hey folks, here's a quick update on our decision to defederate from sh.itjust.works! (and here's sh.itjust.works's side of this update)
we got in touch with the head admin over there, The Dude, and we had a pretty good chat about our concerns and reason for defederating. while immediate re-federation is just bluntly off the table with the rudimentary state of Lemmy's moderation tools, we now have a pretty good idea of the roadmap to refederating with them. we think we'll eventually be able to do this, although we don't have a timetable on when yet.
we're also now collaborating with him on how to move forward--and in the weeks and months to come we'll be pushing to expedite the process of developing some of the necessary tools. this decision has really helped us make connections that can hopefully realize those tools both on the desktop side and in apps being developed for Lemmy. we're also hoping to collaborate with other Lemmy administrators who have needs like our own, or just generally want more granular tools at their disposal.
we did also get in touch with the lemmy.world owner prior to defederating to share the concerns that prompted us to defederate[^1]--but we have not received any communication from him since it was levied, so there's no roadmap at all there as of now. we're always open to reconsidering and collaborating to end the defederation with him, but for now the earliest i can give you is "when mod tools are in a better state".
that's all for now folks. if any new significant developments take place we'll announce them as needed.
[^1]: we're only bringing this up now because it was just not useful information in the context of our announcement. it almost certainly would have been interpreted as some sort of callousness and/or brought unnecessary sectarianism and grief to him. at the end of the day he has his reasons and desires for running lemmy.world how he does, and we have ours for running Beehaw as we do. because of social and technological circumstances those are just incompatible right now, and that's fine.
Thanks for the transparency. Is there no way to see a list of defederated instances? The one in the instances page includes mastodon instances which makes it hard to read, and also doesn't list the reason for defederation.
The defederated list does not include reasons and we can't add it from Lemmy's tools. The Lemmy instances we've defederated from memory are : Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml because they deny certain genocides, exploding-heads.com and lemmygrad.com because they are queerphobic, burggit.moe because they host child pornography.
Finally, lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works because of the reasons mentioned in the post.
New fear unlocked: unknowingly signing up to an instance that federates with servers hosting CP 🤢
Ew Child porn, wtf! Thanks for defederation. I see the news headlines: "All Reddit alternatives host child pornographie !!!111!!"
I like your clear communication. On the other hand, would it be better to not give the exact reason and instead refer to "content that violates out guidelines" or similar?
Just a thought and really just to keep the image clean. I can't tell if I'd rather have honest communication or a better view of us in public.
A downside of open source platform software is that it can be mis-used for purposes the developers and most users abhor. There isn't much they can do to stop that. Defederation, however, can be very effective in keeping those instances separate - far better than on proprietary platforms like Twitter, where the only defenses are moderation and individual blocking. Neo-nazi instances using Mastodon software are just using Mastodon software, they're not part of the broader Mastodon community. Clickbait news headlines thrive on misrepresentation. But when it comes up, we can use that as an opportunity to teach others about how these sorts of platforms work.
Yeah Admins are doing their best and that's super important. I do wonder what will happen if Lemmy grows enough to be monitored by officials.
Here in Germany we have NetzDG, where platforms need to act on illegal content as they reach a certain size.
My understanding is that there was illegal content and that it's been dealt with. There were other things too, thus the temporary defeds. Mastodon.social and its main dev are in Germany. That would be an example to look at. I think for Lemmy it's both the instance hosting the account and the instance hosting the community it's posted to which bear responsibility for removing illegal content.
Is there a non tankie leftist instance? I'm honestly looking for one