Exploding-heads.com is another instance on Lemmy where alt-right MAGA types tend to reside. Some people on this server want us to defederate from them immediately, some people want to save defederation as a last resort. They have 104 active users (more stats below).
It seems that exploding-heads has also experienced a recent botswarm invasion. This is obviously another point in favor of defederating them, assuming you are worried about botswarms, which is currently being discussed here.
My advice to you all is please try to discuss this in a civil manner, we need not allow them to create divisive conflict inside our communities. No matter how the vote turns out, you're not going to be able to defederate from your fellow sh.itheads so be nice.
I've linked many of the previous discussions below so people who are out of the loop can get a general sense of the situation.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714 https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126 https://sh.itjust.works/post/410325
Lemmy.world just recently defederated them.
https://lemmy.world/post/747912
https://lemmy.world/post/577526
Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.
Ensuring diversity of servers is beneficial to the platform as a whole, but it is also not our responsibility to bear that burden.
TLDR, just wrap up any last points in this thread before we open the vote tomorrow. Please be civil.
EDIT: To clarify, this isn't the official vote, this is the final discussion. The vote thread will be posted tomorrow and you will only be allowed to make a single comment saying Aye or Nay.
EDIT2: Vote thread is up, this thread is now locked. Very lively discussion thread sh.itheads. Please try to be more respectful next time.
I think federation should be used as a tool for combatting spam (brigading included) and dealing with instances that allow illegal content or that promote actual violence.
De-federating is not the tool to use because you don't like seeing the content in your feed, you can block the communities. De-federating isn't the tool to enforce this instances moderation rules on other instance's communities.
Brigading is certainly a concern and if their users were doing that we would need to reach out to their admin to attempt to resolve the issue. As a last resort we could de-federate to mitigate the problem.
I'm not at all defending the ideas on EH or the user's posts or comments. There are some truly disgusting opinions being represented there. I just haven't seen them cross the line into allowing violence to be planned, or allowing CSAM or spamming.
It is very important to understand that de-federation is just a global block list that is enforced on every user on this instance. It is convenient for the users to have spam instances automatically blocked and for the users to not have to worry about CSAM in their feed. Beyond that, if a user wants to read alt-right content then it isn't up to me to tell them that they cannot.
If you want to block content that is 100% up to you, nobody can tell you who you can block. In exactly the same way you should not attempt to exercise any control over another user's block list.
De-federation is just a block list. Curate your own block list otherwise let the admins remove spam and obviously illegal stuff. De-federation isn't a super downvote button an we should not use it as such.
Please don't be naive. We've already seen where this goes. January 6 has already happened. The Club Q shooting has already happened. These are not isolated incidents. This brand of hatred is not nonviolent anymore. We should not remain passive in this case. If someone from our instance wants to read and post alt-right stuff, let them create a new account on their instance.