever owns major media, where the majority of discourse occurs in the modern world.
  Arguments based on compelled speech infringing the social media's right to free speech or it's right to freedom of association make no sense. The law already provides them with protections for hosting users' illegal material (whether copyright infringements or far worse) precisely because it's not the social media itself that posts it.
  With that said, I do not think defederation infringes on their right to free speech (the moral right, not a legal right). Their message is still online and frankly lemmy.world is not really the public space in the way things like facebook or twitter are. Thus they are not really affecting their ability to get their message to people.
  
  I agree. If you are being a turd to people without committing any crimes the government should do nothing but other people can
- There's a reason freedom of speech goes hand-in-hand with freedom of association. The freedom to not associate with someone because you don't like their speech is as strong as the freedom to say what you want.
  
  Exactly
- Some opinions shouldn't have consequences thoughts. Hate speech isn't freedom of speech too
- I agree but I don't want someone else to decide what I can hear or read. I can filter dump-heads myself.
  
  No one's stopping you from going there though. Just not from this instance

Thank you. One of those dudes were over on sh.itjust.works when they defederated it, arguing that the exploding heads community was totally fine! As you can see... no, it was not: https://lemmy.world/comment/577634
You can expand the rest comment section for context but the screenshot in the link speaks for itself.
Edit: here come the downvotes! The exploding heads guys really hate that I screenshotted & exposed the cesspit they call home. Lol
- Yikes. Good riddance.

Thank you for your transparency! As always, very appreciated.

Good! The older I get the more I realize that free speech at all cost is bullshit. Every idea or thought does not deserve a platform.
- It's called the paradox of tolerance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- In Spain we have an old saying (maybe it's international, but I just heard it in Spain): My freedom ends where yours begin. Meaning that you're free to do what you want, but not when others are affected in a negative way (your noise disturb others, your hostility affect others, etc). When I see some people in the US behaving like assholes claiming that's their freedom I realise they don't actually understand what freedom means.
  
  In the US (at least where I'm from) we have a similar saying that goes:
  Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my face begins
  Same essential meaning but some people here just don't get it.
  
  We use it in Greece too
- Freedom of speech should only ever mean that a government cannot retaliate against or stifile someone's view on politics. It should never equate to freedom from consequences for hate speech, by anyone.
- Free speech does not mean every idea or thought deserves a platform. It's a doctrine of being able to express one's idea without fear of retaliation or censorship from the government. And it is also a very indivisible idea, either you have free speech for everyone or for no one. There is no middle ground because as soon as you introduce the idea that some ideas should censored you lay the groundwork for all ideas to be censored.
  Free speech at all costs is not bullshit but also, defederation is not censorship.
  
  Not necessarily advocating for giving everyone a platform but an interesting thought here is how we should treat the concept of free speech in an era where so many important things are under the jurisdiction of private entities. If 90% of public squares were owned by companies who restricted what you can wear, say, and who you can talk to on that public square, that would technically not run afoul of free speech but definitely would practically heavily restrict people's ability to freely express themselves. Meanwhile, this exact scenario is the case on the internet with private corporations owning most of it and are free to remove whatever content they want at a whim.
  
  I’m familiar with the argument I just think it’s outdated.
- Free speech is fine. The interpretation of "free access to anyone's eyes and ears at any time" is bullshit.
- Voat is an excellent example of this. Unmoderated speech -> Nazi infiltration -> removed from app stores and shut down.
  
  Come to think of it, are there any libertarian "no rules, block users if you can't handle it" social networks that haven't catastrophically collapsed into toxic hellholes? ....like are there ANY examples of this idea even working?
  The thing free speech absolutists never understand is people have tried their plan PLENTY of times, in fact it has been tried over and over again in an exhausting cycle of amnesia. It never works, running a community fundamentally requires choices and moderation.
- It’s a curve, you think you are getting wiser while it’s the exact opposite
- Or you can build a better argument and debate the idea. If its not a call to violence, its just words and ideas battling it out.
  
  I believe COVID showed very well that this isn't the case. Not to mention, when you're debating something like an astrophysics concept, it makes no sense to allow a professional basketball coach to weigh in.
  
  Debates don't convince people to change their minds.
  
  COVID-19 proves that rational debate doesn't work. Heck, even the results of recent US and UK elections prove that people are so brainwashed and incapable of rational thought that they'll support their side like a local football team, no matter how badly their policies screw them over.
  Arguing with a right-winger is like playing a game of chess with a rooster. No matter what you say or do, the rooster will knock over the pieces, shit all over the board and strut around triumphantly.

Good riddance

Good call! Thanks for creating a welcoming atmosphere for all!
- It's weird to say that as they defederate from a community. I don't know anything about "explodingheads", but I always prefer to choose what I do and do not see.
  I have no doubt that the "explodingheads" community is shitty, but I don't like the precedent of protecting me from the world on my behalf.
  
  The Paradox of Tolerance: If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people.
  To create a safe space for all ideas, the intolerant ideas cannot be tolerated
  
  Then maybe this isn't the federation for you. I'm sure there's at least one host out there without standards.
  
  You are free to still join exploding heads and their instance if you want. That's the beauty of lemmy. It's also other instances choice to join with them or not. This one chose not.
  
  It means when choosing between allowing people who are minorities, or people who want to harass minorities, the admins here prefer the minorities.
  You can have one or the other. I know which I prefer.
  Also, horrible politically incorrect jokes are fun, however, the last few years have led to people genuinenly believing in them instead of making fun of them, so things are a bit more uptight generally in the world.
  
  The thing is.... it isn't to protect you if you don't feel you need protection. But this is a community, not a monolith. Consider that you always have the option to join a second community rather than forcing two communities to stay together for your convenience.
  And in an online space that's federated, there is a really strong incentive for the admins and mods to keep us *informed when defederation is happening because the community on the other side are extremely likely to notice and let us know either way. So at least you can keep track of how censored these communities are is in some fashion.
  
  You're able to launch your own Instance and it will federate with everyone and you can do what you have stated.
  
  The admins and mods are doing this out of a sense of duty to the community at likely a financial cost to themselves.
  I've abandoned many a website because moderating was ruining the experience because users wanted to give too many people too many chances (notably competitive gaming spaces)
  
  And what's stopping you from checking out exploding heads? The site runners have said that exploding heads stuff isn't appearing on their property. They don't, last I checked, have any control over what sites you visit using your property.
  See how that works? Freedom of speech means the shitheads at exploding heads can say what they like, but it doesn't mean other people have to listen. You want to read shitfuckery, they're right over there. Head on over!
  
  This instance smells like Spez, good luck not getting cancelled here
  
  Lemmy mods are no different from Reddit mods really
  
  Literally go and see yourself. It's so incredibly lukewarm that it's hilarious to see the level of groupthink and conformity in this thread.

And this right here is what separates Lemmy from voat: active community moderation that works to limit the reach of hateful bigots. While I’m a big proponent of free speech myself, I do agree that many kinds of ‘speech’ aren’t the most conductive thing for building a welcoming platform; especially one that caters to many vulnerable groups.
This move also highlights the core strength of a decentralized platform, by the way: while people who no longer want to engage with this content can stay safe, nobody was deplatformed! We achieved a clean break without banning or ‘silencing’ anybody.
So, good job on responsibly using the defed hammer!
- Free speech includes my right to not listen to you.
  
  Agreed! A country with free speech is a free country, which means people have the freedom to ignore speech as well.

Fantastic. I don't want to have to block all transphobic shithole communities since that requires me looking at them. If hateful people could just group together in their 4chan bubbles which are defederated from sane people, that'd be awesome.
- The worst part is that they kind of do. From my past experience from using imageboards, a good chunk of the moronic beliefs that you see these people posting outside of 4chan/8chan/Whatever are saner than some of the absolute crackpot shit they will say when they are under the complete guise of anonymity.
- I just wish blocking here actually worked
  
  It doesn't? What does it do then?
- It looks like you just want your own echo chamber and are not even willing to stand up for yourself, not surprised
  
  I don't feel like having to explain why trans people should have human rights day after day. I'm fine with reasonable discourse, not people that are so far gone I can't even see them over the horizon.

Damn those sysadmin posts are dire.
- I'm hoping that eventually a free speech Lemmy instance pops up that has admins that are less cringe
  
  While almost everyone tends to agree with the principles of freedom of expression, whenever someone says, "This space is an absolute free speech zone" or similar, you can almost always assume they're just fascists who got told https://xkcd.com/1357/
  
  Feel free to create one, just don't get upset when other instances want nothing to do with the toxic community this inevitably creates and everyone de-federates you..
  
  Sure, in principle, as long as “free speech” isn’t just cover to spew toxic bullshit all over the place. No one has to put up with that and you better believe it’ll be defederated by most instances.
  
  Sure, in principle, as long as “free speech” isn’t just cover to spew toxic bullshit all over the place. No one has to put up with that and you better believe it’ll be defederated by most instances.
  
  Me too. But exploding heads will probably be bigger in the long run anyway.

I'm happy you guys announced it and posted visual proof of why you decided to defederate from them.
Trasparence in the management will shine a bright way ahead!

Thank you, admins!
This is one thing you're getting right that Reddit never got right. They let shit like the_donald fester for years.
- I believe spez endorsed those views himself. Makes sense too, he’s a doomsday prepper and an Elon Musk fanboy.
  
  "Valuable discussion"

I'm not a fan of de federation except in extreme circumstances... but this is a good choice. Its not a couple mods being slow to respond to reports, but real nasty speach from admins.
Thank you.
- A site being turned into a Nazi-bar qualifies as a sufficiently extreme circumstance as to justify defederation.

thanks for this. Feels good to be on an instance that takes it seriously!

In case it hasn't been suggested before, it might be a good idea to give users the ability to block a whole instance, rather than one magazine at a time
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2397

To those whinging about the decision to defederate Exploding Heads, think about it this way.
Mastodon once got a massive influx of users because Gab attempted to expand their influence as a far-right Twitter competitor by joining their fediverse. The various other instances responded in kind by collectively defederating Gab because they didn't want their platforms to be flooded by the racist and bigoted gruel that Gab's clientele were spewing out.
And here lies the beauty of free speech and the fediverse. People are free to create an instance with their own rules, but others are also free to disassociate from them.
- One way to think of it, anybody has a right to selfhost an instance of fediverse software and say whatever toxic trash they want, but being part of the broader fediverse is a privilege (not a right) predicated on not using the platform that comes with that privilege to hurt others.

Any time you limit the MAGA maggots it is a win for everyone.

I just love how we are reminded to observe the simple rules here. That's great. ;)
Originally reddit was very observant on what they called rediquette. But I honestly don't recall seeing it mentioned for the past 5 years.
As things degraded and rediquette was more and more needed, instead of reminding each other of it, it seems to have disappeared.
- Enforcing Reddiquette would mean less trolling, which is bad for Reddit because anger fuels engagement.
  
  Yes, the recipe for twitter and facebook too.
  I hope that the fact that this is a community not run for profit, means we will be better, and remember to behave with decency.
  I must admit it happened I got sucked in, so I ended up deleting my reddit account a couple of years ago.
- Reddiquette and the disclosing of how much server time was paid for by Reddit gold. Both previously disclosed to the users and now missing.

Good. I was getting sick of blocking them every time one of their new communities popped up that wasn't blocked yet. I have yet to see a single thread from that instance that didn't immediately make me block the user and community.
Good riddance.

I'm the head mod of /r/darkbrandon (75k) doing a voluntary migration to Lemmy & Kbin. We do not condone the behavior shown in that moderator post. I've setup a community on this instance so I'm just reaching to say that officially. Take care and thanks for hosting.

Thanks, a sensible action to take.
I hadn't been exposed to it, but it sounds like something I don't want to see.
- I looked over there and you don’t lol

I am trying to create a tolerant NSFW community on lemmy, it's the first time I hear about this "Citizen Code of Conduct". While I am totally opposed to Doxxing and general harassment, there is this part which concerns me:
Unacceptable Behavior
The following behaviors are considered harassment and are unacceptable within our community:
[...]
Posting or displaying sexually explicit [...] material.
Where does this apply? In lemmy code contribution? or in the communities? If this applies to the community, this is quite worrisome.
- Looks like this "Citizen Code of Conduct" is only a template for creating rules, but is good to follow these rules on the whole internet (and in real world too).
  Talking about the rule you mencionated, that rule is only for non-NSFW communities. You can make your community only if you mark the NSFW flag in it and all posts flagged with it as well.
  If you do not understand something feel free to ask and sorry for my bad english :-)
- I would assume as they have a clearly marked NSFW option, that means in the SFW area.
- If I had to guess, that rule doesn't really apply to instances that are NSFW friendly in their description. Probably gets enforced on instances and communities that are not going for an explicit thing.

Good move. We don't need to tolerate nazis. Though the code of conduct is admittedly progressive and this in itself will exclude people who are conservative. I am OK with seedy underbellies, or areas with people I don't agree with and I think we should avoid being moral police where possible, but the rhetoric on exploding heads is too much. They aren't actually conservatives they are just insane people, literal crazies that belong on 4chan or voat, or maybe truth social if that's still a thing.

Went over to their site. I found it ironic that their ten level reply thread complaining about the defederation made me realize that the different level reply colors form a rainbow. Hopefully that isn't for just June, it is very helpful when trying to figure out who is responding to who.
- My favourite comments are the ones calling people sensitive while they proceed to cry about not being listened to. Bunch of soft cunts lmao
  
  I found that amusing too. They are mad we aren't forced to hang out with them

I support this move after a quick glance at their site. Thank you team!
- Agreed, all types of discrimination should be destroyed quickly. Lemmy needs to be aware of the paradox of tolerance - the only thing we can never, ever tolerate is intolerance.
  
  Too bad you are defining intolerance as whatever you want

This is great. Free speech and edgy jokes are one thing, but this is literally just random crazy racist sexist bullshit with a classic case of Biden derangement syndrome. Why even bother federating with these boggarts

I’m not usually a fan of defederation, but I'm actually glad to see it in this case. It's beneficial to have healthy disagreements in opinion and interactions with people who don’t share your views. However, I haven't witnessed anything positive resulting from these interactions so far.
I really appreciate your transparency and responsiveness to the community.

This is how you do it. The Code of Conduct is established. Habitually violating the Code leads to defederation. It's simple, and need not be dramatic.
I don't want an echo chamber, but excluding bad actors is not the same thing as excluding differing views and perspectives.
- I think it should be dramatic - it's a very serious choice, and it shouldn't be made lightly or quietly. Especially when it's because of social rather than technical reasons
  It should be a big deal, and admins should feel the need to answer to the community when they make that choice. It needs to be dramatic, or it'll become too easy
  
  Damn, this is a good take here.
  Most of us just came from a site where admin overreach is ruining everything. While I don't think the admins here are going to pull the same thing, there's something to be learned there about how the community deserves a say in the operations.
  
  Why do admins owe anything to anyone? Their server, their time, their money => their rules. End of story.

Good riddance. You want your free speech? Fine. You're not owed my free ear, though. Take your insufferable twaddle elsewhere.

Good. I'm glad to see active moderation nip these in the bud, unlike Reddit several years ago.

Thank you

It's crazy to me that people find those types of racist and distasteful posts funny. Does anyone here know if kbin has already defederated with exploding-heads? And yes I have already blocked the domain. This type of shit doesn't belong on the fediverse.
- I'm on kbin.social and I've never seen an exploding heads post.
  
  They may be getting drowned out by the huge lemmy instances. I've only seen a bare handful of content from them, but the quality of every one made me refresh my memory on blocking instances. I really never thought I'd be advocating defederation so quickly, but we already have a 4chan and it's not kbin
  
  I don't think they've targeted kbin in the same way exploding-heads seem to have targeted other Lemmy instances, but when I checked a day or so ago we were still federated. I blocked the whole instance ...but I can't now remember how that was done. Somehow you can make an instance appear like a magazine from kbin, then you can follow or block it in much the same way too.
  Edit:
  From the comments below, head to https://kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com
  Then at the bottom of the page, or from the kbin menu, choose the no-entry (i.e. block) symbol which is next to the subscribe button.
  
  Since you can see their users' posts I think it means they aren't defederated yet, I think ernest is a bit overwhelmed at the moment to deal with stuff like this but it should be brought up, sooner better than later.
  
  wouldn't you have had to subscribe to one of their communities to see those posts? If that's true, your observation isn't evidence they are deferderated and you may still be seeing their users comments on other posts.
  
  I saw one once but I cannot remember if it was kbin.social or lemmy.world because I have tried both.
- I saw them from kbin a few days ago.
- Ernest commented on the situation, but I think he had a fair bit on his plate at the time.
  
  Yeah I'm not urging him to do anything, he shall taketh as much time as he needs. Was just asking, but meanwhile blocking the domain individually suffices I'm pretty sure.
- Do they find it funny or are they just shit people that like being cunts?
  
  At this point, I’m past caring. I just take them at face value and move on.

Good, and thank you. No need to tolerate hate and I would be happy if we had a low bar for instances that encourage hateful conduct.
How hard is it to defederate and re-federate an instance? I'd like if the admins had the ability to remove instances if they weren't properly moderated, and then add them back if things improved.

I heartily approve. Thank you.

I disagree that defederation shouldn't be taken lightly, if it looks at all like a nazi instances, scalp & move on.

Good work, no notes.

To all who don’t like this decision, that’s fine. This isn’t the only Lemmy instance, that’s the whole point of a federated system. Go to another instance that aligns with your values.

Do you have any thoughts on beehaw blocking lemmy.world? Are you working with them to resolve the issues?
It seems like a rather large hit to communities as a large number of subreddits have landed there to help lemmy grow as a whole
- I don't think the beehaw block of lemmy.world is a permanent one necessarily, it is based on much different circumstances than the block of exploding heads (differences in growth philosophy vs hatespeech/nazis). At some point in the future lemmy.world and beehaw may federate again.
- I moved to Lemmy.world because Beehaw defederated from everybody else.
  If I wanted a walled garden that only allows intelligent debate, I'd just go over to Tildes, especially since Deimos is an ex-Reddit admin who actually knows what he's doing from a tech and community moderation standpoint.

Thanks! The admin over there doesn't even follow their own posted guidelines.

Good call. I think within my first day or two here some idiot from exploding heads was commenting on here about being banned by beehaw and just acting like a complete tool. We’re better off without them.

Thanks

I'm sure there are a lot of nuances here I'm not familiar with--but, in general, I'm always in favor of insisting on ('enforcing'?) "adult behavior". I have a zero tolerance policy where I solo-mod. If you can't talk/disagree politely with someone, then you need to go somewhere else...