this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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Proposed instance defederation for multiverse.soulism.net - an instance administrated by Grail aka Dronerights aka Hardlightcereal aka Exocrinous aka Drag
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
This is a FAF defederation vote for !multiverse.soulism.net. Note that I have tried to summarize views both for and against this proposal, rather than pushing a particular view. Please feel free to comment if you want to contribute your own thoughts and experiences.
The reason for this vote is that admins have been getting a lot of reports about Grail and Their instance from our users lately, but tbh I am not sure whether the reports warrant a ban or not. While most cases are more clear-cut, I wanted some more admin & community feedback on this one.
For context, the soulism instance is (for all practical purposes) a personal instance run by infamous fediverse "personality", Grail. Grail is suspected to be a recent alt of DroneRights aka HardlightCereal aka Exocrinous aka Dragon Rider aka Drag.
Grail, the current incarnation, is (imo) a liberal progressive masquerading as a leftist (a self-described "Anarcho-Antireal theorist" whatever the fuck that is). And I really don't think this qualifies as a "No true Scotsman" situation where it's arguable either way - it's immediately obvious from reading Their comment history.
I don't really want to rehash the extensive history of this user and Their alts in detail here, however I'm pretty sure long-term Lemmy users will be aware of at least some of these previous alt accounts, which have been almost universally banned. I'll try my best to summarize the issues below.
The case for defederation
Here's some recent examples/summaries of why the user is so problematic:
- Concise summary of past trolling behavior:
. - Recent YPTB post: Banned for Nuttin'
- Recent example of Grail's electoralism and criticism of c/flipanarchy rules, including a claim that pugjesus isn't a turbolib ๐ https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63720883
- More blue MAGA electoralism demonstrating that the user is about as "leftist" as Joe Biden
Recent examples of hating on / agitating against our instance:
The case against defederation
- Grail is neurodivergent (trans and NPD afaik), so we should be willing to make some accommodations for Their behaviour
- While some folks (including myself at the time, unfortunately) took the "DroneRights" account as an attempt to troll transgender folk with the "my gender is an attack helicopter" line, it could also have been a genuine attempt to advocate for xenogenders. There's no way to know 100% for sure what Their intentions truly were, but on reflection and with the benefit of time, I think it could be reasonably argued They should have been given the benefit of the doubt on that topic.
- Just because this user seems to have a grudge against our instance and bad-jackets anyone to their left as politically "right wing" doesn't mean we should ban them. They are still entitled to express their opinion.
- Given Grail's unique personality, is there anywhere else They would potentially fit in other than the Fediverse? Maybe we should cut Them some slack and just let users block Them individually.
Warning
Please do not attempt to re-litigate the topic of xenogenders in this post. Such comments will be removed as off-topic. As an instance, our policy is to respect personal pronouns, whatever they are. This is not a referendum on the validity of xenogenders. The topic of the post is clear - whether or not we should defederate from the multiverse.soulism.net instance. If you want to bring your own experiences into the comments that is fine, but please keep them pertinent to whether or not we should defederate from this instance / user on the basis of Their problematic behaviours, not on the basis of Their identity or pronouns.
Instructions
The proposal is:
We should defederate from the multiverse.soulism.net instance due to an extensive history of trolling by the main admin's alts, and due to the admin being openly hostile to our instance.
Please upvote this post to vote for defederation. Downvote to remain federated. This proposal will require a 2/3 majority to pass.
P.S., Please be sure to use Grail's preferred pronouns of "capitalised They/Them", so we don't have to remove comments for misgendering.
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That kind of reinforces my point. They made themselves terribly easy to block. And I have to question even though we dont do this often, is this really the solution? Wall ourselves off and leave them to their devices? I'm not so sure. I could agree with either solution but as it stands currently it is super easy to block their instance and move on without defederation, and defederation is extremely serious. We don't want to create a bunch of little islands in the fediverse (I know this specific instance would not cause this, but over time defederation has the potential to do so).
But they aren't easy to block. We rely on that instance owner to respect the protocol's semantics. They aren't respecting separate instances rules enough to not be banned, and there's no reason to believe they will maintain their same account to allow themselves to be blocked.
If they weren't over 99% of that instances activity I might be convinced.
Maybe Lemmy doesn't have this and I have been on anarchist.nexus for far longer than I thought.
Oh neat.
Hmmm
Yeah I guess thats a piefed only thing. My bad. I am unsure about my vote now
Something else to consider, if someone gets banned on their home instance and then unbanned, the unban deletes all bans on remote servers. An instance admin can unban themselves from other lemmy instances due to being able to access their own server with the ability to ban and unban.
@Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com I think that's an important consideration here. Grail could do something ban worthy here, then unban Themselves because They feel like it and we wouldn't know until Their posts started showing up here again, and they can repeat the process as much as we ban them. Defederation is the only way to actually stop that, and it's part of why it's customary to defederate a self-hosted instance when banning the person in charge of it.
i feel like a broken record here but I feel like defed on the back of "They could do this thing" is unreasonable.
if that does happen I say we should defed immediately and I think a vote on "They unbanned Themself" would definitely pass.
p.s. you missed a couple capitals near the end I think, unintentionally I'm sure
That sounds like a horrible design oversight in AP? Why is that possible?
You'd have to ask the Lemmy devs, but it is a serious flaw, and in some cases effects community bans too. I've had trolls come back to my communities after being instance banned from here when that happens.
Sorry, not entirely familiar with this exploit, but wouldn't their next move be to start a new instance of their own simply to regain access to said unban loophole? ๐คท๐ผโโ๏ธ๐
Sounds like a slo-mo Whack-A-Troll, if so. ๐ค
It already is there instance, they are all the admins.
Creating new instances or changing domains can get around defederation, but since domains cost money it would be very slow and they lose their investment each time they are defederated. Which is probably why it doesn't get done often.
Unbanning yourself locally as an admin is free and can be repeated over and over.
Yup
Looking at Mystic Mushroom's comment it seems defed is the only viable defence agaunst trolls and other users trying to evade a ban. Its actually insane you can unban yourself.