I was there, I saw the thread. @TheDude, did you? It was pretty strongly in favour. Do we really need to keep waiting around to see if an instance administrated by a guy who wants to declare “cis” a slur is going to turn out okay?
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 for context.
Does vlemmy defederate anything? The Instances list doesn’t seem to show any blocked instance.
Ok, sorry, I’m a little buzzed and feisty currently. After thinking about this in context of the best options for users and the health of the community as a whole:
As a user, I’d like to be able to block instances if I see a need. I don’t think this is possibly yet, but I can block communities and individual users, which is useful.
At the admin/instance level, defederating would be a temp or permanant nuke, for defederating from instances that cause bigger issues like allowing bots to manipulate votes, spreading hate, or exposing their intended audience to content they don’t want to allow (child friendly instance such as BeeHaw blocks porn, fair play) per the admin’s discretion
Last but not least, Mods are only responsible for posts on their own communities and pruning comments or blocking users who violate their rules or the instances rules. (They should be able to report to admins/the instance when a user was blocked for violating instance rules so the admin can consider banning across the instance if necessary).
I have thought of developing an anti-instance block, but since I would definitely not use it I haven’t gone forward with it. But it seems quite an easy task, to be honest. A script would just go over any post or comment, check the community’s instance, check the poster/commenter’s instance, and if any of the two match, it can simply do node.deleteNode() and that’s it, ez pz. It’d probably take me less than an hour to do this.
I haven’t heard of vlemmy defederating. My main reason for joining this instance was so I didn’t have to provide an email address, which was the first priority for me due to added privacy. Long ago, reddit never required email addresses, so I think that’s a good feature for now (protecting against bots is another can of worms altogether). I may shift to another instance soon, we’ll see.
But free speech, I don’t think people started advocating for free speech so they could coexist with nazis and bigots. I imagine it was more for allowing criticism of people in positions of power, like government figures, admins, and mods without repercussions (executing people, throwing them in jail, banning, etc). If you’re merely advocating for transphobia and racial slurs, what the fuck is the point of protecting “free speech”? Why would someone even value that?
Edit: To put it another way, I won’t choose to be part of an instance whose admin allows open bigotry in their own content or stays federated with other instances that allow bigotry, cp, neo-nazis, or alt-right communities to thrive. I realize that at a more granular level, I will have to use my own discretion and power to block whoever I see fit or switch instances, but I can also use my voice to advocate that admins not allow that shit either.