Opt In Soft Defederation?

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/162716

Hello friends, I have been thinking about the defederation issue
I have a satirical post in mind for the subject but a different topic came to mind
what if instead of defederating, a "soft" defederation could be activated, where content basically is not served to users unless they opt in to it
So like say "shhhhhhitjust.works" instance activates "opt in soft defederation". Exploding Heads posts stops showing up on the instance, but users could still navigate to shhhhhhitjust.works/c/freeforum@exploding-heads.com and choose to subscribe and then stuff would show up
This would allow admins to be able to not promote content they agree with, while allowing users the ability to still interact with content they might approve of agreeing with
thoughts or has someone proposed this already?
we could also call for a new round of soft refederation if this idea is of use to anyone

edit: I suppose I should add I'm not really advocating for soft defederations at all so much as for them over "hard" or "full" defederations as have gone on as they drastically cut off all communication

20 comments

I would really rather see users eventually get the ability to just block an entire instance if they don't like the content there, and have admins step in for actual defederation in the case of illegal / abusive content
- I'm in for this. If we're worried about defedration gone wild, I get it, just let me have my own personal blacklist I can employ to filter all the trumpanzees out of my feed.
- Lemmy keeps showing me old posts like this one. Anyway, Connect for Lemmy (android app) has an instance blocking feature.
- I guess that's been raised on a github issue (see carbon's comment in this post) so it's just waiting on someone to code it I think
- In the case of that Detonating Craniums board, the content is indeed abusive. Having had the poor taste to peek, (NSFW, trigger: bigotry) ::: spoiler spoiler I saw a "joke" about throwing trans people into a woodchipper. Yeah, not funny. That's what they do - make it acceptable to murder people who are different. :::
  They're completely despicable. They need full defederation.
  
  I think you missed the point of this post.
  
  they need full defederation
  but then I can't come and discuss the topic with you at all
  I saw a post like you describe, but I think it was about harming not simply "people who are different" but criminals who abuse children. Throughout history such criminals were often punished severely with imprisonment or worse.
  So, we aren't able to have any discussions to try to clarify things with defederation. That to me is one issue.
  The other is I like to post random things that are kind of "neutral", like I was wondering what masks are recommended for wildfires or about how to improve lung health if you get exposed to toxic fumes, which I would presume most people might be interested in discussing: https://exploding-heads.com/post/161502?scrollToComments=true

That's called a "Silence" in mastodon parlance. Things won't show up in the global feed but you could still go to their communities and see posts there.

I think particularly when it comes to legally questionable content full defederation is the only option to avoid having the content in any instance caches at all.
- that's probably true, I guess from what I was seeing, a lot of the defederation questions didn't come down to legality but other disagreements about content
  
  I think a lot of the defederated porn instances were worries about legality.

Freakin joke yall are blocking leftwing instances but not the rightwing ones 😭
- I also think that you missed the point of this post. It's about giving the people better tools to choose what they see. That's a meta-discussion, independent of current debates.
  
  yeah, it's kind of a separate issue
  idk I guess I can understand political disagreements, but then I also post about "neutral" things like about health which is kind of for everyone, and defederation really unnecessarily cuts off discussion on topics like that, for example a post on how to "detox" lungs or improve the health of lungs: https://exploding-heads.com/post/161502?scrollToComments=true
  So I was asking the question if there is some other possibility between the binary option of federation versus defederation and the idea of a "softer" defederation came to mind. With discussion and considering options, maybe people might come up with other ideas (like people mentioning blocklists as another tool for creating the desired experience)

This interesting idea (has been expressed before) could be just made in extension of the "user blocks instance" ability, for which there is an issue waiting to be taken up by a programmer:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2397
This feature request has a "hide instance from 'all' feed" included:
More granular administration tools for federating with other instances #3255 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3255
The way a "soft defederation" could work is that an admin could have the ability to insert an instance block in every user's blacklist. The user could still unblock if they wish. That would have most of the future defederation discussions dealt with. I suggest adding this suggestion to the above feature request.
Edit: just added it.
- thanks for adding it on github, I'm glad to see some progress in the discussion
  looks like we just need someone to code it and it would become an available tool
  I'm curious then on who would want to use the tool(s) if and when implemented: perhaps that discussion could be posted about on various instances that are currently totally defederated with certain platforms?
  maybe the "instances" page could also have a list for "soft defederated" instances?
  
  Well, it's a much-wanted feature, so it will get known with ease, i think.
  About the interface, i could think about possibilities but i'd say don't make it look too complicated if we want to have it soon. ;-)
  We now have a page with blocked users and opted-out communities, and there could be another section with opted-out instances. That's how i would do it but i will not get directly involved in the development.

This seems like the user should just create a new sign in for the site if they REALLY want said content, instead of leaving it up for the devs to do the work. Like we do now.

Why would you even want to deal with that exploding-heads.com instance at all? As if the issues there are limited to those two communities alone

I like the idea

20 comments