I’m pretty much a natural enemy of tankies, but I love being able to talk to them.
I too view defederation with suspicion.
Comment on [deleted]
maegul@lemmy.ml 3 months agoI’ll add to hendrik’s sibling post … it seems you’re relatively new to the fediverse. You may want to get a feel for the place before advocating for such wide reaching actions.
I’m all for expressing your feelings on an issue, but I do wonder if your eagerness is a bit premature. I myself “called for” defederation early in my time on the fediverse … and it was dumb of me.
Since then I’ve come to view most arguments around the idea of defederation suspiciously. There’s usually a bit of personal drama or a shallow opinion or people who want to loudly voice opinions without wanting to put work into making this place better. Usually, if defederation is actually needed, the admins will know before you do and it will be obvious.
All that being said … I’d ask you … what do you think federation and decentralisation is for?
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 months ago
I think what we ultimately need is a healthy and welcoming culture of being nice to each other and engaging with each other with a minimal amount of drama. But that's difficult to pull off and a long process. We aren't there yet but we can make an effort.
Defederation might be part of that. But it's a bad tool with lots of consequences and side-effects. And ultimately the Fediverse is about connecting people. So disconnecting them will be problematic. However we don't all agree on that. And it's a good thing that the Fediverse is a diverse place. You can sign up at beehaw and they have a strict policy and are happy to defederate with a lot of the network. Maybe OP is better aligned with what they do, than be on lemmy.world
maegul@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
As you say, it’s a very blunt tool and likely only able to create more civil interactions by creating a fairly strong echo chamber.
My perspective on “defederation” conversations, hinted at in my comment above, is that it’s a new “tool”, a new phenomenon etc. Nothing like it existed on reddit for example. And so it’s natural that there will be “unwise”, premature and overzealous calls to use it as though it’s the solution to many of our social media problems, when in reality it’s a relatively subtle tool best used in concert with active and relatively sophisticated community building and organising.
Which all makes sense to me. But what’s a little sad I think is that we have here a pretty good compromise between “absolute free speech is bad” and “censorship is bad” for social media, and instead of embracing it as an ideology we’ve gotten some loud voices eager to use it as a territorial weapon for drawing boundaries around spaces for everyone else without, AFAICT, much the same in the way of actually building spaces that suit people’s needs (though that happens too of course).
If one wants or needs a space that is shut off completely from what one would call “extreme” politics, that’s totally fine. Doesn’t mean all of lemmy world and half or more of the communities on lemmy should be cut off in a big “us and them” statement. Instead … you probably need an instance that caters to that world view. You may need to try to start organising it yourself if it doesn’t exist. Except, that’s harder than posting a “lets defederate” post.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 months ago
I think I mostly agree. The thing with that, we could solve a lot of the issues with technology. Give users more tools to decide what content and which users to expose themselves to. Maybe hide or collapse content on a user level. But we just have these blunt tools and lots of fine granular tools that would be able to actually tackle the issues are missing on Lemmy. And I think we should revamp some other aspects too to foster good behaviour. I don't see things change substancially, the way it is.
One good thing about the Fediverse is everyone can have their own instance and make their own rules. Theoretically that enables us to have a locked down "safe" space and an anarchic place with freedom of speech next to each other.
In practice most people don't lean towards the extremes, you're right. I want something in between. Not just a*holes and trolls but some meaningful discussions. I wouldn't want to be on a free speech instance. But I also don't want to be in a bubble all day. So something in the middle would be appreciated.
maegul@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Tools could always be better for sure! This is still beta software after all! And the fediverse ecosystem is still finding its feet.
That being said … isn’t subscribing to communities a pretty good tool already? I ask because it strikes me that many here might be talking about the “all” feed. If so, that’d be a case of people just not using the tools given to them (and also an abuse of this system frankly).
Think I’m totally with you there. The fediverse for me has been a bit of a let down in terms of how much it has just recreated big social platforms without more experimentation. It’s early days and all so I don’t want to be harsh on all the devs. They’ve done great things. But it does feel like some basic revamping could be quite nice.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Honestly I’m in favor of people talking even when it isn’t nice. I’d rather have angry words than no words, you know?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 months ago
Agree to disagree. If the internet was an empty space with only a few posts, I'd understand. But it's filled with lots of stuff. And every shitty interaction I have, actively takes away time from my day. Time I could spend reading something nice and positive, actually interacting with people, learning something or doing something productive like maintaining my server or coding. I think it's a waste. And worse than that, it also affects your mood and drives you further apart. And it's not healthy. Every interaction defines the atmosphere of this place. Good and bad ones. The whole atmosphere becomes toxic if a certain amount of interaction is bad and people always have to expect that happening. I'll certainly stop giving (good) advice if there is a 40% chance that I get yelled at. And I think we have to guide and steer to the correct destination and do that early. And there is precedent. We have had several attempts at re-defining social media. Once trolls and negativity dominate, the places usually die over the course of a few months or years.
maegul@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Yea … I can’t shake the feeling that there many who have a kinda “echo chamber” instinct with their idea of what a platform like this is for. Which I get. They want it to be a nice doom scroll I guess.
But I wonder if there should be a real counter to that instinct and if it should be given a clearer form and identity. My rant about the value of federation as an ideology for better social media is maybe a possibility.
But the point is that there are many I think who aren’t on board with trigger happy defederstion (the voting on this post is an indication) but don’t get much of an opportunity to make themselves clear.