EDIT: It seems that I have may have gotten the wrong impression about the community structure here from the @TheDude comment I listed below. It looks like this should have been posted to The Agora. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Now I must go find fresh air and see if I can find this grass thing that I have heard so much about.
First, let me say thank you for spending your time and money on creating and maintaining this instance.
Second, the name sh.itjust.works is great. It gives me a little half smile every time I type it.
Third, I am hoping this can be my Fediverse home base but I have a single concern.
Now on to the meat:
I have been over on lemmy.world for the last few days and really enjoying the content and experience, but as I was learning more about the Fediverse I realized they have blocked a whole slew of other instances. Most of the reason I have grown to dislike and distrust reddit over the years was because of their random subreddit bans that didn’t follow their own rules and processes, so it was a pretty big turn-off for me looking at the lemmy.world Instances List.
When I heard this instance only had two blocked instances, I immediately came here to check it out. I quickly saw like-minded individuals genuinely engaging in reasonable discussion about what should and should not be defederated, so I decided to go ahead and make an account. It didn’t take long though before I decided to look into why each of the instances were banned.
It seems like burggit allows simulated CP which is a pretty decent reason for blocking them in my mind. On the other hand, the only thing I could find about lemmygrad.ml was this (https://sh.itjust.works/comment/130474) post that says you blocked it because of your personal convictions.
Given that this instance is your own personal project, I certainly don’t fault you for choosing what is acceptable and what is not, but I am concerned about making sh.itjust.works my home base if it is just the start. Based on the previous post it doesn’t seem like something you are going to change your mind about, nor do I have an interest in trying to convince you to do so. What I would like to know is if this is going to be a regular thing.
Are you intending to block any instances with political opinions that you are staunchly against? Further, are you planning to create any sort of standard for what kind of instance you are likely or unlikely to ban in the future?
Bonus question for my curiosity: What makes lemmygrad so against your personal convictions? While I have a basic understanding of Marxism/Communism and am aware that current communist countries have a pretty questionable history of violence and suppressing personal and political freedoms, I think an objective viewer might say the same thing about the representative republic that I live in.
tl;dr: Are you going to block other instances for personal reasons? Also, are you going to create any standards to indicate which instances may be blocked in the future?
That instance is full of sympathizers of Mao Zedong, Stalin, they’re in favour of a authoritarian regime. If you are in favour of that stance may as well migrate there if you don’t believe in the so called free world.
Welp looks like its time to swap instances, admins are damn cops, sure ban the loli shit but defederating with ppl because they hold the same views as a billion+ ppl on the planet is borderline insane
There is now @goat doing a “lemmygrad findings” collection here: !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for anyone who is interested in those gems.
I know goat pushes some buttons (whether just due to being contrarian but earnest or actively trolling - I’m still kind of on the fence about that beyond ‘they’re kind of a dick’), but I’ve said this would be an interesting concept before, so it’s neat to see it in practice.
Will reserve judgement until I see what’s being curated, though.
Two thrusts to this: re: your community, haven’t followed it too closely, but from what I did see it’s mostly just shitting on tankies. That’s fine I guess, though my thought was more sifting through the garbage and sharing posts of decent quality/worth seeing despite defederation or the larger tenor of the instance.
Re: you specifically - also haven’t followed too closely (have reverted to lurking more in fewer communities - bad Cracks!), but maybe the binary I mentioned is a little too stark. From what I have seen, you’re opinionated, maybe contrarian for its own sake sometimes, but apply it evenly. I saw you getting in people’s faces over at EH too, and it looks like you don’t care which side of any given divide you piss off - gotta respect that.
And moderating FoxNews? Obvious but legitimately hilarious bait, and I have to tip my hat. Edit: Though you might not anymore?
You can unsub from the Agora then. Discussing shit like that is kind of the point of it.
What? We’re not currently on that community. Your reply does not make sense.
I vote we ban ‘can we ban “can we block x” posts’ posts.
Kidding.
Or am I.
Hi Nahvi.
Thanks for posting this well put together post. I can tell that you put some time and thought into this and I want you to know that I recognize that.
Regarding your concern, this is a topic that has been brought up numerous times over the past month. I’ve since moved towards being more community driven, letting users discuss and debate on topics that are important to them. These discussion move forward towards a vote over a 7 day period. This process will change over time as we come across flaws and look for ways solve them together.
One more thing I want to make clear regarding your tl;dr question Will I be blocking other instances for personal reasons? Short answer is no, I believe the community should determine what should or should not be blocked.
That being said I want to make myself clear that there are limitations, I will continue to defederate instances that openly promote or spreads hate speech, terrorism, CP, loli, trolling and instances that become bot instances. These shouldn’t be things that need to be justified, I think they fall under the “be a good human” category.
I hope this clarifies your concerns and you continue to make sh.itjust.works your home.
I hope Lemmy will one day support defederating from content and users separately. As I wrote in other threads already, and I will just take your word for it that lemmygrad really is promoting hate speech, I can understand and support defederation from instances pr9moting hate speech, but at the same rime, it robs me of the opportunity to engage with tgeir users even on other platforms. As such, if the option to separately defederate from content and users ever becomes available, I hope the lemmygrad users will be federated again.
will continue to defederate instances that openly promote or spreads hate speech
That’s great but please define hate speech and give us some examples.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
Hate speech is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation”.
@TheDude
Hello and thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.
I appreciate you clarifying your stance on future blocking for both personal reasons and along the human decency lines. While I may lean fairly deeply into free speech territory, I also recognize the need for certain limits. The balance you’ve struck seems to be very reasonable, though I admit to being a hair surprised by the community driven approach.
I look forward to seeing which direction the community takes the instance.
Are you planning to actively moderate against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia?
