this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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This would likely lead to a lot of content only cached for the 1% of users which change that default which would be quite inefficient for the instance. Not to mention that most admins and mods would likely not see that content so they can not judge the legality of that content (or other reasons to defederate instead).
Not to mention the big reason to defederate isn't just the subs on an instance.
It's users of that but instance getting free reign on posts from other instances to troll or spread hateful bullshit.
OPs "solution" doesn't do anything about that, which why they're wrong and is defederation is better.
With blocking instances I mean also blocking all the users on that instance, which is the case on all platforms that allow it.
That makes even less sense...
Like, if that's really what it does, then it's exactly what defederation is....
Yes, but at least the user has the choice to reverse it for themselves, which I explained in the post.
So...
You want every user of the fediverse to manually opt out of the far right hate instances?
Alright, fine.
Make your own instance with that. And if that's what people want, then they'll join your instance.
Problem solved. Super easy.
No, I wrote that they could be blocked by default but that the users would have the choice to manually opt in.
Edit: Also, the problem is that the instances people want to be on don't always federate with the instances they want to see content from. Adding an extra server which people have no reason to want to join doesn't solve anything.
Sorry, the more you clarify the worse it gets.
You want instances to use up their server space for shit the vast majority will never even see?
And admins would have to have it unblocked, otherwise they're hosting a bunch of shit from problematic instances without knowing what it is. Which, worst case scenario, could have legal ramifications.
No need to keep clarifying, I was convinced already this is a terrible idea.
Nah, content doesn't get federated unless someone follows it. And I said it already I'm not for unconditional federation, if instances do illegal things (which gets well documented, no need to observe it directly), of course you should defederate.
Ah, so you want a 'hard' defederation, that works just like it does now, and a 'soft' defederation, that users could opt to disable? Interesting.
However, as others said already, that would mean that servers now also have to federate with other servers that most users and the mods probably dont see, creating difficult moderation challenges...
Now that is a fair criticism. But I suppose it wouldn't matter all too much since the user decides themselves that they want to see it.
Define "trollin" that ain't justa different opinion vs yours because nowadays, y'all just as soft as rotten fruit and bruise just as easily so anything can be slapt with rhe TROLLS label O_O
like what I just said for example p sure you or someone else is going to say I was trolllyn with my response but I am not :P
Speaking of blocking...
Content isn't cached unless someone follows it anyways.
And I'm not sure what you mean with that latter part; what difference would this make in what content admins can see before they cast their judgement on a server?
What op said still stands: if only one of your users follow a high-traffic, heavy-content /c/, then the server is caching all of that content for one person.
E.g., there's this great bot on Mastodon that posts random fractals, and the highest-voted ones "breed" to create a new generation of child fractals. The bot posts a static image and an animated movie of each new child every 4 hours. The images are ca 5mb each; the movies are between 20 & 40mb ea. That is, on average, 210mb/d, or 1.4gb per week. That's a lot of data. You might, as an admin offering a free service, not want to have to pay for that much storage just because one or two users are suscribed to /c/flamereactor ("FlameReactor" is the name, so you can find this mind-blowingly awesome bot). There's also bandwidth considerations, both on the pull and when users request the content.
I like the idea, though, and will suggest a tweak, tried and true from Usenet days: provide the ability to unblock to only paying users. It'd give admins control, plus money to offset storage costs. Maybe provide three options to admins: full defederation; auto-block with any user able to unblock, for odeous but low impact sices; and auto-block with unblock for only users in some group - close friends, paying users, whatever.
Lemmy could also transcribe content into links back to the source, but that's just punting the bandwidth costs onto someone else, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is frowned upon within The Federation (although it's common practice with Reddit and X(twitter) content).
Mastodon servers typically don't federate images, though. Also, I don't think people will defederate an entire server for one bot anyways.
A lot of legal issues get worse though if they occur as part of a paid service.
There are a lot of ways it could go wrong, for sure. IANAL, but lots of small and large companies have and do navigate these issues. But I wasn't talking about legally contentious content; this would be a work-aruund for stuff that's expensive to cache, or stuff you just don't agree with and so don't want to absorb the cost out of the goodness of yous heart. Just continue to defederate if you have any doubt.
Anyway, it was just a potential work-around to address OP's issue. I'm not a Lemmy dev and won't be implementing it.
Admins need to make sure they do not host illegal content. They can not do that if they do not see the content so they would likely still have to look at all of it just for the benefit of the few users on their instance who change the default. Instead they could just defederate and not have to worry about that.
There are great sites like fediseer.com to keep track of suspicious instances. And if those users see illegal content they can report it to the admins.