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.
Here is the answer.
Autoblock spam and illegal content Make a "not cool" communities list and allow users to check a button upon signing up to block instantly.
Problem solved.
I am massively against defederation when at all possible- However, I will draw the line at illegal content.
The reason being- when content is federated, a copy of it is stored on all subscribed instances.
I REALLY don't want the feds knocking on my door. So- I will take a strict stance there, for protecting my own well-being. My server isn't hosted in a country where anything goes.
If- it is content which is against the rules of the instance where it was posted- by all means, I will give the admins a chance to handle the issue. Otherwise- nuclear option.
You are right to be concerned here. Since it touts self hosting, storage should’ve been decentralized and encryption designed in a way to legally protect hosters. Alas, we have what we have, which will require a lot of moderation until it matures more. Fingers crossed. Being responsible is the best we can do right now.
There shouldn't be one "not cool" list on signup, that's just /r/popular then. Every user should be able to make their own list. And every other user should be able to subscribe to any other user's list if they don't want to manage it themselves. But it shouldn't bet set up and defaulted by the admins. If you aren't able to at least do the bare minimum to curate your experience then just go back to facebook or reddit with their recommendation engines.
I will elaborate. Every user can and should make a list of instances they personally don't like, but admins/mods are also users. They're just telling you that we don't like these instances, but it's your choice on whether you want to block them or not. Maybe they shouldn't show it to you upon signup, I sort of agree there but a new user showing up and needing to start by cleaning up the place to their liking is a bit of friction for them. Will make a stronger selling point for another server that just defederates by default.