@TheDude What is the Deal with Lemmygrad and Are You Going to Block Other Instances for Personal Reasons? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Nahvi@sh.itjust.works to c/main@sh.itjust.works

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EDIT: It seems that I have may have gotten the wrong impression about the community structure here from the @TheDude comment I listed below. It looks like this should have been posted to The Agora. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Now I must go find fresh air and see if I can find this grass thing that I have heard so much about.

First, let me say thank you for spending your time and money on creating and maintaining this instance.

Second, the name sh.itjust.works is great. It gives me a little half smile every time I type it.

Third, I am hoping this can be my Fediverse home base but I have a single concern.

Now on to the meat:

I have been over on lemmy.world for the last few days and really enjoying the content and experience, but as I was learning more about the Fediverse I realized they have blocked a whole slew of other instances. Most of the reason I have grown to dislike and distrust reddit over the years was because of their random subreddit bans that didn't follow their own rules and processes, so it was a pretty big turn-off for me looking at the lemmy.world Instances List.

When I heard this instance only had two blocked instances, I immediately came here to check it out. I quickly saw like-minded individuals genuinely engaging in reasonable discussion about what should and should not be defederated, so I decided to go ahead and make an account. It didn't take long though before I decided to look into why each of the instances were banned.

It seems like burggit allows simulated CP which is a pretty decent reason for blocking them in my mind. On the other hand, the only thing I could find about lemmygrad.ml was this (https://sh.itjust.works/comment/130474) post that says you blocked it because of your personal convictions.

Given that this instance is your own personal project, I certainly don't fault you for choosing what is acceptable and what is not, but I am concerned about making sh.itjust.works my home base if it is just the start. Based on the previous post it doesn't seem like something you are going to change your mind about, nor do I have an interest in trying to convince you to do so. What I would like to know is if this is going to be a regular thing.

Are you intending to block any instances with political opinions that you are staunchly against? Further, are you planning to create any sort of standard for what kind of instance you are likely or unlikely to ban in the future?

Bonus question for my curiosity: What makes lemmygrad so against your personal convictions? While I have a basic understanding of Marxism/Communism and am aware that current communist countries have a pretty questionable history of violence and suppressing personal and political freedoms, I think an objective viewer might say the same thing about the representative republic that I live in.

tl;dr: Are you going to block other instances for personal reasons? Also, are you going to create any standards to indicate which instances may be blocked in the future?

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[-] TheDude@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Hi Nahvi.

Thanks for posting this well put together post. I can tell that you put some time and thought into this and I want you to know that I recognize that.

Regarding your concern, this is a topic that has been brought up numerous times over the past month. I've since moved towards being more community driven, letting users discuss and debate on topics that are important to them. These discussion move forward towards a vote over a 7 day period. This process will change over time as we come across flaws and look for ways solve them together.

One more thing I want to make clear regarding your tl;dr question Will I be blocking other instances for personal reasons? Short answer is no, I believe the community should determine what should or should not be blocked.

That being said I want to make myself clear that there are limitations, I will continue to defederate instances that openly promote or spreads hate speech, terrorism, CP, loli, trolling and instances that become bot instances. These shouldn't be things that need to be justified, I think they fall under the "be a good human" category.

I hope this clarifies your concerns and you continue to make sh.itjust.works your home.

[-] Nahvi@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

@TheDude

Hello and thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.

I appreciate you clarifying your stance on future blocking for both personal reasons and along the human decency lines. While I may lean fairly deeply into free speech territory, I also recognize the need for certain limits. The balance you've struck seems to be very reasonable, though I admit to being a hair surprised by the community driven approach.

I look forward to seeing which direction the community takes the instance.

[-] lol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

will continue to defederate instances that openly promote or spreads hate speech

That's great but please define hate speech and give us some examples.

[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hey dude, thanks for dropping by.

Just wanted to say that I appreciate the direction you're trying to herd cats towards.

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[-] loaf@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I’m gonna park my car here for this.

[-] IsThisLemmyOpen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The instance called lemmygrad promotes an ideology that's considered extremist by many instance owners, so it has been defederated by many big instances. The other ones one the list that are defederated because of an unusual number of users to content ratio, leading many instance owners to suspect that they are bot accounts used for spam so any instance with these suspicions are also defederated, not because of ideology, buy simply because of the perceived spam threat. Now I don't know how true is the bot threat, but that is what people have been saying is the reason for defederation.

[-] Shit@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I think part of it had to do with genocide denial being pretty rampant there and way outnumbering the number of users in new instances when the reddit blackout started. One of the top posts here when the instance was new was asking if the admin even allowed discussing the topic. I think @god made the post I'll see if I can find it.

[-] Nahvi@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

Thank you. I would be interested to read it.

[-] Shit@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I think this is the thread https://sh.itjust.works/post/37624

[-] Nahvi@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

That is quite the interesting thread. Especially that History of Lemmy link. Not sure what I expected but it wasn't that.

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[-] aspseka@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Bear in mind, that lemmygrad.ml is not lemmy.ml. The latter instance is run by the devs.

[-] ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I don’t know if they should or shouldn’t be defederated. I will say they openly brigade. That is just my personal observation, and you shouldn’t trust a random comment without data to back it up. But maybe keep an eye out and you’ll see it.

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

FWIW, my original response here was 7/0 upvoted and then I checked a few minutes later and it was at 11/6. Certainly an unusual upvote pattern.

[-] ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yep. I’m thats usually how it goes. Once of of them makes a comment or posts about a comment they don’t like they show up. And then the downvotes begin. They are openly narrative driven, and the way they “discuss” things comes off as digital warrior-esque. They’re here to for the showdown of their lives.

I actually wouldn’t mind their odd positions if they weren’t so hyper aggressive and unwilling to discuss facts. I’ve been banned from threads over there for pointing out that while I see their frustrations with western interventionism, it’s odd how they don’t seem to mind BRICs members also intervening in conflicts worldwide.

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, its not their political positions, it's their behavior. I have absolutely no problem debating the merits of communism and capitalism. But they don't necessarily seem interested in debate, or really objectivity in general.

[-] nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Go look over lemmygrad.ml and decide on how much you want to argue with passionate communist and tankies everywhere. Lemmygrad.ml will brigade posts and comments on other instances they are allowed on to spread their beliefs and they are not interested in the same happening on their own instance.

[-] Aviandelight@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

This shit is so tiresome already. If you don't like the atmosphere of one instance then find another. It really is that simple. Quit harassing the instance admins they don't owe you shit.

[-] Nahvi@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Seems like you didn't actually read my post.

This is the new parking lot that I am checking out. It seems pretty nice so far, but there is a weird statue in the corner. If it is just a one off that is cool. If it is the first among many then maybe I need to keep driving around.

Edit: Seems like I combined the two posts when responding, but I think I am going to leave it as is.

[-] Catpocalypse@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

You're asking a person with a day job who is doing a cool thing for the fediverse community and set up a community in sh.itjustworks (Agora) to handle these possible future blocks to give you a granular breakdown of the blocking of one instance in a justification they don't really owe you.

The community itself is trying to be chill and just vibe. If what we're doing fits what you're looking for, welcome.

[-] Nahvi@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

And you are repeating my own words back to me in a different order as if it will surprise me into keeping my questions to myself.

Pardon me for trying to find out if I just wandered into an environment that is as chill and welcoming as it seems from the outside or another reddit where many genuine questions will get shouted down.

[-] Catpocalypse@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Genuine apologies, as that's not my intent.

We've had what has seemed (to me) an influx of just really bad faith and downright trolling type stuff going down recently and it's perhaps colored my take on things more than I realized, and it probably has for others as well.

We really did just come here for the chill vibe, read the thing, and were like "yeah, this works for me."

Other things may get added to that block list in the future, yes. I pointed you to the Agora because you may not, as a new user, be aware of it, as the Dude set it up as the place where these kinds of decisions will most likely be made in the future and where community discussions tend to be focused.

However, as a Canadian based instance, they have different laws on what does and doesn't put them at risk, so there are times where those calls may be his and his to make alone (which is why there are two where there was only one on the list of defederated).

[-] aspseka@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

influx of just really bad faith

Is that so? On this instance or in general? So far, I did not perceive that. On the contrary, I enjoy the discussions around here so far.

[-] Catpocalypse@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

It started with a discussion on sh.itjustworks, but due to the open nature of federation, anyone can wander in to the discussion, as you can see with input from users outside our instance.

There was some confusion, some trolling, but I think if as a user you weren't really active in our Main or Agora communities it may not have been something you would have been aware of, if that makes sense.

Honestly in my experience, most (I'd say as close to all as you can get) of sh.itjustworks users are really just here to chill and make an awesome experience.

[-] aspseka@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

If you are of the opinion that I am not active Ilin the Agora, clearly you don't follow it that well. I am sorry.

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[-] Lols@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

federating with lemmygrad means opening your communities up to the same behaviour displayed there, such as active calls for political violence, suggesting users kill themselves, ableist slurs etc

having personal convictions against this sort of behaviour seems entirely reasonable

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[-] sudo@lemmy.fmhy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

"I want someone else to pay for hosting and maintaining an instance for me, to admin it and moderate its communities, but when they make a choice I disagree with that's not okay."

Well, good thing there's a way for you to stand up your own instance that you can federate or defederate whatever instances you want.

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[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When I first made an account on lemmy.ml, I looked over at the lemmygrad.ml "Introduce yourself" thread. Heavily upvoted hot comment was somebody saying "Joined up to troll and fight liberals! Gonna show those libtards how stupid they are" (paraphrasing, don't remember the exact words).

When I eventually moved here, I was happy to see it defederated already. Celebrating trolling and "fighting" people isn't something I want to see here.

[-] Nahvi@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

That sounds like a good reason to block that idiot or maybe even that community from my own thread, but I would rather make my own choice as to when someone or a community is not acting in good faith. I don't need someone with different values than my own trying to protect me from some words I might find offensive.

On the other hand, blocking burggit so I don't have simulated CP showing up in my feed is not the kind of choice that I need clarification about.

[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago

I should clarify that this wasn't just 1 user that was isolated. This was an upvoted comment, with many other users congratulating him on his commitment to "trolling the libtards".

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[-] carbon_based@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is now @goat doing a "lemmygrad findings" collection here: !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for anyone who is interested in those gems.

[-] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

I know goat pushes some buttons (whether just due to being contrarian but earnest or actively trolling - I'm still kind of on the fence about that beyond 'they're kind of a dick'), but I've said this would be an interesting concept before, so it's neat to see it in practice.

Will reserve judgement until I see what's being curated, though.

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[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Firstly, welcome. I hope you choose to stick around.

Lemmygrad.ml is blocked and will almost certainly remain blocked. Any further discussion of that topic is moot. I understand your point, but to be frank, they only have about 700 active users. They simply don't have very much to contribute, even if they were commenting in good faith. And they obviously aren't, given how many instances have defederated them.

Going forward, the decision to defederate instances is not going to be taken lightly. I don't speak for TheDude, but my understanding of defederation is that it should be utilized defensively, rather than aggressively. If another server is harassing our users, disrupting our communities, or otherwise preventing our server from flourishing, then we will consider defederation.

Barring that extent of conflict, the block functionality exists so that individual users can protect themselves from unwanted content without compromising the integrity of the federated model.

You will have the opportunity to raise any arguments in favor of or against defederation in the relevant discussion thread that will be posted to the Agora prior to the vote.

https://sh.itjust.works/c/agora

We do not have any intention of becoming beehaw here, but we also need to protect the standard of discourse that has already emerged on this server.

I hope I have addressed your concerns. Let me know if there's anything I left out.