FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH @lemmy.fmhy.ml nbats @lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 yr. ago

Defederation Policy

What is Defederation?

Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and users from our instance will no longer be able to see anything (communities, posts or comments) coming from it, and their users won't be able to see anything coming from ours.

What will get an Instance Defederated?

Our goal is to avoid defederation, but we will do so under the following circumstances:

The instance spreads overwhelming amounts of drama, hate or negativity.
The instance is mostly made up bots, and or promotes spam.
The instance allows the harassment or doxxing of others.
The instance knowingly hosts CSAM or other illegal content.

Has FMHY Defederated Instances?

Only two, both for breaking the 1st rule above:

exploding-heads
lemmygrad

Things to Note:

There are circumstances where we may block a specific community within an instance, rather than blocking the entire instance itself, but this is very uncommon.
Remember that if there's a community you don't like, you can block it entirely in settings.
Keep in mind that our goal is to keep this community safe, so if you see something that breaks our rules please don't hesitate to report it.
If its something urgent, you can always contact us easily via Divolt 💬. Its connected to our discord, so there are mods online 24/7.

78 comments

Oh, thank god for defederating exploding-heads.
- Shockingly like pulling teeth on some instances. But they'll defederate meta and lemmygrad in a heartbeat. Says a lot about some folk, but whatev.
The hysterics over the as yet purely hypothetical prospect of Facebook/Threads being on the fediverse, along with some worrying signs of censorship, have caused me to to flee lemmy.world. Here’s hoping FMHY will be a better fit for me.
- It became the largest instance and the one to absorb most of the attention-seekers that expect to be treated as "customers", despite the instance admin (of lemmy.world) emphasizing they're all volunteers working for the community.
- Threads already violates rules 1 and 3, hosting people who escalated their harrassment into real life multiple times already, so I hope the decision to block them (should they ever choose to federate) is a no-brainer to FMHY admins.
  
  How is threads more overwhelmingly negative or tolerant of doxxing than other major platforms? Like what is the basis for your comment?
Permanently Deleted
and their users won't be able to see anything coming from ours.

That is not true, beehaw defederated from sh.itjust.works, but we can still see posts from beehaw in our feed. Granted, if we comment, nothing gets sent back to beehaw, only members of sh.itjust.works will see those comments.
- Are members of defederated instances informed/notified when they comment (or interact in general) under a post of instances that defederated from them? If the answer is "no" then it's trash design. If the answer is "yes" then it's good design.
  
  There is no formal warning, like from the software, but the admins did explain this and most just removed beehaw comms from their subscriptions (or at least I presume), but I kept them, for experimental purposes, to see if this is actually true. I don't actually see anyone commenting in those posts. They appear empty. I know they aren't cuz I can view beehaw from other accounts, but to sh.itjust.works, they appear empty.
  
  The thing is I don't think an instance can check if it's being defederated by some other instance in the fediverse. If there is an easy way to check this, than yes, I do believe a formal warning on a post on an instance thay has defederated from you is in order. Things are kinda chaotic now regarding other bugs and features that are more important, but when things kinda settle down, yeah, I believe they should look into this as well.
I just hope this is done as an absolute last resort, and doesn’t become common practice.
- People have been highly vocal about de-federating from XYZ instance because they're "transphobia", "nazis" or something else they object to.
  
  People should be looking at the tools they currently have, blocking communities/magazines or whole domains, that way content you don't like is hidden just for you, without impacting anyone else.
  
  Banhammers on an admin level should be a method of last resort
  
  That was exactly the problem with exploding-heads. EVERYTHING on it was some kind of hateful bullshit. It wasn't one community that you could easily block.
  
  I'm really hoping that lemmy implements blocklists like mastodon so users can block instances themselves soon.
  
  Agreed 100% some places way over moderate and create these horrible echo chamber safe spaces- no thanks. I’m an adult. I can manage my own queue, and If I’m offended, I can block things myself. I don’t Like over moderation
So what does deferedating from them do for us? I wasn't seeing their content anyway because it wasn't popular enough to end up on all.

Does it have any practical effects for fmhy users?

I personally joined this instance because so many other large ones have massive federation lists. So if the only effect of defederating is to send a message, then I'm not sure I'm for that.
- Yeah they haven't become a huge issue for us yet, but they have for other instances, and most of our reports of "racism" have come from things posted to exploding. Deferedating isn't to send any sort of message, its just to prevent having issues with them in the future.
Can always check https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/instances . Blocked Instances are at the bottom
Yes, very cool. And about Threads, I will probably block Threads myself just because it's a twitter clone, it doesn't need to be on lemmy. But people should be able to make that decision themselves.
- I think preemtive defederation/blocking from Threads is the most logical decision for every instance since we are talking about a known hostile company, not something new testing the waters that nobody knows how it will behave, it's Meta being Meta (even if they are trying to hide it behind the "by Instagram" slogan).
I would have preferred to have a no-defederation policy (except for maybe threads due to EEE fears), but as long as it is not swung around constantly, I am okay with it.

The two that are blocked are political circlejerks that I personally dislike anyways. I am hopeful there is not more.
- We want to use defederation as a last resort and hopefully when users are able to block instances themselves we'll be able to use it even less frequently. I dislike defederation personally as well, and like Nbats stated here, if the community's opinion of those two instances change and the instances themselves make their communities safer we'll refed.
  
  Good. Hell, once the user-instance blocking thing comes out, give people a list and instructions to block those political instances, porn ones, etc. etc. I always like it to be on the user level, rather than some over-arching force telling me what I can and can't view. Freedom to make the decision for yourself should be a large priority.
- Does EEE mean embrace, extend, and extinguish?
  
  Yes.
exploding-heads

:o
- Out of curiosity, what’s the deal with exploding-heads? I keep seeing them referenced negatively all over several instances.
  
  Edit: thanks for all the replies! I’ve got it now hahaha
  
  At first I thought it was just some edgy troll community, but it didn't take long for me to find a fairly upvoted comment saying "look, I just don't like immigrants" or something like that. So yeah, seems like that kind of place over there...
  
  It's basically alt-right spam. Lots of Breitbart links, right-wing culture war mouthpieces and memes, etc.
  
  Check coments here: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/809481
  
  They're basically /r/the_Donald.
  
  It's a fairly far-right instance, which makes it unpopular with many left-leaning members of the fediverse. Tt also tends to export a lot of trolls and drama that cause it to get defederated by mainstream instances that don't want to deal with the moderation hassles.
Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and our users will no longer be able to see communities, posts or comments from users on the defederated instance.

It should be noted that it's a two way street, no? They won't see any content from here either?

Also, I thought single community ban from other instances wasn't possible yet? I remember the vlemmy guy saying that before going MIA.
- I've been hearing different answers on this lately, particularly regarding Lemmy.world and Beehaw. Beehaw defederated LW, but not vice versa. The result is that no one on Beehaw can see any posts on LW, but users on LW are seeing some posts on Beehaw. It doesn't seem to be a complete cut to all communication.
  
  But that's still something worth bringing up - Here is the list of instances that block FMHY, and are (somewhat) effectively isolated from us here:
  
  https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=lemmy.fmhy.ml
  
  The only one that's significant is feddit.de. From what I can tell, it's because FMHY has open registration
- Yeah good point, I just added that it goes both ways. As far as blocking single communities go I don't have all the details but I've been told we've done it for one so far.
  
  Is it possible to list blocked communities in the /instances page? Or at least list them in a post? Just so users know what's being blocked.
Isn't lemmygrad a community on the lemmy.ml instance, not an instance in itself?
- Nope, it's an instance
defederate enough and people will switch, much less friction to just go to a more open instance. much better than what we had with centralized sites.
- Don't defederate enough and people will switch to a less objectionable instance.
  
  It's a balancing act.
  
  how is it the instances job to moderate for the user? I get defederating from like spam stuff, however the user should be in charge of its own flavour. Well, we will see what approach wins, i just find it odd how one can choose federation over centralization and still prefers to be babysit.
Censorship is cool again 1 month after reddit fucked up
- It's not cool, but if you think defederation is censorship then you can switch to a different instance. This is a non-issue.
- This guys's posts are exactly what you'd expect from someone that gets offended when an alt-right instance gets blocked.
- Defederating from people who support bombing innocent people is not censorship 🤦
  
  The US has its own instance?
  
  In the same way it's ok to punch nazis.
- Umm..... What did you think the point of mods on reddit was? The mods we chose to support and followed here to lemmy and kept the community on track?
  
  And you know you can just lurk on here and can use another instance that better fits your idea of the type of conversations you want. There's nothing keeping you from making an account on exploding heads and chatting away with them. You can multiple accounts you know.
  
  I left Reddit because the admins killed third party apps. Not because I was a fan of mods blocking whole communities, which wasn’t actually a power that Reddit mods had.
- I mean our goal is to not have to do this, but its up the individual instances to protect their own reputations and neither of the ones we blocked have done that so far. If they clean things up and the communities overall opinion of them changes then we can consider federating with them again but as of now they have too many people against them.
- You really gotta look up what censorship is before you use the word.

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