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
    5•1 year 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•1 year 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
        3•1 year 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•1 year 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•1 year 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
      -4•1 year 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
        -1•1 year 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
          -9•1 year 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.