It seems that the issue was resolved behind closed doors, so it could have been resolved behind closed doors to begin with, and then if the defederation was to go ahead simply announce the defederation.
Making an announcement “it will be defederated in 48 hours” made for this weird countdown drama thread (we even had programming.dev people show up and be sad about defederation!) that didn’t really go anywhere, and then y’all just locked it when we refederated and made it clear that you were never interested in input and you’ll be running the instance as you please (which is well within your rights of course). So what was the point of the thread?
I can see how it is nice to have warning if a community you’re involved in is going to be defederated, but it also drags drama to our nice little corner of the fediverse, and pins it at the top of our feeds for all to see. In fact it shows up as the top of every feed for me, Local, All, and Subscribed. I can’t get away from it.
Every time these threads show up they end up blowing up. Honestly, if you didn’t make these threads, I wouldn’t care who you defederate. But because the thread exists, I have to come in and I have to have an opinion. That’s a personal issue and I recognize that, but I would hazard a guess that I’m not the only one. People who have never interacted with Blahaj nor the instance getting defederated show up in these threads sometimes. These threads invite drama, and for me personally, whenever they come up they make this space feel significantly less safe and make me want to leave Lemmy as a whole because it feels like it’s just nonstop defederation drama for days at a time, but it’s pinned at the top of my feed.
Maybe these threads actually provide utility, and I should just take these threads as a sign I should take a break from the Internet for a bit. But to me, they just seem like they’re all downsides.
I think the point is to be informative, also it is important to realize how it affects people which many of the people providing feedback showed. I’m not a believer that Fediverse should cater to “user choice” or “free speech” and I do believe defederation is justified and necessary, but sometimes it is too much, or too early to properly tell.
I can definitely see how it would be unpleasant to have a countdown thread pinned in the feed though, and the announcement of defederation in general. Defederation is an unpleasant subject and does start drama, though I feel it would be just as bad if not worse if we didn’t get a warning or announcement. So it is necessary to talk about it and understand how it impacts people, especially with bigger and well established instances.
(I wouldn’t say this is necessary for an instance that is new or has never contacted us or vice versa, in that case us defederating them would be as if we never existed to them, this argument about considering impact doesn’t apply to threads or any other instance which hasn’t gotten off the ground).
Personally I wasn’t a fan of seeing the post pinned in my community (especially after lurking on Reddit and seeing a troll post claiming that Snowe needs to hand over Programming.dev to hexbear, made it seem like we were trollbaited) but I’d still prefer it to not noticing anything for months until I inevitably tried to respond or search for something there and couldn’t find it, or replied/posted in their communities and get no response. Even though it’s unpleasant I’d still take notice over ignorance.