Idea: if you mod a community on a lemmy.somewhere you should be able to migrate it to lemmy.elsewhere which would include all post & comment links being forwarded and subbed users having their subscription updated to reflect the new location.

I'm aware this would be a way down the road as user account migration alone is still not great but it would be a great feature for the fediverse to have to avoid centralisation and mod/server admin wars.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Aux 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That will break federation in a very bad way. Imagine you're on such instance which doesn't want NSFW content, but you subscribe to a NSFW community. Admins block it and you don't even know it, you just don't see your community anymore. What do you do? Create another account elsewhere? The whole point of federation is to use one single account EVERYWHERE. Otherwise it's no different then Reddit and Hacker News - just two random online sites and you have to create a bazillion of accounts everywhere.

Admins should not block anything coming from outside instances. Admins should never defed. Instead you, as a user, should have all the tools to moderate your own feed. If you give away your rights and freedoms, you'll lose them forever and you'll be abused on Lemmy the way you were on Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want your freedom – whatever that means to you – you go to an instance that represents those values. Admins that run their own instance get to decide how they moderate that instance. And that includes blocking (or defederating) whole instances, communities, or individual users. You don't have to sign up to one that does something you don't like.

Besides, you don't seem to understand the importance of moderation. If it wasn't for the ability to defederate, we'd have tons of fake instances with fake users creating fake posts. Not to mention people going out of their way to make others feel miserable. Do they have the right to spew their hatred? I have my opinion, but it doesn't matter. I happen to also have the right to join an instance that has a policy to take care of that stuff so I can browse for things that actually interest me.

[–] Aux 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you people even understand what is the point of federation and Fediverse? Because it seems you don't and I'm tired explaining... In short, you should use Reddit instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How long have you been part of the fediverse? (A term which tends to not be capitalized, by the way. *nerd snort*) It's not about you getting to interact with every instance using just one account. It's about putting the power into the hands of ordinary people. Including the power to associate or disassociate with certain people, communities, and content. That includes an admin's ability to go "I see you're not sufficiently moderating your instance. We will defederate until you've taken steps to ensure your instance sufficiently moderates with common-sense rules.". Whether that is due to some content policies or to block an instance from which a ton of spam originates.

Just how with email a provider can choose to block or automatically mark-as-spam any email coming from a server they don't trust, for example because it's a known source of spam. It's actually how a lot of the internet works. And it works as long as well-intentioned people are in positions to make such decisions. And if a server or service goes rogue, they get the equivalent of defederated.

[–] sangle_of_flame 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

then the question is why the hell did you make an account on an instance that doesn't want to interact with NSFW content (presumably it's in their rules) when you want to interact with NSFW content; like I don't see why you'd do that if you knew the rules beforehand

[–] Aux 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you understand what the point of federation is? The point is to have one single account to interact with the whole Fediverse. It shouldn't matter where you register your account, all Fediverse should be accessible to you.

[–] sangle_of_flame 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that's not the point; the point is to not have a single group dominate the site and to make it easier to avoid bad actors (bigots + fascists, because there's a lot of that online) by just blocking the instance they live on

the "one single account" thing is a bonus, but definitely not the main reason for federation

[–] Aux 0 points 1 year ago

Lolwut?