Draconic_NEO

I just want to say in case you didn't see my other replies, that probably won't work out as well as you think, because the way instance blocking works it only blocks the communities. User content still comes through.

From Join-Lemmy:

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

So regardless of the uninformed people suggesting this, it isn't a solution to this issue, especially the hexbear spam problem, it's not an alternative to defederation, and it never was, fact is Lemmy isn't a free speech platform, people and instances can and will be banned and moderated, people who don't like it just need to either deal with it or go elsewhere.

Are you sure that they defederated, because from what I saw they just blocked some of the communities, it certainly was looking like it would end up going that route though, plus they were banning people from the instance in the thread who were speaking out or making points, it certainly was a feud between the two instances, but it didn't seem like they defederated (though I do remember some very angry anti-piracy trolls calling for it).

Oh, I didn't exactly understand what you meant 😅

Paper books are the future.

As if paper books can't contain garbage and misinformation oh wait (article has link to amazon page which contains listing that has option for paperback).

Realistically with how Fediverse works they could just ban his actor from their collection node and it'll ignore all requests made by him or replies to him, as if they never even happened.

I only know of one server who defederated dbzer0, so it doesn't seem like a major thing. Maybe some are hiding the Piracy communities (that happened with Lemmy.world a while back) but most seem to still be federating with dbzer0.

I think the spam and regular attacking and harassing users is good enough a reason to defederate hexbear, if it were a few users I would say just ban those users, but this is an instance wide problem for them (as in there are more problematic users than non-problematic users, and non-problematic users almost always have accounts elsewhere).

Instance blocking in Connect for Lemmy also hides all comments from all people in the blocked instance. It doesn’t make them disappear like blocking a user does, but the comment appears with the body text replaced by a button that allows you to optionally unhide the message (like how Discord used to hide messages from blocked users).

I never used that app but I can tell that it absolutely is not how blocking in the Lemmy back-end works, I'm not even sure if it adds insance blocks to the user's account when using the feature or if it just keeps them client-side, since that feature existed long before Lemmy itself had the option. Regardless many people don't use connect, especially desktop users (connect is a mobile app) so for them it won't work the same way.

Defederation should literally be a last resort option IMO. Otherwise you end up like Beehaw: isolated on an island away from like 90% of the Fediverse. Great for moderation but terrible for discoverability and growth.

I would agree but it's important to realize where that line is, and to make sure it's reasonable. Defederating Lemmy.world because of their bad users isn't reasonable (just ban those specific people) defederating hexbear is, because their instance is entirely dedicated to spam and trolling, it's a matter of community health, it's not just because they're annoying or we don't wike them.

As an example, I like anime. Let’s say hypothetically that you don’t like anime and that I have an account on your instance. And let’s say you hate anime, actually. You want your instance to defederate from ani.social (and any other instance that hosts anime content) because you hate anime, but I don’t because I like the memes and discussions from there. How do you resolve this? Now think about what happens with an instance that hosts content that is of a different political ideology than you. Its really the same problem.

I don't think this is really a good comparison, you're framing it like every call for defederation was founded on personal opinion as opposed to said instance's impact on community health i.e. Hexbear's tendency to spam and harass people, or ExplodingHeads and their tendency to attack users of minorities (particularly gender diverse folks). Lots of people will feel these bans infringe on their freedom, yet these are for the good of the community. It's important to remember that most lemmy instances (the ones still in the main network) are not and have not been free speech havens. When these types of guidelines aren't enforced you get communties very similar to 4chan and gab, where the loudest ones rule and push out everyone else, it's the Nazi bar problem. This isn't really comparable to admins blocking instances out of personal preference, which is in a sense a form of malpractice, this is a form of moderation meant to keep spaces sane and normal, otherwise people won't want to be their and it'll become a Nazi bar (or Tankie bar in the case of Hexbear).

Lemmy does best when it gives as many options to its users as possible, including preferring local user instance blocking as compared to defederating.

I think you're thinking of Nostr, Lemmy is very much a power to the site/administration type platform. They're the ones that have the final say, they can literally ban your account from the entire network and prevent you from even logging in (on your Homeserver). The big difference between Lemmy and mainstream centralized sites is that there's more than one of them, so if you do get nuked on one you can go elsewhere, or even start your own. Same thing when it comes to instance defederation. The user options are the servers they can choose to home themselves on, not being exempt from moderation requirements or overriding admin's decisions. If a person doesn't like that aspect of mainstream media, they're going to hate Lemmy just as much. Lemmy isn't a free speech user choice haven, it is social media free from central corporate influence (for the most part, corpos can start their own, whether instances follow them or block them is a different story).

Heads up, instance blocking doesn't do what you think it does. I just want to make this clear because a lot of people suggest it without having read the announcement on the join-lemmy page or the dev comments on github and get a less than accurate idea of what it does. From Join-Lemmy:

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

It isn't a souluton to the Hexbear spam problem and this is something people should remember and keep in mind when suggesting it as an alternative to defederation.

Probably best to have two discussions, one for each instance, as there might be two entirely different verdicts and also the problems on each instance aren't the same.

I mean, I am not fond of the head admins running Lemmy.ml, but you should just do what I do and block the instance.

I always say this and I'm going to keep saying it until people get the memo, instance blocking doesn't work the way people think it does, it only blocks out communties from appearing in feeds, it doesn't do anything for spam and bad faith actors:

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

For that reason it should not and cannot be used as an alternative to defederation.

Probably something to do with them not wanting to be part of the Fediverse and federation, since it gives them less control of content and moderation. Also judging by the way they run their instance it seems like they would prefer something more along the lines of the classic forum experience.