[Discussion]: Community standards for defederation

Didn't want to further derail the exploding heads vote thread, so:

What are the criteria that should be applied when determining whether to defederate from an instance? And should there be a specific process to be followed, and what level of communication if any with the instance admins?

For context it may be useful to look at the history of the Fediblock tag in Mastodon, to see what sorts of stuff folks are dealing with historically in terms of both obvious and unremarkable bad actors (e.g., spam) and conflict over acceptability of types of speech and moderation standards.

(Not saying that folks need to embrace similar standards or practices, but it's useful to know what's been going on all this time, especially for folks who are new to the fediverse.)

For example:

Presence of posts that violate this instance's "no bigotry" rule (Does it matter how prolific this type of content is on the target instance?)
Instance rules that conflict with this instance's rules directly - if this instance blocks hate speech and the other instance explicitly allows it, for example.
Admin non-response or unsatisfactory response to reported posts which violate community rules
- Not sure if there's a way in lemmy to track incoming/outgoing reports, but it would be useful for the community to have some idea here. NOT saying to expose the content of all reports, just an idea of volume.
High volume of bad faith reports from the target instance on users here (e.g., if someone talks about racism here and a hostile instance reports it for "white genocide" or some other bs). This may seem obscure, but it's a real issue on Mastodon.
Edited to add: Hosting communities whose stated purpose is to share content bigoted content
Coordinating trolling, harassment, etc.

For reference, local rules:

Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
No Ads / Spamming.
No pornography.

35 comments

I think de-federation should be very limited.
It should be used as a tool to fight spam, disassociate with instances allowing the commission of crimes, that propagates abusive content (CSAM, Doxing, Targeted Harassment, SWATing, etc) or other things that cause direct real-world harm.
De-federation should not be used as a political tool to divide social media along partisan lines. If people cannot handle distasteful opinions then they have access to the block button. If users from other instances break the rules here, then they can be banned from here. If you find other communities distasteful, then don't go there.
- I have the same views on this topic. Thank you for sharing, and wording it better than I probably could
- Well said. I think it’s a slippery slope to start de-federating with instances we find distasteful.
- De-federation should not be used as a political tool to divide social media along partisan lines.
  I certainly agree with the statement, but bigotry isn't a partisan issue. I don't think anybody here is calling for defederation over estate taxes or redistricting or infrastructure bills. We're talking about people's right to exist and hate campaigns that are the equivalent of someone posting on behalf of ISIS, to put it charitably. Apologists for people engaged in ideologically motivated violence, literally out there killing people.
  
  My point is that de-federation should be a technical tool to ensure that all of the servers who are on the Fediverse work together to form one large social media network. It is to do things like shut off spam networks and other low-level maintenance. It should not be used as a tool for deciding who gets to speak and who doesn't get to speak. The exception to that would things that are likely to cause direct harm. A person saying 'Let's meet here and shoot up a school' or a person using an instance to dox people, instances that allow CSAM or other illegal content.
  I very much disagree with a lot of the views I see on many communities. I disagree with the suggestion that we use federation as anything more than a spam filter or means of disconnecting blatantly illegal things. The difference is that I'm willing to actually discuss the disagreement and attempt to change people's minds.
  I don't think it would be right for the server admin to come in and ban you because he didn't like your opinion and you shouldn't think it is right if he came in and banned me for my opinion. No progress can possibly be made if someone simply steps in and puts a wall between the two people that disagree.
  I think the role of social media is like the role of the town square. People should be free to come in and say or think whatever they want, no matter how offensive you may find it as long as they're not directly harming someone. You can be wrong all day but you can't punch someone in the face. You can type whatever words that you would like, but you can't use this space to directly harm people.
  De-federating another instance does absolutely nothing to their ability to think whatever thoughts you find offensive. It doesn't de-platform them, their instance will continue working just fine without your instance's federation. What you do when you de-federate is you cut off any chance that their mind can be changed and you cut off any opposing viewpoints from being able to try. That builds the worst kinds of echo chambers.
  Whatever chances you may assign to being able to change someone's mind via debate, those chances go to 0% when you eliminate the ability to speak to them.
  
  As much as I very much dislike the current political climate, and even though I'm aware that there is actual violence going on against those that don't deserve it, I must say I disagree with your claim. Not every racist or sexist or homophobe is guilty of violence. We are a tribal species, but not every disagreement has to mean war. Additionally, I don't think defederating communities at the first signs of any of these will achieve what you want.

I definitely think de federation should be on the table if an instance has a significant portion of their users breaking our site rules, or trolling/spamming our communities. We don't want to have our communities overrun with people who want to promote a negative atmosphere because the admins of another instance are unwilling/unable to moderate their users effectively, as it will just put undue burden on our admins and community moderators.
I'd say before de federating we should definitely try to engage with the offending instance's admins to see if they're acting in good faith, and if they have a plan for mitigating the issues.
Personally I don't think we should federate with instances that make themselves safe-havens for people who post bigoted/conspiratorial content and dog-whistling, as having that kind of content on our /all feed will drive away users from groups the content is targeting, making the community worse overall.
- I’d say before de federating we should definitely try to engage with the offending instance’s admins to see if they’re acting in good faith, and if they have a plan for mitigating the issues.
  The way I look at it is that there are some things that are absolutely unacceptable. Violence, CSAM, Doxing, harassment campaigns, illegal activities, etc. These are a red line for de-federation.
  Then we have our instance rules. They circumscribes the behavior that we allow and don't allow in communities on this instance. Let's say this is the green line.
  There is a huge amount of grey area between the red line and the green line. I think that this grey area is best handled by individual users' ability to block and avoid communities and users that they don't care to see.
  Federating with an instance isn't an approval of their users or communities, it is simply a line of communication. Cutting that line should be avoided if at all possible. Otherwise we don't have a social media network, we have a few islands of instances and we're back to being no better off than the current social media where you need to create 50 different accounts to access each island of content.
  We don’t want to have our communities overrun with people who want to promote a negative atmosphere because the admins of another instance are unwilling/unable to moderate their users effectively, as it will just put undue burden on our admins and community moderators.
  You're absolutely right. If an instance's users are coordinating to harass or brigade our communities, then the admin staff should work with the other instance owner to resolve the problem. De-federation would be a last resort if it isn't possible to reach a resolution. That scenario fits into the 'harassment campaigns' category.
- Before de-federation we should talk to the admin/mods and also ban the accounts causing the problem.
  I don't think de-federation should be used to clean up the "all" feed, that is not at all appropriate or useful.

I apologize for basically duplicating this thread, I deleted my old post and I will just paste what I wrote bellow
[Discussion] Defederation posts; creating some form of criteria / framework
I feel like it is significantly more productive if we discussed and vote on a policy for what types of instances are reprehensible to the point that we need to seek defederation. We could still create a system where defederations should still pass a vote in the Agora, but I think having some type of framework / criteria in place would be useful.
I don't think federated instances have to follow our local rules entirely. I think they should follow the No bigotry rules, but if another instance has a sensible framework for self-promotion we should still federate with them even if we currently do not allow ads. Pornography is more complicated, I am assuming part of the ban is so TheDude doesn't have to ensure there is no CSAM, if other instances have porn and use NSFW tags properly I am unsure if the CSAM implications still exist for federation.
I think we definitely need to make some type of criteria for defederation but I also think it could be productive to still vote on defederation requests (excluding legal implications ofc)
- Agreed, I think there are definitely some local rules that instance uses to manage itself internally and some that are also standards that they expect other good neighbors to have as a basic floor on their moderation, and I also agree that the key one is no bigotry.

it looks like some people are realy itching to get instances defederated from sh.itjust.works. It's all they talk about.
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People you don't like exist. They probably don't like you either. Life goes on and the world at large doesn't care.
Please stop making up problems, we will run into real ones soon enough. Instead, how about we stop worrying about "Nazis" or "Commys" or whatever over at other instances and try to enjoy watching this instance grow for a change.
edit: some formatting.
- Defederation is a normal part of life in the fediverse, and this instance already defederates from the start. Healthy fediverse instances have clear standards for what instances they do and don't federate with.
  Normally those are defined by admin; in this case admin has now stated a desire for the community to make rules decisions. So, reasonable and normal to discuss. And reasonable and normal for folks to have disagreements about.
  This instance is already paying the price for lax moderation in having been defederated by beehaw, which regardless of how much you or I personally care about the content on beehaw does notably impact the user experience for many folks. And the more this site "stops worrying about nazis" the more that will happen. (And the more users will get fed fed up and migrate to instances with clearer moderation practices.)
  Not referring to you or anyone in particular, but it feels like a lot of the folks in this conversation had never heard of defederation before a couple weeks ago and are acting like it and the fediverse generally are a brand new idea. Defederation for Lemmy in many ways has higher stakes than it does for Mastodon due to being structured around communities and not just individual user -- but that's all the more reason to have clear standards for it.

That's a much more sensible approach to the question.
What were the criterias that lead to defederating from lemmygrad? That should give an idea of the reasoning that should be applied for other instances.
Disclaimer: I never checked any of their communities so I don't know how bad it is and I wasn't there early enough to see if they were brigading other instances.

I suspect there is no objectively right way to single out instances for exclusion to maintain a healthy community. There are clearly cases where it is necessary. An instance set up plainly as a place to automated spam needs to go. But we will see many edge cases as well, and these edge cases can end up being community defining for better or worse.
I might suggest, in addition to the existence of a well defined set of rules, putting de-federation from another instance, if there are objections, to a vote in the Agora, with a respectable supermajority (maybe 2/3) being needed to realize the de-federation. Violation of the rules justifies putting the instance on trial for being a crappy federation partner. But if no consensus can be found to that effect then, well, that's how it goes.

High volume of bad faith reports from the target instance on users here (e.g., if someone talks about racism here and a hostile instance reports it for "white genocide" or some other bs). This may seem obscure, but it's a real issue on Mastodon.
There is no way we should defederate an instance because of this. Particularly, as we know reports will grow as the number of users does over time anyway.
Breaking the users' experience because your tooling is insufficient is a bad look.
- Throwing up your hands and saying "oh well, you're gonna have to personally deal with all the trolls because we don't want to hurt their feelings to keep our rules in place" isn't better.
  When the tools are created, they can refederate and use the tools as needed.
  
  Bad faith reports don't imply actual trolls for users to personally deal with.
  Performing moderation actions on good faith reports from users is desirable.
  Disconnecting your own users from content they find useful because of the volume of reports that they can't see or prevent, just because you can't be bothered to do the moderation work is undesirable.
- Breaking the users’ experience because your tooling is insufficient is a bad look.
  The Beehaw method
  
  Indeed.

I think your examples fit pretty well!
I don't think defederating should be used as a 'mega downvote' button.

35 comments