Both host content that are against our content policy and have had issues with users from those sites entering our community crossposting content that violates our content policy. We are discussing defederating other instances as well. There is discussion of lemmit.online being defederated because it pretty much exclusively scrapes reddit content and reposts it, and some content creators have expressed discomfort. If there's other instances that might be worth considering defederating from, just post and it'll be added to the current discussion.
and before anyone brings it up, lemmygrad defederated with us.
This isn't a dictatorship but I ask that you please behave in the comment section and at least try to understand why we are defederating.
IDK if this is a hot take, but personally I think the only reason to defederate should be for content policy.
Otherwise, it should be up to individual users to block communities that they don't want to see.
When it comes to hosting a community like this that hands off policy when it comes to communities that reddit did for a time is not something we can repeat. I generally disagree with such community building ethos in general, but for a NSFW community that's trying not to implode the high probability that exploding-heads would cause issues serious issues against minority sexual communities here in the same way they have on other instances is not something I feel we can risk. Even more so, their content is poorly moderated in general and we aren't too sure where we are going to move hosts either. On instances that decided the same approach you feel, it has backfired hard when they have raided communities and began to harass and brigade people. Such cases are recent as well. I'd have to double check the modlog but I'm pretty sure they've already caused issues here as well on a consistent basis.
TL;DR: I don't want to set myself up to having to clean up a bunch of gore and NSFL images being posted into communities on here.
This is reactive, not just proactive. The history of exploding-heads is known.
I think it's absolutely valid to defederate if the users from a particular instance have a propensity to violate the content policy here.
For communication purposes, I think it's important to clarify and emphasize that this is the case and it's not done for political reasons. Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I always feel as though this is a slippery slope (e.g. defederating from the socialist instance, or the trans/lgbt instance). Personally, for transparency's sake, I think it's better to avoid giving the impression that admins defederate from instances that they simply dislike. IMO, the defederation process should go by a process that is clearly defined and a published policies/rules.
I'll counter with the point that there's nothing preventing someone from moving to another instance if they don't like the defederation practices of the one they're on.
There's sure to be at least one that doesn't care to defederate from anyone and/or one that only does so under the most severe circumstances. Worst case if you can not find one that suits your positions on defederation you can always start up your own.
Personally I'm inclined to think of the people in control of the federation keys as bouncers, keeping me from having to deal with the unsightly/undesirable/what have you.
If every time you go to (neighboring town) someone shoots at your tires, you stop going, right? But those (neighborhood town)ers really like shooting your tires so when you stop showing up, they come looking for you. How are you supposed to keep them away? But everyone's threshold is different. Some people may not mind their tires being shot at, those (neighboring town)ers are just expressing their freedoms. Others are uncomfortable with their tires being looked at weird. It doesn't make any part of the spectrum right or wrong, but different people have different wants and needs. It's no more fair for you to expect others to deal with their tires getting weird looks than it is for them to prevent you from getting yours shot.
That's how the splintering can be best for everyone. No one is forced anywhere they don't want to be. Whether an instance defederates too much or too little for you, you can pick up and move with very little effort.
This is certainly true, but I have a more pessimistic view that this type of fragmenting dooms this type of fediverse model from ever becoming mainstream. If every interest group splinters, eventually they're all small enough that they lack the weight to build momentum, as well as the resources to sustain the community long-term. We can see this in the mastodon nsfw instances (a bunch of them shut down), and IMO that's the inevitable fate of any small instance that lacks the numbers (read: financial support) to support a durable operation.