I love this story, thanks for sharing it.

Yeah I'm finding beehaw a great, very active community. They're doing something right.

Great work! It's not that it's not possible. It's just not common.

For most it's an appetite suppressant. Bear in mind, exercise is rarely a weight loss tool. It's very important but it's not really a way to lose weight

I'm glad people have correctly realized that the French should be associated with violent anti government riots and not surrendering. That was a meme that needed to die.

It's not much better in other places. Lots of us rely on being "better than the us" so as it slides, so do we, just a few meters behind.

Politicians need to actually feel concerned about how the people they are hurting will respond. Currently they know there will be nothing more than a few grouchy news articles and upset social media comments.

I'm really tired of prescribing ozempic. It's the only thing I have access to that works, but it's not the wonder drug people think it is. Pretty much every other day I have to give the same speech about informed choice around it and how it works. I look forward to a brave new era where there are half a dozen others on the market that I have to give a slightly different speech about.

Aye

We can't do anything to enforce moderation of content on another server. If they come here to do it we can boot em.

You already know but posting for those who might not yet, the reason defederation is framed as a "slippery slope" is because they know full well that there will be a clone of exploding heads rising soon enough and we're going to need to continue defederating alt-right bot farms in perpetuity to maintain a good instance. They want to keep having two week long debates about it in every. Single. Case. By framing it as a slippery slope, they're hoping to keep these incessant arguments going on, forever, or until anyone decent has given up and left.

I'm sorry, you're the only representative of the instance in here responding to stuff like this and as a result I feel like I'm coming down harder on you than you deserve...

But you already have this guy and me in the thread who have left because of the instance's inaction and through it, tacit support of e-h. We're two who bothered to watch the server to see if anything actually happened. By nature, most people who left will definitely not have done this. They're just gone, they're not popping into agora to see if you got your shit together. I only did because I have a community I was working on and don't really want to restart it.

Your "oh maybe, I kinda guess it's possible" attitude here is the problem. You are acting now, great, but this was an incredibly slow response, it doesn't matter if your vote is tomorrow. It's already incredibly, mind bogglingly slow, and you still decided to post a day long debate thread before the vote (it seems to show overwhelming support for defederation, which I consider totally unsurprising, and makes me wonder again what you've been waiting for).

I understand a little about why it was so glacial, but you continue to appear to not understand that this was actually a huge issue, that in that time you let the server bias towards the alt-right, showed a general support for alt right topics, and alienated an unknowable number of users in the process. Those are all the sort of users you probably wanted to keep, the ones who aren't just content to see things go badly and will take action when they see it rather than stare like a deer in headlights. If they're like me, they were probably posting and trying to find out the delay before leaving in disgust. They're folks that care about having an instance that reflects their values, and you've let them - us - down.

That can't be undone, but the way you keep shrugging it off as though you really don't see it does not inspire confidence. It tells me that you think it's not really a huge issue that you lost a bunch of users who aren't comfortable with hate media showing up in their feed, stored on the servers they're using, because you're more worried about alienating the people who are okay with it by acting too quickly.

I don't disagree with any of this in principle, but I don't think any of it applies here. Time, evidence, and even some sociology have shown us that all we gain from trying to mix alt right communities online with other ones is an increase in conflict, alienation of people disgusted by alt right, and strengthening of the alt right as a result. This isn't a place for conversation and conversion in those regards. Helping someone through ignorance and extremism requires an empathy and understanding that is almost impossible to achieve online, and certainly isn't suited to this kind of environment.

As I said, I deal with this stuff in real life all the time. I talk to these people often, and have I think even opened a few minds now and then. I don't even attempt it online. It's fruitless. That doesn't mean I think they're all lost causes individually, but it does mean I don't want their distasteful opinions stanking up my leisure time as well as my professional time.

I like the cut of your jib, fella.

Yeah and if you replace "opinions" with "babies" then "shut down" with "murder" then suddenly you're talking about murdering babies!! Oh man. This is a real slippery slope.

My friend, I'm worried I'm going to come across dickish here in my next paragraph, so let me say that you've proven intelligent and pleasant to talk to and I think well of you from our conversation here.

With that out of the way, I'm not sure how - as someone who seems legitimately pretty intelligent and reasonable, overall - you could hold an opinion like this in the year of our lord 2023. Have you not seen what's happened to public discourse over the last seven years? I think we're long, long past the point of wondering what the consequences of letting things that seem distasteful and unfunny in the particular vein of e-h go unchecked. It's an experiment that has been tested, tried, tested again, and tried again, and always to the same end. How many times do we need another /pol/ or r/t_d or r/conservative or r/asktrumpsupporters or on and on and on and on before people are allowed to point at something like this and say "yep it's this again" and be understood?

Have you watched the alt-right playbook? It's a wonderful summary of what people are concerned about.

You want me to explain myself, but don't want to read what I say. I don't quite know how you figure that will work, but I appreciate you being up front about it I suppose.

Lol I almost responded with, “I appreciate the options.”

I chuckled good at that. And I too enjoy conversations like this, no worries. This thread has mostly been nice, intelligent discussion and I've liked it.

(bit concerned as it seems the trolls are now coming in, but I won't doomsay yet)

• Not every dissenting opinion is an obvious apologist account. If it were, you wouldn't see me through this thread all over the place having what I consider productive discussion with other people who have differing opinions.
• Within the post you just quoted, I explained why I am unimpressed. In the replies, I explained it far more. I find it a little hard to believe you could read what I wrote even in that one post and come up with that reply in good faith, but if you'd like to hear what I mean in more detail, try reading the copious explanation I've added in this very thread over the last six hours.

Frankly, I think the evidence thus far suggests that users do side with me, so your hostility is both unwarranted and kind of nonsensical.

I gave you some extras above in case you ran out, no worries

I apologize for being a little harsh here but I don't know how this is a reasonable response to what I said in this very thread. Edit: woops, apology rescinded, didn't realize you were just here to troll. Blocked instead.

I think I've made it very clear that my problem isn't that I feel the admins were beholden to that very flawed vote. It's that there was a nine day gap of nothingness including very loud refusal to respond to requests for information.

That vote was literally the first thing users did with agora, almost the moment it opened. Clearly it's something users of the instance feel strongly about. Personally, it is something I consider time sensitive and that is deeply important to my own values. I'm willing to assume this is a problem of new admins on a very rapidly growing server, provided a show of good faith from here onwards, but taken on its own it is a bad look. At this stage, sh.itjust.works has taken longer than any other major instance to address the problem with e-h. Even this thread, which is a step in the right direction, is more deliberation. I suspect it's going to be another week of careful deliberation, foot-dragging, and hand-wringing to decide whether or not we're okay with hosting and serving this sort of pure garbage, which I literally found only by opening their front page and screencapping the two most recent posts.

It's an easy fucking decision, we don't need a month to decide if we're going to be a breitbart link share site.

I agree, but also I think defederation isn't the bogeyman it's being made out to be. Remember that when instances are federated, they download, store, and transmit information from each other. Sh.itjust.works is currently hosting alt-right stuff from e-h. There are plenty of things I don't like that I'd be fine just blocking myself, but I also have a line, which e-h crosses, where I am no longer willing to be an active member of a server that's okay with hosting and amplifying that signal. Even if I could block the instance from all my feeds, I'd leave sh.itjust.works for being a passive supporter of that stuff. I definitely wouldn't donate to help pay for server costs, or try to increase traffic by hosting a community on it.

There are, however, plenty of cases where I - as someone who comes here to relax - would prefer to block particular instances and to have better control over blocking specific users and communities, but would not be put out by the instance as a whole still being okay with that content. This isn't that. And as I've said elsewhere, if the community disagrees, that's fine. I'll go somewhere else, where the instance better reflects my values. I largely already have.

Option option option option <-- you may add this in there wherever you like, since you clearly love the word 😋

This doesn't make sense in a number of ways.

First, the problem most people have is specifically with the admins of exploding heads. I don't imagine they're attracting a great userbase given the content they promote, but it doesn't much matter. If the problem was how they moderated their users it might be something we could discuss in a different way, but the problem is that the instance is run by the people causing issues. It will not improve, you can't isolate that without just removing the instance.

Second, if there are people at exploding heads who can abide by posting rules in other instances, nothing stops them from going to other instances. Defederation is a form of democratic selection. If enough people excommunicate e-h, then the users there who can post productively on other instances will go to other instances and not get banned, and all will be well.

Defederation isn't a vote to cut every user of an instance off the internet in perpetuity. It's a vote against the administration and content of a server.

Should be noted, I don't plan to silo myself with only like minded people. I have a line though, and exploding heads is well beyond it.

Thanks for the conversation!

Edit to explain further: for example,.even if I leave this instance, I don't have any plans to defederate from it in my other instances. It will clearly be a place far more "okay" with the alt right than I am, but that doesn't mean I need to remove it from my feed entirely.

Unfortunately we do not. We can block individual communities and users, but that also isn't perfect. I was getting pinged from a community I blocked a while ago because I left a post up there, and had to unblock the community to go delete the post in order to stop it, for example.

First, federation isn't just a passive series of links, it's paying to host and serve their content from our instance. I'm not going to be part of, and very much not going to donate to, an instance that's fine with hosting material like that.

Second, no, their admins are pretty visibly transphobic. It was seeing their transphobic memes in my feed, before this conversation even came up, that was my initial problem. Since then there's been far more stuff. Had it been a few users maybe this conversation would be different, but it's the admin and from there the entire community. I intend to be an active part of the community I join on Lemmy - I think that's really the entire point of the federation model - and I'm not going to be an active part of a community that, as I said, stores and serves that kind of stuff.

Further, I'm on here for fun. My job deals aplenty with stress along these lines... I don't need it in my relaxation time as well.

You're quite welcome to feel differently. If the vote goes against me I'm just going to leave for a place that fits my needs. Likewise I encourage you to do the same. That's how it's supposed to work.

Exactly. Thanks.

I get you, but federation is a form of sharing. We're downloading their content and storing it on our server for people to see.

I'd be quite willing to donate to an instance (I'm donating to my other instance), but I won't pay for bandwidth and storage for alt-right garbage.

Yeah, and it sounds like they were wanting to implement just that first. The problem then is mostly not telling anyone the plan, and I think that was a lack of realization rather than ill intent. We'll have to see how it all goes.

I don't particularly care which side of the neoliberal coin you want to place their memes. In fact I think by focusing on that you think this is a conservative/liberal debate is kind of telling on yourself a little.

I just don't want to platform people who, for example, call me a child abuser for allowing my kid to live the life they've asked to live. They can be as "liberal" as they like.

I haven't quite yet either or I wouldn't be here. I'm just concerned. This discussion is a good step in the right direction.

First, I want to make it clear I'm not specifically talking about you personally, though I'm sure you're included in the group I'm talking about. I understand there's a lot of administration involved... That is one reason a big instance isn't a great idea, it takes much more work to do anything or make any significant changes.

I was pretty active on this instance and I have no idea who manages what. All I know is agora opened, we had a vote, and then we had a long period of people asking what's up and not being given any answers. Something like "we'd like to get a better voting system in place first" would have gone a long way.

Like I said, it's not as much about the lack of speed as the lack of communication. The timeline went "announce that major decisions will be democratic -> community votes to defederate almost immediately -> a week and a half of radio silence". If they weren't ready to start voting on such things yet, then let us know. If they felt the vote wasn't rigorous enough, just let us know. The chosen path can easily be interpreted as "the vote didn't go how we wanted so we're ignoring it", particularly when any requests for answers were generally, well, ignored.

Again, you're misunderstanding the idiom you used.

There are bad apples in the bunch. bad apples spoil the bunch. You can't "not allow a few bad apples to spoil the bunch", spoiling the bunch is what they do.

Understand, it's not that I think exploding heads in specific is the root of all evil. The nazi bar effect isn't the result of one bad actor turning everything bad. It's that sh.itjust.works has demonstrated that it takes well over a week to respond to what appears to be pretty blatant alt-right stuff and a public vote to disavow it, with pretty much admin silence over that week. Where were they? Why choose not to act? More importantly, why not say anything about the choice? This makes it look like a prime place for anyone sympathetic to come around and start astroturfing, and that's what they've done.

I'd feel much differently if there'd been any kind of explanation of why the first vote on agora was just summarily ignored despite the topic cropping up multiple times per day before and since, but aside from "we need some time to think" buried into comments, I'm not aware of anything. The admins were thinking something, and that is fine, but we weren't given the option to decide if we agreed or disagreed with the reasons for delaying and now rre-voting. I'd call that a bad look any day, but it's a much worse look immediately on the heels of big talk about making the server democratic.

I'd be happy to talk about why I think large servers are a mistake any time. The explanation is even partly couched in these answers, because I know some of the reasons things are slow is because of the size of the server.

Then we disagree on what is heinous, and I suppose that's how it's going to be. I think they are well past the line for "people I want to platform on social media", which is what federation ultimately is. It is not a legal action or something.

You can always just make an account over there to do that, without expanding their platform.

Hate groups rely very heavily on people sharing their shitposts around and amplifying their messages under the "look how dumb these dummies are" flag. That's what got Trump elected and why I have been forced despite every protest to know who fuckin Gr**n and B****rt are in the alt right. They thrive on the shadenfreude shares.

let’s not allow a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

That's the saying though. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. That's why you remove the bad apples. That's literally what that saying is about.

First link in parent post, original vote thread had lots of examples. Edit: the Lemmy.world posts also have examples.

My vote remains to defederate. Their administration are among the worst of the bad actors; to me, that is the primary issue as the admins will determine the shape of the instance. I have already pretty much abandoned this instance though, so take of that what you will. There is, in my opinion, an excessive amount of hand wringing and foot dragging over what should be a pretty easy question. As a consequence we've been flooded with very obvious apologist accounts and their bad faith arguments to protect their friends. I'd like to keep this account active but I'm deeply unimpressed with how this has all been handled and I no longer have much faith that sh.itjust.works is able to prevent itself from becoming a nazi bar.

In general I think instances this large are a mistake.