That’s a pretty big accusation. I don’t have enough information to say one way or the other and have just read a handful of posts from the Beehaw mods, so I’d appreciate some context and direct evidence if there is any. From what I can tell, they’ve never pretended to be ideologically neutral, and seek to actively defend minority rights and push back against what they view as fascist movements.
To be fair, much of the modern news cycle comes from Reddit. When I worked as a tech journalist years ago, we had half a dozen bots watching relevant subs and alerting us to breaking news. We’d clean it up, fact-check, call sources for comment, and do all the “journalistic” stuff you’d expect, just like with any other story, but Reddit was absolutely part of our workflow. You’ve got to look for news wherever the news is happening, be that a press release, a leak on twitter, or a convo on Reddit, and frequently it happened to be Reddit.
These days you even have tictokers cutting out the middleman and straight-up reading r/AmITheAsshole posts over Minecraft footage for views. Is it any surprise that news sites are commenting on their content firehose being turned off?
I opened this thread because I had the exact same thought, except my brain went to “dove (facing left) with a toupee” instead of “balding man”.
Yes, but what we’re talking about here is how to effectively target and limit violence, bigotry, hate speech, etc., and that happens best at the community level not the instance level. Let’s say you have something like this:
How do we limit harm to YourInstance.com?
The Users: Most of the MixedBag users are harmless and contribute to the growth and diversity of the fediverse (including YourInstance), so defederating them is a last resort. But what about the BigotsRUs subscribers? On Reddit, some mods use bots to ban or mute people subscribed to problematic subreddits. We could try something similar here, but that’s not the only option. After all, I live over here, not in the community where they’re trash-talking. It’s when they bring their shit into my house that I get pissed. If they put on their Sunday Best over here and want to have actual conversations, I’m fine with that. That more tolerant approach has the benefit of not ostracising and radicalizing users who are on the fence and just hang out there on occasion for the memes. So basically, ban the bad actors when they cross the line while on your turf, but leave the rest alone.
The Community: If BigotsRUs is poorly moderated, frequently spews hate, and its inclusion in All harms YourInstance’s users, that’s what Remove is for. As an admin, you can remove communities from the feed without affecting users or the instance, which feels like the first and best step to handling most issues.
The Instance: Like I said, defederation is the nuclear option that impacts all communities and all users on MixedBag.social, so I’d rather limit that to a last resort. However, sometimes the instance itself if the problem by either encouraging bad actors or centering around a topic that has no place in your instance’s vision. For example, what if you’re running an orthodox religious instance for your friends and want to defederate from the porn-only lemmyNSFW.com? Or what if your instance is being overrun by bots from LaxSignUps.social and you don’t have a big enough mod team to separate out the trash? For me, that’s the ideal use case for instance-wide defederation, and it’s the main reason Beehaw is defederating from others. Yes, they’re protective of their culture, but right now it’s mostly about the small mod team’s inability to filter out spam from instances with lax signups.
He’s still a joke, just one that stopped being funny a long time ago.
How does that work, exactly? I though defederation at the instance level was the only real tool.
Agreed. And Beehaw didn’t say they were kicking any instance to the curb permanently. They’re simply waiting on Lemmy to add more effective moderation tools, like the ability to defederate communities rather than entire instances, and for bot checks to become the norm.
In general, I agree. Diversity is a good thing, and I tend to prefer giving users tools for self-moderation rather than seeing instance admins use a blunt instrument like defederation which will inevitably have spillover consequences for communities that aren’t even associated with TheDonald.
HOWEVER, this is still a good debate to have. The issue shouldn’t be “allow all federation” vs “allow no federation” at the instance level, but rather “where do we draw the line?” Too lax and you’ve got child porn, hate speech, and weaponized disinformation. Too strict and you stifle free speech. I think we can all agree that a middle ground is the goal. So where is the line in this case?
Political communities? Great! Bring 'em on. We need an open “marketplace of ideas.” But you can have a political debate without devolving into hate speech, provably false disinformation, calls to lynch politicians, and doxing. It doesn’t matter if they’re coming from the left or the right, death threats are not okay. That’s not a political statement. It’s just a fact. TheDonald has a long and sordid history on Reddit, and I doubt very much that it’s even capable of staying on the right side of that line. But we should judge their Lemmy community by their moderation policy, not their history on another platform. Do they regularly allow hate speech? Death threats? Provably false disinformation? If so, that’s exactly why defederation exists. Yes, there might be spillover consequences for the other communities on that instance, but if the instance mods don’t have a problem with hate speech in their communities then it is an instance-wide problem that should be addressed at the instance level.
So far they’re tiny and haven’t done anything one way or the other. I don’t think anyone should kick them out just for existing. But I do think we should talk about our community-wide lines in the sand, and then hold instances we federate with to those standards. Including TheDonald.
Because you’re literally browsing a magazine about that other site?
I agree that this particular mod getting banned isn’t directly related to the migration efforts, but the overarching drama it’s connected to is the main reason people are leaving Reddit for Lemmy. IE: admins becoming hostile towards moderators, developers, and redditors, resulting in an environment that the whole userbase is trying to flee. So even though I don’t care about this “power-tripping asshole mod” (as another Lemming described him), I get how some people here might find the post useful and relevant.
Thanks for the writeup! Dumb question from a Reddit Refugee incoming:
Q: When subscribing to a Lemmy community (magazine), we paste the !CommunityName@LemmyInstance.url into our Kbin search bar, correct? What would cause a community to not show up? I know that some instances can be defederated (cut off) from others, but don’t think that’s what is happening here. Is there a lag between when a new community is created and when the wider fediverse gets the memo? Eg: !starcitizen@lemmy.ml, which was just created due to the impending Reddit Blackout
I take no pleasure in inflicting this upon the world. Just remember, you asked. Behold: the balding man.