I saw talk of them being federated with instances like “exploding heads” (literal neo-nazis) and “posting lolis rocks”, along with having interactions from users there. Is that true? idk how to check for that, I can only just barely stumble around the normal forum interface.
If so, why? They’ve been going hard on purging communists user-by-user and comment-by-comment, which seems like a little bit of a secondary concern to nazis and pedos, especially something as simple as just blocking the instances at the very least. What’s going on over there?
What I mentioned, if it is correct, might not be exhaustive, I’m just repeating what I heard about.
Edit: Correction, exploding heads are closer to being latter-day blue checks, complete garbage but not as pressingly bad as the other site.
You’re probably aware that most instances default to open federation and only block an instance reactively when problems come up. Open federation means that as soon as a single user here requests a community off of an instance X, that instance will show up in this instance’s federation list; unless that instance is later specifically blocked.
But wow, those are some pretty crappy people over there.
Interestingly, it says there are 19 comments but I can only see 10 (will be 11 after I send this). I logged out (thinking it was just defederated users or something) and still only saw the same ones. Is there another mechanic that I am missing?
Oh, you might be interested to know that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml are also federating with the lolicon one, which appears to be a Mastodon instance. Both of those have blocked the exploding-heads one, though.
It’s pretty cool that federation (& blocking) information is public! In any event, there’s no point in “repeating what you heard about”, which is to say “playing Telephone with speculations”, when we can all just see the facts:
https://lemmy.world/instances
https://lemmy.ml/instances
https://lemmygrad.ml/instancesLike I said, I didn’t know how to actually check, which is why I asked as I did. Thanks for letting me know that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad don’t have the other one blocked, I will dm their admins about that. If you’re a user in good standing, I’d suggest asking your own instance admins about not blocking these two.
I DM’d a lemmygrad admin, next I’ll do so for lemmy.ml now that I can access the site again.
Isn’t there a way for individual users to completely hide an instance from their feed? Because I would just do that if it bothers you.
I’m not saying that some posts/instances aren’t unethical, objectively incorrect, and/or dangerous, but widespread censorship is a slippery slope. If you want what you’re able to see to be heavily controlled, there are probably other instances with that purpose. An instance that describes itself as general-purpose and for everyone probably isn’t the place for that, though.
widespread censorship is a slippery slope
I wouldn’t call blocking gore, nazis, and pedos “widespread”. For anyone who hasn’t heard the nazi bar story (source @IamRageSparkle on Twitter):
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”
And i was like, ohok and he continues.
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.
I think that’s a somewhat reasonable argument when such people are actually congregating in your space, and their presence necessarily impacts everyone else in that space.
In your example, by telling those people to leave you would necessarily be taking away what they believe to be their space and hindering the ability for group members to talk with each other. In the context of federated communities, it doesn’t matter when you block an instance (if and when such actions become necessary) because they’ll still have both of those things.
In your example, all interactions would constantly be influenced by the presence of that group and non-group-members would understandably associate that group with that space. In the context of a federated community, anyone can easily and instantly remove all influence on them by that group. Non-group-members wouldn’t make such associations because that group’s influence on non-group-members would by default be minimal.
That’s not how Nazis and other disgusting groups operate, though. Once they’re part of a community, they’ll start trying to get any other unknowing people interested in their content, so they start creating communities in disguise, trying to gain any new members, and make sure anyone who feels like an outsider, like they don’t belong, will feel welcome there, which in turn only strengthens those types of communities.
4chan used to be a pretty diverse community, which while it was definitely always pretty intense and insensitive, had a bit of everything, but after the American 2016 elections, /Pol/ started spreading to other boards until the /Pol/ folk became a very sizeable group everywhere else.
I think that happened during gamergate
Censoring literal, open Nazis and pedos is perfectly fine by me, thank you very much. I don’t think there’s any “slippery slope” involved other than the risks of allowing such people free rein in open spaces.
Blocking and unblocking should be normal, expected, easily discoverable, and openly discussed. There are a lot of people on the Internet; a nonzero number of them are frothing assholes; and frothing assholes are quite capable of running servers.
The whole system we’re on here is still new and in rapid flux. Expect change. This isn’t Reddit with admins saying for years that hosting /r/jailbait is essential to free speech. It takes time to develop agreeable responses to kinds of trouble this system hasn’t yet seen.
frothing assholes
smh this is just the kind of NSFL content we’re talking about
The thread was already tagged :)
hah touché!
There are a lot of people on the Internet; a nonzero number of them are frothing assholes; and frothing assholes are quite capable of running servers.
There are people goddamn sure that if you don’t accept their horse porn, that you must hate free speech.
The problem is not that some (or many) communities may block access to some (or many) other communities, but rather that such blocking is not immediately obvious and may give an appearance that those blocked communities don’t exist (kind of like lying by omission). This is especially true if the description of your community implies a lack of enforced blocking. If someone manages a community where it’s very clear that outside access is moderately to extremely controlled, I completely support that.
Gonna just hammer this home: this slippery slope has literally never been true. Reddit getting rid of neo nazis, the fatpeoplehate lynch mob, and the pedophile subreddits only ever made the site better. This fear of censorship has ruined platforms far more than any so called censorship has. I would rather go back to Something Awful and their capricious mods than deal with another laissez faire administration
Did you create an accounton exploding-heads.com and experienced nazism ?
It’s interesting, because on the side bar it clearly states nazis are not allowed.
Did you take the initiative and read their rules to see what it is they allow and don’t allow?
Did you proactively look for evidence of this, or are you just going on speculation?
You think Nazis care about what a sidebar says? Publicly denying their position is straight out of their playbook.
Publicly deny while dogwhistling like crazy. Hell, it’s hardly even dogwhistles.
