Exploding-heads.com is another instance on Lemmy where alt-right MAGA types tend to reside. Some people on this server want us to defederate from them immediately, some people want to save defederation as a last resort. They have 104 active users (more stats below).

It seems that exploding-heads has also experienced a recent botswarm invasion. This is obviously another point in favor of defederating them, assuming you are worried about botswarms, which is currently being discussed here.

My advice to you all is please try to discuss this in a civil manner, we need not allow them to create divisive conflict inside our communities. No matter how the vote turns out, you’re not going to be able to defederate from your fellow sh.itheads so be nice.

I’ve linked many of the previous discussions below so people who are out of the loop can get a general sense of the situation.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714 https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126 https://sh.itjust.works/post/410325

Lemmy.world just recently defederated them.

https://lemmy.world/post/747912

https://lemmy.world/post/577526

Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.

Ensuring diversity of servers is beneficial to the platform as a whole, but it is also not our responsibility to bear that burden.

TLDR, just wrap up any last points in this thread before we open the vote tomorrow. Please be civil.

EDIT: To clarify, this isn’t the official vote, this is the final discussion. The vote thread will be posted tomorrow and you will only be allowed to make a single comment saying Aye or Nay.

EDIT2: Vote thread is up, this thread is now locked. Very lively discussion thread sh.itheads. Please try to be more respectful next time.

  • socialjusticewizard
    187·
    2 years ago

    Understand, it’s not that I think exploding heads in specific is the root of all evil. The nazi bar effect isn’t the result of one bad actor turning everything bad. It’s that sh.itjust.works has demonstrated that it takes well over a week to respond to what appears to be pretty blatant alt-right stuff and a public vote to disavow it, with pretty much admin silence over that week. Where were they? Why choose not to act? More importantly, why not say anything about the choice? This makes it look like a prime place for anyone sympathetic to come around and start astroturfing, and that’s what they’ve done.

    I’d feel much differently if there’d been any kind of explanation of why the first vote on agora was just summarily ignored despite the topic cropping up multiple times per day before and since, but aside from “we need some time to think” buried into comments, I’m not aware of anything. The admins were thinking something, and that is fine, but we weren’t given the option to decide if we agreed or disagreed with the reasons for delaying and now rre-voting. I’d call that a bad look any day, but it’s a much worse look immediately on the heels of big talk about making the server democratic.

    I’d be happy to talk about why I think large servers are a mistake any time. The explanation is even partly couched in these answers, because I know some of the reasons things are slow is because of the size of the server.

    • imaqtpieOPMA
      152·
      2 years ago

      I’d feel much differently if there’d been any kind of explanation of why the first vote on agora was just summarily ignored despite the topic cropping up multiple times per day before and since, but aside from “we need some time to think” buried into comments, I’m not aware of anything.

      https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888

      Do you mean this post? This is not a functional democratic process. The OP himself describes it as a shitshow. If we had simply defederated them based on that, I’d have everyone else at my throat for allowing a sham of a democracy.

      This, right now, is a democratic process. I linked all of the other threads, the people have access to all of the information they need to decide on their vote. We are currently having an informative discussion.

      I think this is working, don’t be so pessimistic. Lemmy is going to be different.

      • socialjusticewizard
        91·
        2 years ago

        First, I want to make it clear I’m not specifically talking about you personally, though I’m sure you’re included in the group I’m talking about. I understand there’s a lot of administration involved… That is one reason a big instance isn’t a great idea, it takes much more work to do anything or make any significant changes.

        I was pretty active on this instance and I have no idea who manages what. All I know is agora opened, we had a vote, and then we had a long period of people asking what’s up and not being given any answers. Something like “we’d like to get a better voting system in place first” would have gone a long way.

      • haxe11English
        11·
        2 years ago

        The voting process was young. It probably wasn’t great. It might have even been a “shitshow.” But it was still good enough to agree on defederating a malicious instance.

    • jwiggler
      102·
      2 years ago

      I dunno, I didn’t even see a thread about it until today. Thats probably on me, but I’d rather slow-moving democracy rather than swift actions determined by the few, you know? I want explodingheads defederated too, but at the same time there needs to be some hesitancy when deciding to take an action like that. I’m not sure what the reason for the delay was for, but from my limited perspective I’m glad it happened, because it allowed me the opportunity to cast my vote.

      • socialjusticewizard
        72·
        2 years ago

        Like I said, it’s not as much about the lack of speed as the lack of communication. The timeline went “announce that major decisions will be democratic -> community votes to defederate almost immediately -> a week and a half of radio silence”. If they weren’t ready to start voting on such things yet, then let us know. If they felt the vote wasn’t rigorous enough, just let us know. The chosen path can easily be interpreted as “the vote didn’t go how we wanted so we’re ignoring it”, particularly when any requests for answers were generally, well, ignored.

        • jwiggler
          3·
          2 years ago

          Ahh, alright. Yeah, more communication would be good. But idk, I’m not sure I’m gonna call this community a wash just yet.

          • socialjusticewizard
            52·
            2 years ago

            I haven’t quite yet either or I wouldn’t be here. I’m just concerned. This discussion is a good step in the right direction.

            • jwiggler
              3·
              2 years ago

              Why not call for some sort of organization in the voting process? Call for a vote – Discussion – Discussion aggregation/voting (done by moderators) – Results + Implementation And have a set time limit on each of these phases. Or is there already something like this ? I guess this exceeds the scope of this particular thread

              I did not read the stickied post on The Agora…

              • socialjusticewizard
                5·
                2 years ago

                Yeah, and it sounds like they were wanting to implement just that first. The problem then is mostly not telling anyone the plan, and I think that was a lack of realization rather than ill intent. We’ll have to see how it all goes.

        • MomoTimeToDie
          37·
          2 years ago

          The vote was a total fucking sham considering how quickly the thread was locked to prevent further voting. If were going to go a democratic route, it’s entirely unreasonable to limit it to whoever was online at the time

          • socialjusticewizard
            23·
            2 years ago

            I apologize for being a little harsh here but I don’t know how this is a reasonable response to what I said in this very thread. Edit: woops, apology rescinded, didn’t realize you were just here to troll. Blocked instead.

            I think I’ve made it very clear that my problem isn’t that I feel the admins were beholden to that very flawed vote. It’s that there was a nine day gap of nothingness including very loud refusal to respond to requests for information.

            That vote was literally the first thing users did with agora, almost the moment it opened. Clearly it’s something users of the instance feel strongly about. Personally, it is something I consider time sensitive and that is deeply important to my own values. I’m willing to assume this is a problem of new admins on a very rapidly growing server, provided a show of good faith from here onwards, but taken on its own it is a bad look. At this stage, sh.itjust.works has taken longer than any other major instance to address the problem with e-h. Even this thread, which is a step in the right direction, is more deliberation. I suspect it’s going to be another week of careful deliberation, foot-dragging, and hand-wringing to decide whether or not we’re okay with hosting and serving this sort of pure garbage, which I literally found only by opening their front page and screencapping the two most recent posts.

            It’s an easy fucking decision, we don’t need a month to decide if we’re going to be a breitbart link share site.

            • MomoTimeToDie
              312·
              2 years ago

              It’s entirely reasonable the admins just left it silent because the only way such a rigged vote deserves acknowledgement is to condemn it.

              Also, funny how your proof the instance is worth defederating from is two posts, one of which is statistical evidence, and the other is literally just reporting on news that the Supreme Court struck down racial discrimination.