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.
I’m late to the discussion, but, I’d be a fan of temporary defederation until Lemmy supports users blocking entire instances. I’m not overly big on the idea of defederation in general, I feel like it hurts the fediverse overall. But I don’t want to see those asshats either. I keep blocking the communities as they pop up. But it’s not really my place to tell everyone else what kind of content they can and can’t enjoy.
And I imagine that even on an instance that leans that way, there are probably still “normal” communities too. If the world’s biggest and best “cute cat pictures” community somehow manages to spring up on an instance that also has a Nazi community, what then? If my only interaction with that instance and it’s users are through cute cat pictures, and I don’t ever know that the guy who posted the cat pic also happens to like swastikas and sucking camel dicks, why should I even care?
In the real world, unfortunately, the guys who like swastikas and sucking camel dicks also seem to really like telling everyone about it. So keeping them federated still gives them an ability to try to infect others. Because they definitely won’t stay in their little box.
So anyways. It’s hard. My preference is to leave it federated for those that want to see it, as long as there’s an easy way to block it for those that don’t. Since that doesn’t exist just yet, I’d be for defederation for exactly as long as it takes for Lemmy to implement instance blocking at a user level. Then open it back up and everyone can make their own choice as they see fit.