Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:

  • Don’t like their content
  • Dont like their political leaning
  • Dont like their free speech approach
  • General feeling of being offended
  • I want a safe space!
  • This instance if hurting vulnerable people

I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.

Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?

Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148

Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!

  • phase_changeEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    A blacklist, to keep using the email protocol as example, is a tool used sparingly and only when other filtering methods are unsuccessful or when greater damage is prevented that way.

    Have you ever run a mail server? If so, have you looked at your logs? The RBL’s on the managed mail gateway for my work turns away 70% of the attempts. This is even before spam scoring kicks in on the 30% initially accepted. A significant percent of that is considered spam. Email has a complex set of automated tools to reject content without even viewing it.

    I still think email, even though federated, is a poor analogy to make for Lemmy.

    • HasturOPMEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Actually I do have my own mailserver and for obvious reasons I do not longer use most of the big IP based blacklists because they just don’t work well enough, some are basically blackmail+systems with pay-for-removal.

      It’s something else when you rely on third party (in my analogy the call for a filtering authority) than you being the one who makes the call and what is being filtered and why.

      As with spam filtering: If you rely on someone else to filter out stuff for you, you hand over control about what you get and what you see. The potential for abuse of this power is a greater danger in my opinion that having to do some extra work to set up filters myself.

      This is, BTW, the main reason my I deGoogled and set up my very own server.

      • phase_changeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yep, my personal domains have always been on my own mail server. My IP has been on the UCE-Protect blocklist for years. I believe it’s now up to an IPv4 /17. Luckily no one reputable uses them since it’s one of the biggest fake pay-to-remove out there.

        Like you, I want that full control and don’t want to trust (or pay) a big player.

        At work, where we have thousands of mailboxes, interacting with people on all continents, I’d much rather outsource that. It’s cheaper in the long run and takes up less of my time.

        If you want to get backs to email as a analogy for the fediverse, and I already think it’s a bad analogy, someone running their own mail server has the full right to block anyone, including all AWS ip address space if they want. Why shouldn’t someone running a Lemmy server have that same right?

        • HasturOPMEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          Somebody running (!) or administrating an email sever can of course make this call! I expect a lemmy admin to make reasonable decisions.

          But let’s keep that analogy: You’re an email sever admin and one of your users asks you to block everything coming from Amazon/AWS and affiliates, because they dislike how this company is run. Would you block the traffic or tell the user how to use filters at his disposal?

          • phase_changeEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            See, you’ve got another false choice here. /s

            What I’d do is ignore them and not engage, which is what I’d expect most Lemmy admins to do for most degeneration requests. By the same token if a user shows me clear evidence that the only content we’ve gotten from another mail server is spam or phishing that’s making it through our filters, I’d probably block it. Of course, no mail user is going to do that.

            • HasturOPMEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I’d expect most Lemmy admins to do for most degeneration requests

              Apologies, I make enough mistakes to not shame anyone but your typo made my day and I had a good laugh at it. Thanks! I will keep “degeneration request” in my list of favourite quotes.

              Seems that we don’t disagree that much. Thanks for engaging and joining in!