Lemmy

Would you defederate an instance for posting IRL child porn? How about AI generated or hand-drawn? What if it's not clear the ages of the subjects? What if it's just discussion about where to find it or how to make it? Now choose for videos of mass shootings or torture? Does it matter if it's war footage? If it's newsworthy? If it's for titillation? How about intellectual property theft? Or a community on the proper way to synthesize hallucinogens or sedatives? Would you allow sales posts as well?

My point isn't to answer those questions, but rather to say that there's a line somewhere and we, as part of the community, should choose where we're going to draw that line. It's not a programming if/then statement, it's a judgement by humans on what we feel is destructive to our society we're participating in. To point out just how absurd that last statement is, and implicate myself in the potential hypocracy of defederating any instance which hosts The_Donald, it's worth noting that my argument - the community based standards - has been used to outlaw all representations of nakedness and self-determination of reproductive health by parts of the US. But most of me doesn't care. In my world, The_Donald is a hateful, destructive, evil magnet and it has no place in intellectual discussions. The threat of defederation is specifically the lever or influence we have on our fellow instances to uphold some basic sense of self decency.

Sh.It.Just.Works should be engaged and should be part of the discussion as to why we feel that kind of community is destructive to the whole. And, in the end, if they choose to stay their path, then we defederate. Or I go find an instance that will. I left reddit because just one dude there was an asshole. Moving to an unfederated instance seems tame by comparison.

(quick edit - to be clear I'm not yelling at you, personally, but into the void. You happened to be at the top of the discussion and it touched a nerve. Please accept my apologies if I offended.)