Draconic NEO

Yeah I’ve heard the spam problems have gotten worse these days but I always knew people complained about that because many of the services just didn’t moderate spam.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t an open standard, that means they are using it as a closed system. This isn’t a case of XMPP not being open, it’s a case of servers using it choosing not to be open. Therefore the problem isn’t XMPP not being open, it’s services themselves not being open. As an example Reddit uses Matrix in their awful chats function, but you can’t message other matrix users there or message reddit users from Matrix. That doesn’t make Matrix not open, it means someone is using it in a way that isn’t open to others.

I don’t think they mean unmoderated as in can’t be moderated but just that they weren’t moderated.

Particularly Lemmy because Lemmy admins have fundamentally broken the idea of federation with defederation. It generally doesn’t matter what email you use or what email the receiver uses, baring more niche services. It does actually matter what instance you’re on.

You’ve probably never tried using email outside of Google, Outlook, Yahoo or Proton but let me tell you it doesn’t just work. A lot of the servers have been blocked by the big first 3, sometimes soft-blocks being redirected to the Spam folder, but often times hard blocks where they don’t get through at all. So it very much does matter what email service you do use, as many of the smaller ones and domains you might obtain to set up your own have been defederated, much more aggressively might I add. It doesn’t take much for a domain to end up on spamhaus’ or other spam lists, and it’s a big pain to get them off said lists.

Let’s compare with Defederation of activitypub services (because Lemmy devs didn’t invent the idea of deferation, it’s part of ActivityPub standard and is a thing on all activitypub platforms), something that typically happens when a server is spamming, spreading violent or hateful messages, or otherwise engaged in unproductive or harmful behavior (i.e. trolling, rudeness towards others, etc.). We don’t use spamhaus or a similar equivalent service to filter “spam” automatically, much of it is done by server admins themself, there are tools like Fediseer meant to keep track of instances which are trusted as well as identifying known bad actors, but since this is community driven and not monolithic it is different from spamhaus and the like.

In all honesty the Defederation boogeyman is a very stupid argument, especially when comparing it to email which has ironically been hit the hardest by it. It has effectively been reduced to a handful of big players while all the other smaller ones out there find themselves unable to compete. Meanwhile on the activitypub side defederation is still an issue but it is a minor one and is limited to edge cases or bad behavior. One thing that is important to note, and why it isn’t talked about more frequently to other people is this. When people invite others to join the Fediverse, they naturally assume the people who are joining are NOT trolls, alt-right sociopaths, neonazis, pedophiles, spammers, etc. and thus are not likely to have their accounts banned or the servers they start get widely defederated. If you are one of those people chances are you aren’t the target demographic for most fediverse servers out there, and thus you will face friction, bans, and mass defederation because people do not want you in their spaces or to listen to your dogshit propaganda.

The Fediverse was never about freeze peach, it’s about collaboration and cooperation between services, and most services do not want to collaborate with people who are assholes. The people still claiming that it is for free speech are lying or misinformed, because on most servers if you speak your mind and say things that are unacceptable or evil, there will be consequences. That means bans from those servers or defederation if you run your own.

It’s an excuse, people don’t want to just say they don’t want to do it, so they make an excuse not to, saying it’s ““complicated””. They don’t feel like it or hate it for some irrational reason, possibly a misconception or just hate change.

If you see someone making excuses like this, or even casually making fun of the idea of decentralization and the fediverse, challenge them on it, point out how they are making excuses simply because they don’t want to do it, or say no. Ask them how it is “complicated” and make them give an explanation. 90% of the people I’ve done this with couldn’t come up with one and just acted embarrassed after, because they couldn’t come up with one. It’s a mindless excuse.

My theory is that they’re doing it to try and avoid defederation and bide their time until they can figure out a way to circumvent it, like was done with Mastodon defederation with activitypub-troll. Thankfully many instances haven’t fallen for it and have defederated them anyway despite not being whitelisted by them.

That’s good to know.

Doesn’t Lemmy already support federated wordpress blogs as locked communities? I don’t really see how this extra complexity is needed.

Would seed-only mode still be acceptable for an instance larger than 100 users? Asking because another instance admin is concerned about the possible ethical issues that might arise if larger instances use this. They haven’t used the tool up to now due to concerns of increasing storage and disrupting/affecting the natural All page by federating many new communities automatically, which is why seed-only mode was being considered.

CC: @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com

(If I misunderstood something or got something wrong I apologize)

For Twitter it really doesn’t make sense because it has become undebatably a “Nazi bar”, metaphorically since they aren’t an actual bar, but they still support and tolerate Nazis (and other manners of horrible people). Some people insist that it isn’t and there are “normal level headed people there” but that doesn’t matter, it’s still a Nazi bar, because it accepts and tolerates Nazis. How can someone expect to not be judged for going to and hanging out in a place like that?

Well right wingers want to ban books and services like IA make that harder since they provide easy access to download or digitally borrow those books. It makes it harder for them to deny people access to those books since they can find them online. Of course, there are other ways people can still obtain those books, IA isn’t the only one, but it’s the easiest and the most convent.

I’m in agreement. The social credit idea really doesn’t bode well. Karma resrictions on Reddit are one of the bad parts of Reddit and I for one am glad that it’s not a thing here.

That’s why it’s really important to have an option to share your own instance communities without receiving ones from others. Allows others to know of you, while not taking on more data load than you have to.

I don’t know, it’s hard to say what actually happened. I will admit that it seems weird but I don’t want to jump to conclusions about how or why they did it, maybe you could post about it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com to get different opinions on it.

I mean I think that’s the idea, they didn’t want people blocking the instance to disrupt normal discussions by hiding the users.

Their intent wasn’t to offer an alternative to defederation, but rather for blocking all an instance’s communities manually.

Yeah I saw it on their modlog. It’s very useful to check the modlogs of remote servers, especially since admin comments removals and site-bans for remote users don’t federate in the modlog.

(which your agreement to could be seen as agreement with trans-segrigation in sports).

Nah, I was explaining how the only way to get better at chess is to play better people, and there’s no reason for any classes based around gender. And the explanation for difference in skill, is simply that the best men refused to play women, so they never improved. The first female grand master was only that good because her dad was crazy good and made her and her sister play him constantly.

You need the experience of high level play to be able to play at a high level, and any gender divide in division just prolongs that. So I was arguing against any segregation at all.

I guess it was likely a miscommunication or misunderstanding. They probably thought you meant something different than what you actually meant.

You were banned in blahaj.zone for your comment on Chess:

They take the whole trans women allowed/not-allowed in sports thing very serious there, and I agree with them mostly. The sports thing is a dog-whistle transphobes use because it sounds reasonable even though it really isn’t. It is especially unreasonable in a game like Chess (which your agreement to could be seen as agreement with trans-segrigation in sports). It’s likely they reacted way too harshly, outright permanent instance bans over something small like that are very extreme, a warning would’ve probably been the best thing to do, maybe a temp ban at most.

Lately sh.itjust.works been more good about nuking spam and troll accounts, and they also have automated defenses set up to mitigate abuse.

You may want to consider the fact that instance blocks on the user side don’t actually effect that, they are not in any way like defederation, not by a long shot. They simply filter communities from those instances, and not much else. It doesn’t even hide user interactions from those instances.

There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit.

Disagreed, I’ve seen them trying to force their hand on other instances into running things the way they want them to, so I think it’s only fair others hold them to some standards as well. After all in the Fediverse there is some leverage you do have to get other instances to compromise, by way of simply refusing to operate with them anymore. Obviously that doesn’t mean completely bossing them around, which is why I said compromise, not comply. It also is still their choice whether or not to follow through, it comes at the cost of them no longer inter-operating with servers they refuse to compromise with, but I think that’s more than fair enough as a trade off.

It is also a good idea to push for alternatives, but even so, if the issue isn’t addressed it will still be problematic on those problems due to the size and weight the instance and its communities carry in the Fediverse.