What is Defederation?

Defederation means we have disconnected our instance from another, and users from our instance will no longer be able to see anything (communities, posts or comments) coming from it, and their users won't be able to see anything coming from ours.

What will get an Instance Defederated?

Our goal is to avoid defederation, but we will do so under the following circumstances:

The instance spreads overwhelming amounts of drama, hate or negativity.
The instance is mostly made up bots, and or promotes spam.
The instance allows the harassment or doxxing of others.
The instance knowingly hosts CSAM or other illegal content.

Has FMHY Defederated Instances?

Only two, both for breaking the 1st rule above:

exploding-heads
lemmygrad

Things to Note:

There are circumstances where we may block a specific community within an instance, rather than blocking the entire instance itself, but this is very uncommon.
Remember that if there's a community you don't like, you can block it entirely in settings.
Keep in mind that our goal is to keep this community safe, so if you see something that breaks our rules please don't hesitate to report it.
If its something urgent, you can always contact us easily via Divolt 💬. Its connected to our discord, so there are mods online 24/7.

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[-] Maebbie@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

defederate enough and people will switch, much less friction to just go to a more open instance. much better than what we had with centralized sites.

[-] Zorque@kbin.social 26 points 1 year ago

Don't defederate enough and people will switch to a less objectionable instance.

It's a balancing act.

[-] Maebbie@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

how is it the instances job to moderate for the user? I get defederating from like spam stuff, however the user should be in charge of its own flavour. Well, we will see what approach wins, i just find it odd how one can choose federation over centralization and still prefers to be babysit.

[-] Zorque@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Because there's no one broad brush one can paint everything with to solve all issues. It takes a variety of approaches to solve the variety of problems that occur in the world.

Those running instances are people too, and they create their instance for a purpose. If that purpose is to let people go hog wild, including bigots and authoritarians, then they can refuse to do any defederating (or moderating, I suppose, if it's solely the responsibility of the user to curate content as you purport). The thing is... that doesn't make an instance particularly palatable to people who dislike when other people are dipshits around them. And, rather than get into prolonged troll-baiting contests, they decide to just go somewhere better... all that leaves is the bigots and authoritarians... and the people who feed their need for attention by arguing with them.

I don't believe cutting everyone out who says something you object to, even to the smallest degree, is a good solution. Often people are teetering on the edge of extremism, and just need a rational counterpoint to help them tip the right way... but sometimes you just need to remove toxicity from your life. When it comes to running instances, you can either take the laissez faire approach and let people do whatever they want... and welcome the extremists that draws in. Or you can take a more active, albeit gentle, hand. So you promote a place worthy of discussion and fun.