Authority deciding what you see? You mean like Reddit does? With Lemmy you can always change servers, heck, even set up your own server with your own rules.

The problem for those operating a Lemmy instance is that they are hosting copies of the content of all federated instances.
So if one instance is filled with illegal content, the admins of all federated instances must remove it on their instances to avoid law enforcement kicking down their doors.

If there is too much illegal content on one instance to effectively moderate manually, defederation is the solution.

This is beside the fact, that some might have their own additional non-legally mandated requirements for content they host on their platform.

Why would we want to do that instead of just dealing with them one by one when needed or just individually blocking communities/users?

Who would be "dealing with them one by one"? People seem to keep forgetting that lemmy, both the code and the infraatructure, is developed and maintained by hobbyists, not by a company.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with an authority deciding for me what I may see in my feed and what not.

You should really think about this, in my opinion, entiteled attitude.. You are not the one paying for the server, you are not the one running the server you are certainly not the one who will have to deal with potential legal actions if illegal shit is going on on your instance..

You are not entiteled to any of this.. You don't have to pay in any way for any of it and lemmy admins don't earn any money from you..

Imagine not only getting into trouble for a hobby, but have random people complain about "authority" because you don't want to/can't deal with potentially illegal shit on your server..

If you are so concerned about "authority" and about "what you see on your feed", start your own server and federate with whoever you want, or start a server that is collectively owned and controlled by it's users or something like that.. You can very very easily do that..

If you don't want someone to decide who you can connect with, you can spin your own instance. Otherwise every instance has admins that aren't you

No one is stopping you from joining a server full of Nazis.
Those openly avocating violence and cruelty towards others who are being neither violent or cruel aren't "just another reasonable point of view that deserves to be heard"

1. Why would anyone want to stay connected to a Nazi community, except for the obvious reasons?

2. Nothing prevents people from just creating new accounts on another instance of lemmy - ban evasion is trivial.

If you're uncomfortable with this feel free to set up your own server.

You seem to be saying that moderation actions should be performed against users, not instances. You're not getting that instances ARE users. On a network where anyone can create an instance, and then as many accounts on that instance as they like, moderating accounts from a hostile instance is POINTLESS.

Two things.

First, you can opt to follow that instance still, but I don't know why you would want to hang out with a bunch of Nazis.

Second, I liken it to cutting out a cancerous growth. If you have an instance infested with Nazis and those Nazis are not being stopped due to a lack of admin and/or mods or worse actively being promoted by an admin then defederate them to keep the Nazis from spreading.

Look at the incel and redpill movements that happened on Reddit. Failure to act quick enough helped the movements grow. They were vitriolic to most people but most of them didn't break any rules. They were destructive in nature and validated misogyny but Reddit didn't act until it was a very vocal and well established community on its platform. Now, even after closing down their major subreddits, those users who weren't the most extreme still actively espouse the values of those communities and have created new subreddits.

Or in this case Beehaw has some very progressive ideals, with rules that require a lot more active moderation, they can't handle the influx of everyone jumping ship from Reddit. Instead of leaving the gate open for people who will ignore the rules it's better to shut it and open a smaller "apply to join" door creating a protective barrier from individuals that may be Nazis.

In closing, I've both been a shitty redditor and seen shitty redditors and I appreciate that the fediverse has tools to decouple and recouple as needed. And again, if you like hanging out with Nazis that instance still exists and you can willingly hang out with Nazis.

If Nazi content is something you don't want blocked, then I recommend you find a different instance because not many people will share your values here.

Everyone missing the point because the example is "Nazis". It doesn't matter what it is, I don't want someone else deciding what I can see. Unless it causes legal problems for the server, don't censor me.

Individual servers isn't the quick answer everyone seems to think it is.

Yeah, admins need the power to block communities for all users on their instance. You don't want to have a list for new users of "communities you might want to block". They should be blocked for you, and the list of blocks should be publicly available.

Can you elaborate more on this? Its a tangent, but one I'm out of the loop on.

Why DID beehaw split?

What I actually DID say is that allowing mods admins to defederate entire communities is stupid. If you want to talk about THAT, fine.

I think you're really misunderstanding a lot about the fediverse if you think everyone must federate with everyone. Choosing who you federate with is a fundamental part of the design. It means communities can choose their own ways to operate, and we don't have to apply universal rules to everyone.

If a bunch of nazis want to run a server and post racist shit all day we can't stop them. But we can (and should) defederate from them. They can have their own private island. If someone wants to run a "safe" server for (e.g) LGBTQI+ and defederate from some of the big instances, they should be able to do it.

If you want to be in a community that allows almost everything except racism, and other horrible shit, and federates with almost all servers then there are plenty of servers that support that. You are free to choose that. That freedom to choose is a massive feature (not flaw) of the fediverse.

You can argue it should be user-level, and again that's something you can choose. But there will be servers almost everyone wants to defederate from, and don't want to leave it up to user-level blocking because new users will see horrible shit as soon as they log on for the first time.

I didn’t say or suggest a single thing you just said.

Of course you did. You said that the defederating thing turns you off the concept of Lemmy, and you advocated for it to be not-a-feature.

You are advocating for centralised mega platforms owned by mega dictators.

The are two options. Centralisation, or decentralisation. That's it. There is no magic alternative. This is the material reality that exists.

If it turns you off Lemmy, then what you are advocating for is centralisation. The literal polar opposite of what the entire fediverse aims to be and exists to solve. There is not an alternative and there will not be. You either get one owner of a super site or thousands of owners of minisites that federate in order to be emulate a supersite without the oversight. That's it. There is no third-way.

Admins* defederate instances*. Mods only have power inside their /c/ community.