This has been an interesting bit of discussion, to say the least. Different instances with different local rules are going to lead to problems like this situation more and more, as lemmy grows in popularity. It’s inevitable, and we’re all going to have to sort it out as the platform matures.
However the more I think about it, the more concerned I am that removing individual posts (or even comments) on a federated instance has the potential to misrepresent communities, through the filter of each instance’s mod/admin biases.
Perhaps a pointer saying “this post was removed on lemmy,world for violating rule (x), and can be viewed on its original instance <link>” would be appropriate. Or alternatively, blocking entire communities with a comparable stub: “lemmy.world has chosen not to federate community@instance.”
Of course in my examples I’m picking on lemmy.world because that’s where this is happening, but the problem and possible solutions are true for all instances.
Shadow@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Yes, but we have a post that is political in nature being removed by admins of the largest instance. If this was child porn I wouldn’t be concerned, but this is on a post that I don’t think even violates lemmy.world rules.
I don’t think instance admins should be actioning reports, unless they are in clear violation of instance rules. Reports should be left to the mods of that community. By actioning on reports like this, lemmy.world is effectively acting as a censor, and they control what most lemmy users see.
stankmut@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I think the federated nature makes it tough to just have a blanket policy of leaving it up to the community mods. Ideally you would want the report to go through the community mods and then the host instance admins first, but you might not be able to contact those instance admins to see if they have looked at the post. You also have no control of the community mods and would not expect them to remove the post because of your rules.
Even with that, I do agree that something should change. As it stands, you can have posts disappear from largest Lemmy server from seemingly arbitrary admin decisions and there’s no formal process to appeal. It seems like you would need some sort of Alliance where you all agree to certain guidelines and have a formal process for these cross-server disputes.
Maybe there should also be some sort of ‘Approved by host admin’ system so that other admins can at least know that you looked at it.
themelm@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I think that the default should be that when something is deleted it should say deleted by “Admins of whatever” that way people at least know their view is being tampered with and could investigate if they’re so inclined.
can@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Can’t agree more. All we can do is reduce the user dominance.