Exploding-heads.com is another instance on Lemmy where alt-right MAGA types tend to reside. Some people on this server want us to defederate from them immediately, some people want to save defederation as a last resort. They have 104 active users (more stats below).
It seems that exploding-heads has also experienced a recent botswarm invasion. This is obviously another point in favor of defederating them, assuming you are worried about botswarms, which is currently being discussed here.
My advice to you all is please try to discuss this in a civil manner, we need not allow them to create divisive conflict inside our communities. No matter how the vote turns out, you're not going to be able to defederate from your fellow sh.itheads so be nice.
I've linked many of the previous discussions below so people who are out of the loop can get a general sense of the situation.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714 https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126 https://sh.itjust.works/post/410325
Lemmy.world just recently defederated them.
https://lemmy.world/post/747912
https://lemmy.world/post/577526
Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.
Ensuring diversity of servers is beneficial to the platform as a whole, but it is also not our responsibility to bear that burden.
TLDR, just wrap up any last points in this thread before we open the vote tomorrow. Please be civil.
EDIT: To clarify, this isn't the official vote, this is the final discussion. The vote thread will be posted tomorrow and you will only be allowed to make a single comment saying Aye or Nay.
EDIT2: Vote thread is up, this thread is now locked. Very lively discussion thread sh.itheads. Please try to be more respectful next time.
I disagree, federation should about joining things of value not about building a community with everyone at all cost except the most extreme ones. Every community should decide their level of participation in the world community, but it's every bit is as valid if this community wanted to close down and allow nothing but discussions about bunny themed sweaters. Would that make it a huge, popular instance where people wanting to expand their world-view want to part their attention every day? Probably not. Would it be infringing on the rights of alt-left-right-and-sideways groups? Not in the slightest.
The whole point of a federated network isn't that it's one big decentralized network where every node is identical but just harder to bring down, it's having a common link where you can join together however you like without the technical hurdle that exists for parking yourself on your device and checking twitter and facebook and reddit and mastadon and linkedin and a dozen disparate sites because all your friends siloed themselves in and you can't communicate. Here your knitting friends could be on one instance, your biker gang is on another one, your DnD group is on another and aside from your skin-head cousin who you can't see from 'this' instance because he's on a platform this instance didn't want to federate with, you can chat with them all. And if you want to chat with him too, you can find an instance that is wide open and join that one and decide if 'that' is the kind of experience you want to have. Or start your own instance and federate with 'everyone'.
You have great points on making communities more inviting, but the fact is that your argument has to convince each instance individually and that is the downside and the great part of federation. One central authority doesn't see your argument, decide you're right and then force all users of all instances that that's just the way it's going to be from now on. Every instance can embrace your view or tell you to bugger off. That's the freedom and benefit of the concept, not it's weak spot.
Do the right-wing people deserve a chance to be heard and understood. more or less YES. But that shouldn't force everyone and their dog to be the ones to give them that chance. There are people who have been abused by people like that their entire lives, there are people who would rather not listen to infantile profanity repeated in all caps filling up their front page. There are people who simply need a break from it or are just done with it. There's nothing wrong with one instance out of thousands deciding to cater to those people, just like there's nothing wrong with an alt-left site defederating with your sewing group because they think the content is boring and don't want it cluttering up their bandwidth.
There's room for everyone, while still giving people the right to choose where they site, and reserving the right for the people putting in their time and resources to chose who to defederate for any reason they like. If you or I don't like it, there's a nice list of alternatives.
Funny how people downvote some unemotional reasoning, isn't it?
While i don't really know if you answered to my comment or to some other, that last paragraph would could apply to anyone. And it's been said plenty of times, there are ways to go without abusing the defederation tool (which would lead to this same tiring debate being brought up over and again). People who don't want to see specific stuff can put it on their opt-out list, they could actually pay a programmer to implement an instance-blacklist asap, they can ask the admin of the offending instance to ban them, or they can choose a more safespace-oriented server as their home.
This campaigning is just abuse. Let's campaign for common guidelines and better tools instead.