Lately we have been dealing with a few abusive members from Feddit.nl and we were unable to get in touch with the instance administrator.
Part of the problem is the instance’s open registrations which do not require you to enter an e-mail address during signup. This in combination with an inactive admin is a recipe for abuse.
We hope this is only temporary but we have to do this to protect our users.
Edit: we use fediseer, have a look https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world
Edit 2: We got in touch with the Feddit.nl admin. Email requirements were added to the sign-up process and we’re setting up a communication channel. So that means we are federating with Feddit.nl again!
Stuff like this is going to kill the momentum of the fediverse. I’m a reddit refugee, my main account started on vlemmy.net (because it had a policy to not defederate from anything), and when that went poof, I moved to feddit.nl (because it has a policy to not defederate from anything). I believe it is MY prerogative, and no one else’s, to decide what I am or am not allowed to see. I curate my own feed by blocking or subscribing to instances I don’t or do want to see, respectively.
Regardless of any of this, however, I am now unable to view any content on .world without this account, due to actions entirely outside of my control. Since hosting my own instance is out of the question for me, my options are: find a third instance with a no-defederation policy that hasn’t been defederated itself from major instances, have multiple accounts and browse each instance individually, stop browsing altogether, or go back to reddit. As distasteful as the last option is, it’s tempting. I know the impulse will be to tell me “good riddance”, but I am posting this because I know there are others like me that are tired of instance hopping and trying to find somewhere that doesn’t try to police our browsing and also isn’t defederated from major instances.
For the record, I don’t want a no-defederation instance because I want to browse Nazi or pedo instances. I want a no-defederation instance because I have a principled objection to others telling me what I can or cannot view.
I actually prefer that instances can do this, the whole point is to find one you more closely align with like old school forums. The ones they’ve done this to are either mass brigading, full of Nazis or sharing CSAM. They have every right to protect their users from that kind of stuff or make those decisions when they’re individuals paying to run an instance.
Until there’s a tool I can use to fully block instances myself (which I don’t see available) this is the way it’s run. Maybe the fediverse just isn’t for you? As someone who grew up using old school forums this is completely fine and expected. If I am running a website (or store) I have every right to manage it the way I see fit.
If defederation worked more like a shadowban, I would agree with you. .world defederating with feddit.nl could result in no one from .world seeing any content posted by anyone from .nl, but .nl can still see the content from .world. It’s unfortunate that .nl couldn’t participate anymore, but it’s better than that community ceasing to exist.
Defederations as they exist now are like being in a restaurant. There are two employees, one makes the food, the other makes the drinks. It starts out with being able to order either, or both, right from the comfort of your table. However, the owner of the restaurant decides that he just doesn’t care much for drinks, and kicks out the drink-maker. The drink-maker opens a new store across the street, but he does not serve food, only drinks, and the restaurant you started at doesn’t serve drinks, only food. Yes, technically, you are still free to go across the street to get some drinks, or stay here for some food, but boy, wouldn’t it be nicer if that owner never decided he didn’t like drinks? Sure, not EVERYONE in the restaurant cares, but a pretty significant amount of them probably would. They might just go down the street to McReddits. Sure, the food there is pretty bad, but at least they can get both food and drinks without having to go across the street.
A user on there posted CSAM. Given that images federate too and that moderation over there seems to be lacking, do you not think it’s unrealistic not to expect defederation?
I never said I didn’t understand. I’m pointing out a problem that can, and I believe, will, lead to issues with user retention. If one is punished for the bad actions of someone on their instance that they have no control over, it will lead to frustration. I know this because it has happened to me twice now- once with vlemmy disappearing due to someone posting something bad that spooked the admin, and now feddit.nl because someone posted something bad that spooked these admins. I’m not saying it’s not understandable, I’m merely saying that a problem exists.
I expect the Admin’s priority was to worry about potentially inadvertently hosting CSAM rather than user retention.
Two problems can exist simultaneously. I’m suggesting that something should be done about defederation, and the things that lead to it (like automatic image proliferation), because if defederation continues as it is, it will hurt user retention.
It really won’t. Mastodon has whole block lists and has done for years and guess what - user retention is no problem at all.
From what you’ve commented here, you’re annoyed that you keep picking instances to join that allow shitty things to happen and then don’t. The issue there is not defederation, it’s that:
In the real world, instance Admin’s are legally responsible for what’s on their servers. If you want to defed from absolutely no one then you need to rent a VPS and spin up a Lemmy instance of your own. That way, the legal risk is all your own.
I mentioned elsewhere, I don’t have the ability to run my own instance. Mastodon also has user migration tools, making it much easier to start up a new account on a different instance. Lemmy does not. I’m also not even talking just about myself. There’s been drama about large instances defederating from each other since I joined- which, to be fair, was only a few months ago, but it’s also when the population exploded and defederation became a real concern. My main problem is the simple idea that, due to actions entirely outside of my control, large sections of the fediverse can just disappear for my account, forcing me to either accept the newer, smaller fediverse, or make a new account somewhere else that happens to federate with both my previous instance AND the defederated instance if I want a single account to view the same content I used to.
This is part of the growing pains, once moderation tools mature, this type of federation will be less of an issue.
I think so too, especially if and when users get the ability to block entire instances. That will prevent some of the defederation-for-wrongthink (in either direction, it doesn’t matter), and as it matures, I think the “accidentally hosting CSAM” will be less of an issue as well.
LASIM can help you move all your account details. Lemmy is nowhere hear as mature a product as Mastodon so it’s no surprise a lot of what Mastodon has, Lemmy doesn’t - yet.
I’m really not sure you’re ever going to be able to have what you seem to want because it doesn’t exist. There’s a limited set of tools available and if an instance Admin isn’t being vigilant, there’ll always be fuckwits ready to do shitty things. If the only way that other Admins can tackle that is defederation then that’s what’ll happen. It’s not going to affect user retention because I think the majority of people are quite prepared to accept that unmoderated instances are a liability of a much greater scale than defederation.
I’d say that’s fair. I understand that what I want is unlikely to come about, it’s a somewhat extreme view, and due to Lemmy’s current configuration, admins are on the hook legally for everything posted on their server. Something needs to change for defederation to change, and it’s very likely that defederation won’t change. I’ve only ever been expressing a concern of mine. Lemmy doesn’t cater to my will- I’m not even a programmer, I couldn’t do any of this stuff even if I had the power to do so. I just hope that it does change.
Which you want someone else to be legally responsible for providing you with.
What about abusive users that post in communities outside of their home instance? I think that’s what we’re talking about here. I can block instances, but there are communities in Lemmy.world that I enjoy and I appreciate the admins effort to keep abusive users out.
Each user can block other users. Moderators can block users. It can be handled the same way that other sites (yes, like reddit) do it. I’m also not opposed to defederation when it is essentially a single-user ban- for example, if there is an instance with no communities, no signup requirement, and has nothing but malicious bots- that’s banning a bot farm, not “defederation” as it’s commonly understood. But with something like this- where feddit.nl is actually a rather large instance- so many people are essentially being punished for absolutely no fault of their own.
Do you understand that when CSAM images are uploaded to an instance, they are federated to other instances as well?
Even if users have the option to block whole instances themselves, there are STILL going to be instances Lemmy World will not be federating with because we don’t want to risk having any of that on our server.
And feddit.nl had a user that posted csam on our instance, which then federates to other instances. So basically everyone gets a copy.
I do understand. I’m expressing a worry that things like this will lead to trouble for the fediverse’s user retention. Nowhere did I say that I didn’t understand the reasoning. It’s not a requirement to have a solution at hand when pointing out a problem. An instance as large as lemmy.world defederating from an instance as large as feddit.nl is a problem. Is the solution giving moderators better tools? Stopping the automatic proliferation of images? Removing the image hosting entirely to rely on external hosts? Or is this an insurmountable problem with no solution? The specific answer, or even existence of an answer, does not determine whether the problem itself exists.
There would not be a problem if the instance was managed. Everyone can start an instance but it takes a lot more to keep it running and moderated. Check the problems beehaw.org are currently going through.
And as you point out, feddit.nl is quite a big instance but it only has ONE admin. That is a problem. And that is also something to remember when you decide on which instance you want to host your community.
I don’t host a community. At a basic level, I would like the ability to view (and I mean VIEW, not even necessarily interact with- I cannot force my interaction on anyone) the entire fediverse for myself. If other people want others to tell them which areas align with their views, they can join instances that block other instances from being able to participate. I just wish that didn’t mean the defederated instance could no longer even view the blocking instance.
It sounds like you should host an instance. This will give you the abilities you want, unless you provoke defederation from someone.
I’m unfortunately unable to host an instance. I wish I could, honestly.
@PrinceHabib72 @antik are you concern trolling? Because this sounds like concern trolling. You know what they say, you let one Nazi in your bar, soon enough you’ll own the Nazi bar.
I’m legitimately unfamiliar with the term. I’m being very genuine. I’m not sure what you mean about the Nazi bar, either. I’m encouraging users to curate their own experiences. Any time they see a Nazi, they can figuratively erase that Nazi from their personal existence. If they see a Nazi bar, they can erase that too. I object to being TOLD, rather than deciding for myself, what bars are Nazi bars.
@PrinceHabib72 The metaphor is not from the individual but from the bar owner’s (or instance admin, if you will) POV.
One Nazi shows up at a bar, the owner goes to kick him out. But a concerned patron disuades him by saying that free speech is important and if anyone doesn’t want to talk to the Nazi they are free to ignore him. They are perfectly capable of choosing who to talk to and don’t stand to be TOLD who they can or can’t talk to.
@PrinceHabib72 The next day the Nazi guy shows up with 9 of his friends. The other patrons notice the tattooed swastikas, banners and bigoted talk, it makes them uncomfortable. They ask the owner about, who says that they have not been rude or disturbed anyone.
But the word quickly spreads all over the neighborhood.
The third day, no other patron wants to go there anymore. Only the Nazis go to the bar. It’s a Nazi bar now. And the owner is stuck with it.
That helped me to understand what you meant, thank you, but I guess I don’t see this analogy as very accurate. A Nazi showing up at a bar and being asked to leave is not what I’m against- that’s what moderation IS. What is more accurate here is that a Nazi shows up at a bar, and a completely separate group arrives at the same time. Since they arrived together, they are ALL made to leave, despite none of them controlling the Nazi’s behavior. That’s what defederation is like on that side, and the other is that I am told that I am not allowed to visit the Nazi bar. To be clear, I have no interest in visiting the Nazi bar, but my issue is- how do I trust that it IS a Nazi bar if I’m not allowed to visit? I’ve seen so many people called “Nazi” in the past ten years it blows my mind, and of them, only a tenth or fewer are what I would consider Nazis/neo-Nazis. I’ve been called Nazi in real life because I expressed my opinion to a friend that I was disappointed Ariel was cast the way she was. Do I hate black people? No, I just think redheads are hot and I was disappointed. Juvenile, absolutely, but worth being called “Nazi” by a passersby who overheard? This is obviously an exaggerated example, but I believe the point stands.
There is a common thread in your complaints. This isn’t a problem that’s going to kill the fediverse it’s a problem with instances without moderation. Turns out shitty instances that don’t care about moderation are the same ones that “have a policy to not defederate from anything”. Stop joining shitty instances that allow literally illegal content and you won’t have that problem.
Yes, but I outlined my reasons for wanting no defederation. VLemmy was perfect- refused to defederate, actively moderated- until the issue with image federation spooked him. Also, saying “illegal content” is a bit meaningless on a globally distributed platform. On both instances- feddit.nl and VLemmy- many users outlined very similar rationale to me when the issue of defederation came up, and you and I both know that defederation is not used only for unmoderated instances. Lemmygrad is aggressively moderated and defederated from most instances because the owners find the political views expressed there distasteful, and that’s not the only one.
It just introduces so much personal bias into the fediverse, where individuals who don’t like Thing A defederates from instances that allow Thing A, cutting their entire instance off from it. Again, yes, you can join other instances, but that quickly gets annoying trying to find another instance that aligns with your Thing A-positive or neutral views. This is what I’m referring to when I say that it will kill the momentum- users getting frustrated and having to make multiple accounts to essentially dodge a completely unjustified ban (assuming they weren’t the ones doing the Bad Thing that caused the defederation) will lead to burnout and lost user retention.
As I also said, there will certainly be an impulse to say “good riddance, we don’t need them anyway”, but I think it’ll lead to more problems. The fediverse has existed as a small pocket of internet for a while. However, things don’t shrink as easily as they grow. If lemmy continues to get time and money and resources poured into its development for an ever-shrinking userbase, it won’t just go back to how it was. Growth is hard to undo.
Frankly, good riddance we don’t need people who won’t stick around because bad instances are defederated. That’s not a problem that needs to be solved, it’s a feature.
I know a lot of people agree with you. I’m just not one of them. I prefer a more open internet is all, where individuals are responsible for their own personal “defederations”, and don’t lose access to vast portions of the fediverse due to someone else’s actions and decisions unless they go out of their way to keep instance hopping.
You should then pay to create the site you want then as you’re in a small minority. That’s how the free market works. Your comments do seriously come across as concern trolling at this point.
Removed by mod
They ever said they were ok with child abuse, and saying this is seriously not ok.
I disagree with them on their view of lemmy and defederation but painting them as a child abuse advocate leads nowhere.
Trust me, I would if I could. It’s a shame that I can’t.
BS, what you’re saying has nothing to do with an “open internet”. Stop co-opting terms, a fediverse instance defederating isn’t a closed internet. The other instance still exists and you can still access it if you want to.
Thank you for telling me what I want, I guess? There’s a lot between “open” and “closed” internet. Defederation is certainly more towards closed than open, no? And I would prefer it to go the other way, that’s all.
There are laws you know, claiming a fediverse server should work outside the law is idiotic and not at all principled.
I didn’t say they SHOULD work outside the law. What are you talking about? When I say “pedo instances”, I don’t mean ones that post real life CASM.
having a ‘principled objection’ to others telling you that you can’t see child sexual abuse tapes is very admirable and sounds much better
i doubt its going to change anything though, since ‘principled objection’ to laws doesnt actually stop said laws from applying to you, or the site youre using
Ah yes, the two things- acceptable things and CASM. EVERYTHING IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS.
this case of defederation is specifically literally about users posting CASM
You don’t get to decide what others allow on their instances. It’s regular people hosting these servers and these same people having to moderate and manage those instances. They are the ones who face backlash and the repercussions for what’s posted on their servers so if they choose to make the decision to defederate to protect the instance community as a whole then that’s their choice. Long story short, tough shit. Don’t like things being defederated, create an account on a different server. Or better yet, create your own server than you can choose who you do or don’t federated with and what happens on that server can be your own responsibility.
I think this issue could be addressed on the front end.
The reason you would want a server that is federated with everything is so you can access all content at once instead of switching between accounts on different instances. If you could log into multiple instances at once with a single username and see content from both in the same feed it wouldn’t matter if they are defederated. I think this federation thing ought to be, as far as possible, transparent to the end user.
The way this currently works feels odd to me - it doesn’t really behave like a decentralised Reddit, because your account is tied to a specific instance and the content you see depends on which instance you pick. It feels like an awkward middle ground between a centralized service like Reddit and just having a completely separate forum site for each community.
Whaa whaa whaa…
Bullshit, you chose a server that invites illegal content on purpose. It was entirely within your control to NOT choose such a server.
Feddit.nl rules explicitly state no illegal content, so it seems to be not so much inviting illegal content as a failure to moderate account creation and post content, like OP alluded to.
feddit.nl invites illegal content? Someone should let them know that, they’re doing an outstandingly bad job at it if that’s the case.
Just to play devil’s advocate; it seems like maybe an instance with a very active mod team would be another criterion to add to your list.
I feel like the fact that you still consider Reddit an option invalidates your entire point.
If we could control instance level blocking on a user level it would be much more feasible.
In general sure, but not for problems like this. That wouldn’t address the issue in the OP at all.
It won’t protect a server from getting illegal content on their drives. Best to defederate if that is happening and can’t be dealt with otherwise. If you have some other method of dealing with illegal content on your server and wanted to host a Lemmy instance that is federated with everything it would only be appealing to me if I could block instances myself.
I don’t get this? You understand that it won’t protect a server from getting illegal content on their drives but you still want a server that is federated with everything so that you yourself can choose what to block?
Those two things don’t seem conflicting. Some bad actor right now could upload illegal content to lemmy.world. It’s not like lemmy.world can defederate with itself as a solution. It must deal with it by deleting the content. An instance could potentially delete illegal content coming from everywhere on the lemmyverse. This would take a lot of work so if you didn’t want to bother doing that for instances other than your own you would defederate.
If some instance owner for whatever reason decided to take on this work either manually or with some automated process that allowed an instance to exist that is federated with everything, but clear of illegal content then it would be an appealing instance. Assuming I could curate my own instance block list.
That won’t change how we would handle instances with bad actors?
Sure. This isn’t a solution to the problem lemmy.world is having. I just think this feature should exist.
Well I heard that is coming in the next Lemmy update
Absolutely agreed. I hope that becomes a feature soon, I know it is or was being worked on.
Sounds like you want a Distributed/Decentralized service like Nostr instead of a Federated service like Lemmy, you should join there instead, I’m sure you’d be right at home there.
I like it here on monero.town because we have a good admin and the requirements to get an account here are high enough to make someone jump through a few hoops. None of the super big instances like world, ml, or beehaw have reson to defederate us. Some smaller ones defederate us do to ideology but its not a big loss.
Dunno why you’re being downvoted. Defederation feels like a gung-ho way of handling content moderation issues that centralized platforms would be able to directly solve.
It is a gung-ho way, but I understand why I’m being downvoted. People hear “I want to have the ability to view anything” or “I don’t like being told what I can or cannot view on the internet” as “I want to view CSAM” or “I am actually a Nazi”, which should result in an emotional reaction. It’s just not what I’m saying.
The problem is that the fediverse is an unmoderated mess, especially with how Lemmy and Mastodon are currently set up.
What’s stopping griefers from setting up a brand new instance to spam existing communities with CP?
Of course you speaking bad about the fediverse = downvotes because you’re mainly talking with fanboys.
Nothing! But how are you agreeing with PrinceHabib who’s saying that should that happen it would be up to him to decide whether or not he wants to see that. Skipping over the fact that the illegal content would be hosted on several instances.
Show me one Lemmy admin that would disagree with your statement about Lemmy being an unmoderated mess? Every instance admin has been asking for better tools from the Lemmy devs for months.
I want to be crystal clear. The content I am talking about wanting to view does NOT include CSAM, which is illegal in practically every country on earth (I’m fairly certain it’s actually all of them with any type of functioning government). At no point was I or am I advocating for the existence of CSAM anywhere in the fediverse. The only things I have ever advocated for is for fewer defederations, and dealing with those infractions as you would if it were posted to lemmy.world- namely, deleting the content and blocking the user. I am fully aware that mod tools on lemmy are very limited, and that your hands were tied with a fairly tight rope in regards of what to do about this as you can be legally culpable for content posted on other instances that gets mirrored to yours. I have only ever pointed out that punishing a group for the actions of a few can lead to problems with user retention by forcing innocent users to continue to instance hop, and that’s if they don’t give up and leave the fediverse. I would bet that very few of feddit’s users feel as I do about defederation, and they joined that instance for reasons completely unrelated to that. This is essentially being banned from many communities all at once through literally zero fault of their own. The solution I want is unlikely to occur, nor is it feasible with what lemmy currently has for tools, but that does not stop me from wanting that solution. Many people do not see defederation as a problem, and that also does not stop me from seeing it as one.
I completely agree. Believe me, I get why the admins are making the choices they are. In the current situation of how the fediverse works, it’d be stupid not to act. I just hope that it’s able to be addressed- no more proliferation of CSAM through duplication on every instance, better moderation, more control- so that defederation doesn’t have to be used in these situations.