Didn't want to further derail the exploding heads vote thread, so:
What are the criteria that should be applied when determining whether to defederate from an instance? And should there be a specific process to be followed, and what level of communication if any with the instance admins?
For context it may be useful to look at the history of the Fediblock tag in Mastodon, to see what sorts of stuff folks are dealing with historically in terms of both obvious and unremarkable bad actors (e.g., spam) and conflict over acceptability of types of speech and moderation standards.
(Not saying that folks need to embrace similar standards or practices, but it's useful to know what's been going on all this time, especially for folks who are new to the fediverse.)
For example:
- Presence of posts that violate this instance's "no bigotry" rule (Does it matter how prolific this type of content is on the target instance?)
- Instance rules that conflict with this instance's rules directly - if this instance blocks hate speech and the other instance explicitly allows it, for example.
- Admin non-response or unsatisfactory response to reported posts which violate community rules
- Not sure if there's a way in lemmy to track incoming/outgoing reports, but it would be useful for the community to have some idea here. NOT saying to expose the content of all reports, just an idea of volume.
- High volume of bad faith reports from the target instance on users here (e.g., if someone talks about racism here and a hostile instance reports it for "white genocide" or some other bs). This may seem obscure, but it's a real issue on Mastodon.
- Edited to add: Hosting communities whose stated purpose is to share content bigoted content
- Coordinating trolling, harassment, etc.
For reference, local rules:
Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
No Ads / Spamming.
No pornography.
The issue with the ban-happy people is that they equate offensive content to direct harm.
That's literally what they want.
They don't want to change anyone's mind. They want the echochamber.
These are the same users to use the downvote button against people they disagree with.
They're more comfortable living in filter bubble where their ideas are always correct and nobody can even possibly challenge them.
That's fine for a child, but an adult needs to face the world as it actually is both good and bad. It's odd to want to live in a democratic place but don't want to participate in the marketplace of ideas that is vital for making a democracy work.
IMO democracy is merely tyranny of the majority. It's playing out right here in this community, on this instance.
What I really want is a benevolent dictatorship, ala a modern Marcus Aurelius with strong convictions. I hoped The Dude was him, but alas he decided to wash his hands of it and leave it up to community.
Who gets to define "benevolent?"
That's the problem, isn't it.
I think anyone would be happy with a benevolent dictator, as long as they are allowed to define it themselves. That's obviously not practical though. I don't think democracy is ideal, but it seems to be the best system we have.