this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Defederation is not the answer. Honestly, it's such a powerful and destructive tool that I question whether it should exist period.
Users should be treated like adults who are capable of determining by themselves what content they are comfortable with seeing.
If I don't want to see an extremist political community on my feed, I block that community myself. If an instance is full of such communities, I block that instance myself.
I don't want or need some other random on the internet to make judgement calls on what content I can or cannot interact with.
Defederation is a tactical nuke, that if used incorrectly will destroy the freedom, decentralization and openness of Lemmy, and replace it with a far more centralized series of walled gardens.
I fear that people are trying to recreate the reddit model on Lemmy. Lemmy is not reddit, Lemmy is better than reddit. Reddit is top down, Lemmy is bottom up. We don't need more mod control, we need more user control.
I would love to see more features built for user moderation of content. Perhaps I could subscribe to another users blocklist, or follow their 'recommended communities'. Instances themselves could maintain suggested block lists, and users could chose to enable or disable them at their own discretion.
I'm really not sure that defederation has any place at all. Even things like spam and bot instances I think would be better handled by a blocklist (enabled by default even), that users can turn on or off as they see fit.
Some people are so fragile that the MERE EXISTENCE of ideas they don't agree with are an existential threat, whereas I am proud to have friends and neighbors that we do NOT always agree. Ironically, having people around with different thoughts and ideas is actual diversity, which is the opposite of these 'curated safe spaces' that these overly ban-friendly instances seem to crave.
It's not a difference of opinion, it's spewing of hate and misinformation. By the time you address one thing, they've spewed another ten. So you stop and then it goes unchecked. I suggest you watch the "innuendo studios" channel on YouTube.
But de-federating ENSURES it goes unchecked....
Only in that little sub, and doesn't spread to the rest of the fed. Or shut it down like it was in this case.
But you're missing 2 points:
It's not merely a difference of opinion, which many people welcome. It's the spewing of hatred and misinformation.
There's no countering it because of the asymmetry of bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law It goes on and on and on, just flooding everything.
I don't know if you mean that as sarcasm. But we're talking about The Donald. That's one bag, or even one aspect of it. Not everything on the spectrum.
So block them and move on. Or if you disagree with them that badly, push to have that instance/community added to a public blocklist/filter. Defederation, besides being an overly authoritarian solution, damages the network in a way that can and will make Lemmy into a worse place for its users.
As instances start to defederate, it will matter more and more which instance a user signs up to. This will push users towards larger instances. As instances get larger, they will become less and less reliant on 3rd party instances for content, those instance admins will be incentivized to defederate from them, as they will a) not have as much control over those instances, and b) start to view them as competitors rather than collaborators.
The beauty of Lemmy and federation generally, is that information appears centralized to it's users, despite being decentralized in reality.
The more defederation is used, the more centralized Lemmy becomes, whilest giving a more fractured, confusing, and disorganized experience to its users.
Defederation will kill Lemmy. It needs to removed from the protocol before it becomes too widely abused.
I see Lemmy going down in one of two ways:
In fighting and fragmentation with overzealous use of defederation leading to walled gardens, and a terrible user experience.
Or
A major player like google or microsoft sees the potential in Lemmy. Starts their own highly funded instance that is full of useful features and a wonderful smooth UX. (That is all proprietary and only usable on their instance, naturally) Then when the majority of users are on their instance, defederate from everywhere else. (If you don't think this can happen, just look at what google did to xmpp).
My own personal blocking does not solve the problem.
I think you're on a slippery slope argument, taking it from 1 to 100 awfully quick.