I’ve been talking with @[email protected], and we agreed it would be best to discuss this as a community. What are all of your thoughts on defederating instances with loli and shota? My thoughts will be posted in the comments.
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Personally, I joined this instance because it hadn’t defederated anything. It leaves the power to us, the users, to decide what we do or don’t want to see, rather than an admin. Defederating goes against the principle of free speech, as loli/shota content, while most find it distasteful, is not illegal, at least in the US, and so it is up to the user if they want to see it or not. I’m aware that “free speech” is a loaded phrase nowadays, but it is a principle I personally believe in quite heavily. The users can decide what they want to see or not. I believe defederation should only be used for explicitly illegal content.
Same perspecitive here. Recently joined, and the main reason for choosing this instance was it hasn’t defederated with anyone. While most people might be fine with defederating with these specific instances it makes it harder to choose this over any other instance that hasn’t done so.
That’s a fair perspective. I’m a bit more in favor of admin curation specifically because lemmy allows people to self-host, which gives the users complete control over everything in their personal instance. With larger instances with lots of people though, I think that the admins have a bit more power to curate a specific type of atmosphere or try to remove elements that they think are toxic to the community of the instance at large.
I mean isn’t it being a full on buffet for the users to block content they see fit a certain level of curation? Some give you finely tuned instances (beehaw), some give you a moderate amount of curation, and some give you, the user all the power and control. Why can’t there be a general instance that does that?
The admin already said that they don’t want to defederate, why not find an instance that has defaults that match and respect what you believe are same defaults?
I agree that curation can be great, but not every instance has to be tempered to your tastes. Personally that content is a hard block for me, but I don’t want my choice taken away. Look at what happened with beehaw, while justified, many users didn’t get the choice or power to decide.
I made this post at the direction of the admin, who was neutral on the issue and wanted to get feedback from the community, so this isn’t my personal agenda post but rather opening a community discussion.
That’s completely fair, I just commented late and missed the timely context. Sorry about that!
It’s all good. Issues like this bring about really strong opinions, but one of the things that I appreciate about Lemmy over Reddit is I think we’re a bit better about resolving conflict.
Also, in this specific case it’s perhaps not illegal per say, but what happen if you federate with an instance that host illegal stuff ? Due to the way fediverse works, the illegal content may be replicated on the server you own, so you’re starting to host illegal stuff on your server. I’m not a lawyer but I think you can have problems with the law for this kind of stuff. Probably you will need to prove that you’ve done everything you could to prevent this type of content.
Yeah, this type of porn is illegal in several countries, which could potentially block our instance for redistribution.
Would it? Federation with vlemmy doesn’t mean federation with every instance vlemmy is federated with. As long as it’s not illegal where you are, you’re all set on that front, and the instances that federate with us would have to federate with the other instances to get their content.
It’s moreso that when you join VLemmy it presents you with content from all of the communities we federate with, including the loli/shota communities. Some nations (I think Canada has been mentioned) with very strict anti-CSAM laws could potentially, therefore, block VLemmy’s domain because of illegal redistribution. However, I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know for sure.
when you join VLemmy it presents you with content from all of the communities we federate with, including the loli/shota
What I’d wish for as a feature is for the instance to be able to set a default blocklist of “objectionable” communities and allow users to override it if desired on an individual basis. Have the best of all worlds that way, and it feels like something that’s going to end up being a feature eventually anyways.
There are some things that are just so abhorrent that only absolute zero tolerance is an acceptable position.
Pedophilia is one of those things. Ban it all.
ESPECIALLY considering the massive amount of spillover between “lolicons” and fascists.
I agree that this kind of content is disgusting. So the policy should be that it’s not allowed on this instance. It’s perfectly reasonable for you to not want this content directly on your server.
But, I don’t agree with defederation. I joined a general instance to be able to go wherever I want. It should be left up to me what content I don’t wish to see and simply block those communities myself. If you start deciding for me what I’m allowed to see or not see then I’ll leave to a different instance. Today it’s the obvious “no loli or child porn or w\e” and everyone hops on board because it’s easy to just not be a pedophile. But that opens the door to defederation in general. Tomorrow it could be something else.
Do what you will but make sure to state it publicly so I can know whether or not I should bother sticking around with this instance.
If you want that level of control, why aren’t you self-hosting an instance?
Not everyone has the resources I would guess
The same reason I wouldn’t host my own email provider to have “complete control over my spam filter”. It’s just too much hassle to manage an instance for a single account.
I’m against defederation in general. The thing I like most about this place is that we, the users, decide what to see and not to see. When I see stuff like that creeping up my feed I’ll just block the specific community and be done with it. Defederating a whole instance won’t just remove access to negative communities, but also to positive ones that may be on the same instance.
Others may disagree and I don’t know about the legal side of these things, though.
Yeah. We can just block it. no need to defederate
I think this is what im leaning towards as well. Maybe instead of defederating we could educate and encourage people to block the content they dont like or find disturbing.
Sounds like a great idea. I’d be definitely in favor of this instead of defederation. Maybe a pinned post or something on the right sidepanel to explain blocking and content searching.
But that’s up to the admin of this instance.
I like that idea. I’m not a fan of defederating because of poor moderation (beehaw). However I also don’t really ever want to see or deal with blocking loli content. Imagine I’m on the bus and it pops up on my phone. Is that something that we really want to allow? I’m still on the fence it seems lol
Got a point there. Maybe don’t use the “ALL” tab when being out in the wild? Not a real solution, though.
I’m not sure if this is an option on Lemmy, but on Mastodon it is possible to hide a server’s content from the global timeline and still have it accessible by followers. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#server-wide-moderation
I personally don’t think it’s the best solution (I’m in favour of blocking CSAM and those that encourage it) but it might be an agreeable compromise.
I’m a brand new refugee fleeing reddit for the federation, and ended up on this server purely by the luck of the draw. So I don’t know anyone here, or anything about any of you yet. And that’s OK. It’s nice to meet new people.
I do have my list of topics I’m OK with, and topics I’m not. I never want to see abuse depicted, whether real, simulated, AI generated, or hand drawn. That means no loli, no fascists, no gangsters. And I’m not particularly interested in being a part of a community that tolerates those topics, even under the guise of free speech. It’s not that you’re bad for wanting to discuss it, I just personally want no part of it ever.
If they aren’t cut off at the source, that means I’ll have to spend time hunting them down and blocking them. Ideally I don’t want to have to do that even once, let alone on a regular basis.
One other thing to consider is the health of the admins. If the bad apples aren’t defederated, the mods may also have to deal with that content on a more frequent basis. I’d rather they not have to spend their limited time and mental health on them either.
So they aren’t defederated here, then I’ll want to quietly move to a different server now, one where they aren’t tolerated. I want to spend as little time possible being exposed to them.
Loli and Shota is pedophilia and disgusting. It should not be allowed on any platform whatsoever. It is a definite ban. Not only is it morally abhorrent, but not banning it may even be criminal.
I totally understand where people are coming from talking about freedom of speech, believe me, in my country that is non-existent, so I value it highly. At the same time, freedom of speech has its limits, what are those limits? It’s hard to tell.
But this is going to be one of those things that define the whole atmosphere of this community.
Are those communities being helpful or entertaining in any positive manner? I personally don’t think so.
Are they a gathering place for content/people that wouldn’t benefit our community? I personally think so.
So, whatever it’s decided is not going to be entirely right or wrong, but it will be a step in fostering an identity.
If someone new comes in, and is checking all kinds of communities, seeing that kind of thing might turn them away; on the other hand, by knowing that type of content is welcomed, other kind of people might be inclined to join.
That’s my two cents on the matter, I’d personally cut all ties with that, being something with no clear benefits and some potential dangers.
I’m in favor of defederating as well. I’m a very hardcore free speech/expression advocate, but this is where my line is personally.
Being connected with those communities invites problems on multiple levels, from being exposed to those things without inviting it, all the way to possible legality concerns depending on the content they share.
It also is a huge reputational risk for instances that are willingly federated to instances that allow that content. I can already imagine news stories about communities that host that content and all the other ones that chose to stay federated with them.
The Fediverse already has enough trouble seeming approachable from a technical perspective and Lemmy itself has somewhat of a stigma about hosting extremists like tankies. I don’t think we need to do things to potentially add to reasons why people wouldn’t want to join up.
Those instances are still legal depending on where they are hosted and still accessible for the few people that want to access that, nasty as I think it is. We don’t need to help others have access to that kind of content.
By defederating with them, we might offend an extremely small minority of users, but by staying federated, we will alienate a massive majority of users. The benefits vastly outweigh the risks IMO.
That aligns well with my thoughts on the matter.
I joined this instance because I don’t have the need of someone else controlling the content I see. But, in cases like these (distasteful stuff like shota, loli), I have no strong opinion, and I can also move on if I ever think the “defederation” has gone too far.
This is the way
Disagree with it, let people block what they want to block themselves.
One of the few cases were id agree that an instance should be defederated tbh
Personally I’m in favor of defederating if we all agreed to it because I don’t see myself ever interacting with the content. There’s more than a few comments in here bringing up freedom of speech and user autonomy which are fair points. I think if we can’t come to an agreement on defederating, then instead we should take [email protected]’s suggestion and post a “self-moderation” wiki so that users are aware of their options and have the knowledge to control what they see in their feeds.
New to lemmy and vlemmy so I don’t yet understands the implications and possibilities around defederating, blocking, filtering? etc. Personally I hope to never get anything like that in my feed, even if I were a moderator. I’m here to learn if there is (or will be) viable non-proprietary alternatives to the current locked in platforms. I’d like to find places that I honestly recommend people to try out instead of what they use today.
So, Lemmy isn’t a single monolithic thing like say Twitter or Facebook. Lemmy is more like the old usenet or like email where you have a bunch of individual servers each with their own users and communities, they just talk to each other seamlessly allowing any user on a given Lemmy server to participate in any community on any Lemmy server. This is what they mean by “federation”, it’s the mechanism by which this kind of decentralized system functions.
Defederating is essentially when a server blocks another server from being federated with it - if VLemmy defederates from Burggit (which is what was proposed) then VLemmy users will not be able to see or participate in any community or with any user on Burggit and Burggit users will not be able to see or participate in any community or with any user on VLemmy.
Blocking/filtering is just marking the communities in question as “I don’t want to see this” and not having to see it ever again, or doing likewise but from the main new/all/hot feeds. The idea I support is letting the server admin for each server set a default list of blocked communities that can be overridden by each user if desired. Keeps the benefits of federation while giving users the most power to tailor their experience and also allowing server admins to curate the default experience
I won’t pretend I’m knowledable enough to debate the pros and cons of defederating in the fediverse. I’ve just been blocking communities centered on topics that I don’t want to see, including the ones you’re talking about. I’ve been on the internet since the early days though, so a drawing before I can block the communities in question isn’t going to scar me.
I personally support the defederation of communities that allow that type of pornography, especially the types that advertise themselves for it. Beyond not liking it when animated CSAM appears in my feed when I sort by new, I think that communities built around those types of porn invite multiple forms of toxicity that can rot away an instance from the inside. While I think defederation should be used sparingly, I still think it’s a useful tool to remove bad elements from our community and in this case, I think its use would be appropriate.
I agree with you, now isn’t it possible to rather discuss with the owner of such instances in order to make them destroy the hurting content / communities rather that completely defederating?
Now if these instance do not want to restrict their users, and since Lemmy is still in beta and lack features allowing a more fine tool for moderation (for example ability to “ban” a specific federated user or community rather than a whole instance), so perhaps indeed defederating temporarily until the federated instance accept to remove such content or a feature allow you to filter what comes from another instance.
As Lemmy is growing fast this kind of feature become more or less urgent (I come from beehaw which defederated from lemmy.world for similar reasons, inappropriate content which cannot be filtered out by any other way than defederating), I hope that some priorities will be given to development of those features by the maintainers of the project.
burggit.moe specifically says in their rules “We allow loli/shota pornography.” I don’t think they’re going to budge.
Well in this case they are like promoting it, so I’m in favor of defederation. (Well I had to google to know what it was about to be honest).
