The instance is currently federated with every instance (including places like lemmygrad and explodingheads) as the current stance is defederation should be a last resort with users being able to choose what they want to see instead
Exploding heads has some very questionable content though so its status is currently being discussed by the admins
I wish there were a way to block entire instances per user.
It is an option in Sync for Lemmy at least.
Also Connect.
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This is actively being discussed too
This would make my life so much easier
Yeah it should be a per user decision…
Server runners should be able to make their own decisions too.
this is not mutually exclusive
In some respect, it is. For example, users don’t get to decide that they want to see defederated content without creating a new account somewhere else.
Sorry if that was obvious and pedantic to say.
Free speech absolutism is harmful. By remaining federated with them, you’re participating in distributing their content and giving them a platform. People do have a choice of what they want to see, they can choose to be a part of another instance without morals. I would hope that a programming instance of all places would understand the consequences of propaganda given so many programmers work in data collection and targeted advertising. If you show an ad to 1000 people and one of them buys the product, the ad worked. It’s no different for disinformation campaigns.
It’s not like they’re just sharing differing opinions or saying awful shit, they’re taking things out of context or making things up (or posting articles that make things up) and it’s very easy to prove if you do a tiny bit of googling. One article listed off a bunch of climate predictions that were wrong along with sources to look credible. If you checked the sources though, they were all wrong. Some of the predictions were actually made by humans (but not the claimed academic institutions) while others were straight up made up.
I hope the admins make the right decision here. Protecting free speech doesn’t mean allowing people to say whatever they want on your platform. It means allowing them to say it on their platform without being fined or put in jail.
My experience has often been the opposite. Programmers will do a lot to avoid the ethical implications of their works being used maliciously and discussions of what responsibility we bear for how our work gets used and how much effort we should be obligated to make towards defending against malicious use.
It’s why I kind of wish that “engineer” was a regulated title in America like it is in other countries, and getting certified as a programming engineer required some amount of training in programming ethics and standards.
How would a formal licensing system work for software engineering? How would they keep up with the rapid evolution in this industry?
I believe in better education in this field, but the standard “engineer” programs from other fields don’t translate to software. Having the government codify today’s standards would stunt the industry as a whole and kill innovation. Imagine if they had done that in the 90s and said all programming must be waterfall, monolithic, relational dbs, and using c/Fortran/Cobol.
Maybe I just don’t understand how other countries handle it though. I know my country would absolutely screw it up
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Formal licensing could be about things that are language agnostic. How to properly use tests to guard against regressions, how to handle error states safely.
How do you design programs for critical systems that CANNOT fail, like pace makers? How do you guard against crashes? What sort of redundancy do you need in your software?
How do you best design error messages to tell an operator how to fix the issue? Especially in critical systems like a plane, how do you guard against that operator doing the wrong thing? I’m thinking of the DreamLiner incidents where the pilots’ natural inclination was to grab the yoke and pull up, which unknowingly fought the autopilot and caused the plane to stall. My understanding was that the error message that triggered during those crashes was also extremely opaque and added further confusion in a life-and-death situation.
When do you have an ethical responsibility not to ship code? Just for physical safety? What about Dark Patterns? How do you recognize them and do you have an ethical responsibility to refuse implementation? Should your accreditation as an engineer rely on that refusal, giving you systemic external support when you do so?
None of that is impacted by what tech stack you are using. They all come down to generic logical and ethical reasoning.
Lastly, under certain circumstances, Civil engineers can be held personally liable for negligence when their bridge fails and people die. If we are going to call ourselves “engineers”, we should bear the same responsibility. Obviously not every software developer needs to have such high standards, but that’s why software engineer should mean something.
Yeah, the goal is mainly to get everyone in the fediverse able to participate in the coding chats as long as they’re respectful about it rather than being a free speech absolutism instance. An ideal scenario would be allowing users to participate in here while limiting the posts in their communities to not show up in things like the all feed if their instance is problematic
Decision should be pushed out soon, just making sure we get everything sorted out before we push anything and been a bit slower due to vacations
That’s much more reasonable than I expected =D I’d argue they can make an account on another instance if they want to participate
Yeah thats why defederation isn’t as bad of a decision currently while things get coded. It ruins a bit of the fediverse mechanics though of only needing one account to interact with different sites which is why having them able to interact in the instance communities while their outside posts are hidden is ideal
The main sorts used in the instance are local new, local active, and subs which is what we are mainly optimizing for. Default sort when people make an account is local active which is a bit different from most other sites that default to all so it hasn’t been as big of a problem for us as other instances but since we’re growing more and more been working on some different guidelines for things like bots, federated instances, etc slowly on the side
False information is a global problem, but arguing against free speech absolutism sounds more dangerous to me.
I hear people say free speech absolutism is dangerous because it can lead to loud extremist voices overwhelm the more “moderate” ones, often referencing Nazi Germany and the success of their propaganda. However, any limiting of free speech can lead to censorship of voices falsely labeled extreme and fake. The entity regulating speech would need to be absolutely immune to corruption, which just isn’t possible.
Extremists voices often reach further because of how radical they are, but sometimes the radical ideas are the right ones, even if at the moment the general public disagree with them. After all, we have no idea of knowing that what we really hear is the general public opinion or bots deployed by a currently dominant entity, and the general public is not always correct. For example, in certain countries the general public still believe homosexuality is sinful and should be banned, which is horrible. In these places we need radical voices. If there is a regulatory system of speech, it could be skewing and mislabeling what is considered public opinion, and what is considered extreme views.
My views do not align with the right, but I am a strong advocate for free speech and privacy, especially on the internet. Free speech and privacy must be absolute, or it isn’t free speech or privacy.
I’m a very strong supporter of free speech. But free speech absolutism where you go out of your way to make all voices heard is not what free speech is about. It’s about the government not interfering. Just like people have a right to a gun, but Walmart has the right to kick you out for bringing one, rammy.site users have the right to say whatever they want, and other instances have the right to defederate.
If a teacher goes against the curriculum and teaches children that black people are all out to get them, I sure as hell hope the school would step in and stop or remove them.
That’s not a violation of free speech, but in your opinion above it would be.
Honestly, yeah I think it would be in my opinion.
I would argue that an instance is like a governing body for many communities, and defederation is censoring people of other nations. “If you don’t like it, you can leave” is not as simple anymore because you cannot just migrate to a different instance (at least not fully)
Guns at Walmart is different, because you can’t just block a gun on a personal level, but on Lemmy you can block communities on a user level. (Blocking entire instances on a user level would be even better ). And guns pose a physical threat, while radical instances are more or less opinions people don’t agree with.
If a teacher has radical ideas, as long as he has overwhelming evidence, he should be allowed in my opinion. " Black people are out to get you" is very hard to agree with, but “gays shouldn’t be hanged” in a country like Iran isn’t.
Admins of course have a right to do whatever they want with their instance, and I’m not saying it shouldn’t be allowed, but I personally don’t agree with it and I’m voicing my opinion against it.
I have some instances in the fediverse that come to mind that I personally wouldn’t want to be defederated from but know that many others do. For example the mastodon instance pawoo where my favorite artists reside.
I strongly disagree with you and think you’re wrong. Especially that you would allow teachers to teach children that black people are out to get you, all to protect some made up ideal that was never intended when the first amendment was added.
If we didn’t allow for radical ideas to be discussed, we would still be in the dark ages, and criticizing the existence of God would be punishable by death.
I’m not American and the intention of the amendment doesn’t matter. Free Speech is a human right no matter what country or what definition they have. My definition is that it is absolute. Free speech is especially important when dealing with radical ideas. Free speech as long as it is moderate is nothing but a façade, propaganda to keep the population under control.
Let’s make up a scenario where it turns out there are vampires among us, and they’re all the same minority. Let’s say I have extensive research with DNA proof that any descendant from minority X is a vampire, and I’m trying to publish my research, but no publisher is willing to take me seriously. I try to speak in front of people, but I’m labeled a racist, and I’m banned from making public speeches or enter any university. I have the evidence, but cannot show it because people are so sure that it is absolutely impossible that there are vampires among us. In this scenario, I am a radical extremist, and by your argument, it is right for me to not have a voice.
Free speech is not what you think it is. In your scenereo you have the right to try to say what you’re trying to say. Just because your opinion is unpopular and people are unwilling to publish (freedom of speech and the press goes both ways, you can’t force someone to say something either) does not mean your rights are being infringed. This is universal and not just the US. There are no countries I’m aware of that say “all publishers must publish anything anyone says regardless of their credibility”. It would be ludicrous.
And if we go back to my example, that person who believes that they’re teaching children something true can go through the proper channels of society to change the curriculum. I’m also unsure if you’re actually giving the idea of “black people are out to get you” space or just hypothetically, I chose it as an example that’s obviously not true. Replace it with teaching them that strange white vans have candy in them and it’s okay to eat it. Or replace it with them explaining to the children sexual actions they desire in great detail. Your absolutism says they should be allowed by the school to do this, and if that doesn’t change your mind, I’ve made my case, you disgust me, and I choose not to engage further.
I understand the reasoning but I think it’s not the same situation as lemmygrad, which I feel is a normal instance with an ideological bent. Exploding heads is just violent propaganda. I hope you defederate.
What about hexbear? Is programming.dev federated with them? Or are they intentionally defederated with everyone?
hexbear split off and has been running their own fork for awhile separate from the rest of lemmy (so they couldnt federate with lemmy instances). They are coming back now though so lemmy instances will start to be able to interact with them soon
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Ah yeah just checked and looks like I see can see their communites, didnt realize they already joined in. So yes we are federated with them atm, just if a community hasnt been subscribed to yet by anyone the posts from it wont show up in the feeds
I can enter a community but I can’t see any posts. For example: https://programming.dev/c/[email protected]
Weird, what might be happening is posts from before they were federated dont show up but ones after are. Theres posts in [email protected]
I think it might be due to discoverability? I remember reading something about that. If no one in this instance is subscribed to an external community, the server doesn’t load their posts, or something like that.
Edit: OH what a dummy, you just said that lol.
Not from what I’ve seen. They filled up 90% of a thread about China/Taiwan with hundreds of comments supporting the CCP. Quite a few were just troll messages, too.
Thanks for the info.
I understand the reasoning but I think it’s not the same situation as lemmygrad, which I feel is a normal instance with an ideological bent.
Lemmy grad actively denies Genocides. Lemmygrad says that that Tienanmen Square was fabricated by the U.S.
Exploding-heads will poke fun at gender dysphoria in two communities, dank memes and dank taco.
EH is morally superior to lemmygrad in every way.
Finally,
You all should be using nostr where admins can’t take your voice away or your right to hear opposing opinions.
Looks like a typical right wing instance to me. I personally don’t feel like propaganda is enough of a reason to defederate. You have propaganda everywhere, even from official news outlets.
The content that occasionally ended up in my All feed was mostly Hate against trans people (I.e. being happy about people’s suicide), or complete nonsense conspiracies.
Their interactions in threads were unpleasant, and a small group of them were persistently provoking lemmyworld users.
If you search exploding-heads you might come across some examples, if they haven’t been nuked from that instance.
Aside from that, I find Hexbear users really pleasant, and I’ve never seen a lemmygrad user provoke anyone 🤷♂️
While I’m personally bias (see right above), from my experience the general content in alt right spaces (I’ve been on wolfballs, idk about exploding heads tho) is a bit more unhinged than general content on Marxist/left unity spaces. I mean we MLs agree with the “vaguely leftist” person more than a alt right person.
I personally like to try meeting people where they are and don’t block as long as the content isn’t harmful. And imho a random person on the internet saying a 19th century philosopher was right is not that harmful, especially compared to people down the alt right rabbit hole (yes I’m oversimplifing).
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I am not a fan of reaching for defederation often; I actually came here from beehaw because I felt like they just pulled that trigger too fast and too frequently.
However, I do think that we should defederate from exploding-heads and hexbear. I don’t go looking for chances to be offended, but I do notice that when I see something truly distasteful on All it is almost exclusively from one of those two lately, and at this point removing them from All would make my lemmy experience just a bit more friendly.
It’s not even worth reporting content about them because when you do it seems like a common theme is that they just tag you so they can harass you. I tested this myself recently by reporting obvious misinformation/propaganda and the next time I logged in there were indeed items waiting in my inbox calling me a coward, etc.
Edit: fun fact, even if you block a user, and you block the community they are posting from, any time they mention you in a post you still get a message in your inbox, which seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight and a tool for harassment.
For those not aware of any drama, could you spill the beans?
Here’s the front page of exploding-heads.com. It has a picture of a trans person hanging themselves with slurs I censored with an emoji since it’s probably against the rules to post here
God, that is actively depressing. Why can’t people leave us alone 😟
I thought this one was funnier tbh
There’s a lot of disinformation and propaganda on it. They also used rammy.site to post exclusively harmful shit because it’s unmoderated
Thanks for the info
Definitely looks like a place you don’t want to interact with
Np, I left my previous instance when I learned they don’t defederate at all. Beehaw might take it too far, but I can’t be part of a free speech absolutist group that doesn’t understand the consequences of giving a platform to those types of campaigns
Sad to see it. I’m still holding out hope that they’ll do the responsible thing.
They are not left wing, mainly.
A particular flavour of right wing though. One that goes out of it’s way to say the most aboherent shit on people that are not like them.
In France we’ve got laws to regulate this type of speech. Say that AIDS is god’s punishment to the homosexuals -> get a fine (or if it’s the twentieth time you do it, go to jail).
I don’t find it shocking that people are banning content that some countries judge so problematic that they are ready to put people in jail for it.
No, it’s that they’re massive bigots that harass people
Go find me a left wing instance that spreads hateful disinformation and incites violence and I’ll ask to defederate with them too. Just because the right is the only side doing it doesn’t mean they’d be removed for being on the right.
If someone goes to jail because they murdered someone, it wasn’t because of their political preferences.
Hexbear? A stretch, but lemmygrad?
The time I spent interacting with lemmygrad, it seemed to me that although they were completely misinformed (Stalin denial and such) they believed what they were saying and weren’t actively and knowingly trying to hurt people. They believe the Chinese government is good and heading in the right direction for example. Their goal, while heavily misinformed, is to make life better for people. Not to spread hate and discrimination and violence. It’s a lot more gray area imo. I highly doubt the people spreading shit through exploding heads don’t know what they’re posting is bs. I could be wrong though. Regardless, I’d understand if the decision was made to defederate with them, but they’re not going around saying “kill trans people, kill the Jews” to my knowledge. I haven’t seen hexabear yet
Edit: I went back to lemmygrad to take a look, it’s worse than it was last time I was there. What I said still applies, but to a much lesser degree
Just looked at hexbear. I’d defederate them too. Though given they’re shitting all over liberals and saying how great Stalin was, I wouldn’t call them left wing either, other than liking communism. But maybe it counts as not right wing?
I’m sorry but liberals are not left wing, any socialist would shit on liberals. But I agree that their unironic defense of Russia is a about weird.
Side thought, it’s really weird that the right refers to the left as liberals, but the left refers to right-wing “centrists” as liberals, so everybody shits on liberals.
Man, I never saw “tankies are right wing” until I joined lemmy, and now I’ve seen it twice. What even is left wing/right wing to you guys?
I didn’t call them right wing?
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Note if two instances are defederated from each other they can’t see each others posts & comments on some third instance
So if people from world and people from beehaw comment on a post here people in p.d can see them both but the beehaw users can’t see the world users (if you check this thread on beehaw theres some comments missing)
Due to this and the nature of this instance the people in different instances interacting with each other hasnt been a problem and its mainly the all feed. As you said people deciding whether they want to join the instance can’t curate their all feed while they lurk so having that not be shit is ideal (and reducing the amount of blocks people need to do)
I found an option when digging through the lemmy code yesterday that allows a community to be hidden so it doesn’t show in the all feed which might be the best thing to do currently. (It just can only be set from the backend and has no ui to set it for some reason ). Still allows users to interact here since that hasnt been a problem and still allows people to sub to those communities. Would have to be extended eventually to be able to cover entire instances and could make it a screen when somebody joins the instance of if they want to see things like politics, sports, etc. which could enable or disable different things to be hidden
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Dear programming.dev userbase,
Before downvoting me to hell please read this:
As you can see I’m an EH user and I really like to look around here. I don’t comment as much but if I ever want to coment I would like to be able to.
RN the communities where “harmful and dangeorus propaganda” is being actively posted on are [email protected], [email protected] and one more which I can’t remember the name while writing this moment. If you don’t want to look at them please block them or ask the admins to purge them.
Defederation is not a good option. The fediverse was not made to be defederated from.
I’m ready for conversations
The issue with purging them is it can devolve into whack a mole if more problem communities pop up (and they likely will considering the current communities are not being handled by the admins when things like drawings of people hanging themselves are posted) (Could also be whack a mole with instances but a community on an instance with 10 members can do a lot less than a community on an instance with 7k members)
The solution would be limiting the exploding heads instance so that posts don’t show up but would still allow users there to participate in coding chats. Unfortunately though that functionality is not currently built into lemmy (and can’t be coded into this instance for awhile) so the next best option is just defederating and users there having two accounts which would be the case on any other site
If we get more things coded into the site we can revisit what we decide later since we would have more options to manage it
I would like if you just purge those communities or let users block them. The same way we are technically federated with lemmygrad but if you go to the “All” tab you won’t see many posts from them.
As you’ve said a community with 10 members would do much less damage than a community with 7k members, we are an instance with less than 20 active users. We aren’t doing too much damage and the “damage” we are doing could be mitigated pretty easy without defederation.
For anybody that stumbles upon this post, pushed out our decision on it and it was talked about in the august newsletter https://programming.dev/post/1671024
The exploding-heads communities that break our rules have been removed from the instance (and if you find any more in the future report a post that shows it breaking the rules and ill deal with it)
