this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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I mean I'd rather people have freedom over their property (aka their servers) than one entity be able to dictate to the entirety of lemmy.
If I set up a server my instance will have my rules. I won't allow NSFW nor will I allow any hate speech or promotion of extremist views such as nazism, fascism, imperialism, anything encouraging violence or threats, religious extremist beliefs such as sharia law and fundamental Christianity etc.
I would not federate with any instances that break MY rules. That's why it's my instance. I made it, maintain it. My interest isn't getting as many people on my instance as possible but to give a space for people who want to participate on that kind of instance. Some instances will focus on hating LGBT and being sexist etc and while that's horrific they're allowed to do whatever as long as it doesn't break lemmy TOS which i honestly don't know what it is. Anyway, it's weird to see anyone label freedom to do what one wants with their property as being dictators.
The problem with defederation is that it causes damage to the wider network, and can be far too easily abused.
It makes instance selection very important to the user (which is already a major friction point). And causes terrible UX when users can't figure out why content is unavailable to them.
It can also be used as a weapon by powerhungry admins to force centralization around their instance.
I know there aren't really great alternatives to defederation for content moderation right now. But I think that these could easily be implemented. For example, instances could maintain a 'blocklist' which users could automatically be subscribed to upon joining, but they would be able to inspect and 'opt-out' from blocking certain instances or categories if they desired.
I think this is a good balance of protecting users, and also respecting their freedom.
Keep in mind that this doesn't mean they could POST rule breaking content. (They are still users of your instance after all). Just that they would have the choice of which content they feel comfortable with VIEWING.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And defederation is a nuclear powered sledgehammer lol.
There is no lemmy TOS by the way. There is no central authority to all of this. Much like real life, people tend to stay away from the weirdos and in the fediverse they just defederate from a group of weirdos if it becomes too bad.
But to be honest, defederation is an absolutely minor inconvenience. Most important instance will of course cooperate and have similar rules. It's just that we are on a very young platform right now and the moderation tools are not as advanced as elsewhere. Currently, defederation is just a temporary band-aid solution to make the admin's lifes easier. It'll get better and sort itself out over time.
If you like spreading hate, you will of course always have a problem with defederation. You likely won't be able to participate in normal discussions on normal instances as well as vile portrayals of humanities' worst with the same account. But that's not a new concept. People have had two accounts for normal discussion and things like NSFW subs before.
there is no "lemmy TOS". lemmy is only a piece of software that can be ran on a server. it is licensed under the GNU Affero GPL, a copyleft free software license.
this means that pretty much the only legal "terms" you need to abide to run the software on a server is that if you modify it in any way, you have to publish the source code so that others can freely read and modify your version, the way you read and modified the original (this is what copyleft means; it's the exact opposite of copyright).
the instance owner is the only one providing any "service" here, and as such they decide their terms (the site-wide rules for an instance). if you run your own instance on your own server, you are the only one who can dictate any "terms of service".
all of this is by design; the fediverse would be pretty useless if anyone could impose a global "terms of service" over it.