Comment on Suggestion: asking for the community's thoughts before defederating with an instance
Candelestine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I disagree.
I think it is users job to find an Instance that does things in a way they will approve of. It is not the owners job, who does all the work and maintains the hardware, to make sure their users are happy with all their decisions.
You are not locked onto World, and actually, it has far too many users already, enough to unbalance all of Lemmy. Rather than pressure Ruud to try to make the individuals here happy, I think they should simply feel encouraged to leave.
You can access all the content here from almost any other of the hundreds of Instances.
Instead of pushing back against your opinion, I must confess what you said would work if there was a seamless way to move accounts and communities from one instance to another. Unfortunately that’s currently not the case.
It’s also worth noting that an instance itself can change philosophy. It seems .world is moving from generic Lemmy to pro-world bank/imf/NATO Lemmy. I’m not necessarily for or against any of that, but I signed up for a generic Lemmy, not an echo chamber.
People have freedom on the Fediverse. That’s all there is to it. If people want to support a particular view on a particular Instance that they own, then they should be able to do that. Users that disagree with it are free to organize themselves in a different way.
This is vastly preferable to trying to control the behavior of one admin, simply because he happened to grow large the quickest. He should have the same freedom that we do, since none of us are forced to remain here on the server that he owns.
Again, I’d agree with you if it were seamless to move between instances. In fact, what you’re suggesting is far superior to hoping an all-powerful admin would forever uphold ideals around a free and open internet, even when inconvenient. However, Lemmy isn’t there yet.
On your first point, there are tools already for migrating accounts although still in their early stages. For example, github.com/CMahaff/lasim allows you to move subs and blocks to a new account in another instance, but not posts and comments.
Moving a community is my main concern. Also, that utility doesn’t seem to allow moving post/comment history to the new account, unless I missed it.
I think it is users job to find an Instance that does things in a way they will approve of.
You’re missing the forest for the trees here. If this sort of “defederation because I feel like it” shit catches on, the whole concept of the fediverse will not work. You can go to another instance, sure, but what if the admin of the instance that you just left besides they don’t want to federate with the instance that you’re going to join.
The idea that users can just leave and find another instance only works if all instances are connected and being administrated fairly and unbiasedly. Increasingly that looks like it’s not going to be the reality, which means leaping around instances is going to end up meeting a lot of invisible walls.
This is just fear mongering to me. Just because some people defederate with some other people, does not mean everyone will suddenly start defederating with everyone.
That’s just a slippery slope argument, and no better than the rest of them. There is no reason the behavior would suddenly spread everywhere, especially given how much of the Fediverse shares your exact opinion.
I haven’t seem any polling, but it seems fairly close to a 50/50 split between people who strongly disagree with defederation vs those that do not. That is plenty of people to keep most of the service federated.
That works if the instance openly expresses a general policy on defederating , and then adheres to their own policy. Based on the whole pre-emptive threads defederation that many other instances took part in, but lemmy.world did not, it seemed like they were aiming to be a very open instance - their stated reason for not cutting ties with threads was to have a wait and see approach and actually give them a chance before assuming it will be a problem (and it’s not like meta has a stellar track record either). Now with hexbear they are taking an immediate defederation, no chances approach. It would be nice to get some clarity on the general criteria for pre-emptive and reactive defederation in order to make those home instance decisions.
I will admit I was deeply disappointed that we were not promised that we would defederate from any and all Meta properties. I would still like to see that promised.
I frankly just don’t care how much good it will or won’t do.
frankly just don’t care how much good it will or won’t do.
Then why are you speaking up against letting the community have a say if you don’t care what the outcome is? You’re just as capable of changing instances as anyone else.
Axiochus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean, they’re voicing a position, much like you do. It’s important to not just have ‘exit’ approaches, ‘voice’ is important as a contribution to the development of a community. That doesn’t mean that an owner should be beholden to the users, but it’s perfectly fine to have dynamism and exchange in what instances are. We construct them collectively, and over time.
Candelestine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I agree. But that should be up to Ruud, not us. I have no interest in seeing any attempts at direct democracy here.
It’s not like these communities are even remotely secure. We should remember full well that there are plenty of people out there that want the Fediverse project to fail. Strongly enough to perform attacks. They are certainly attempting more conventional trolling techniques, that should be a given, as its also an effective way to harm a community. From within.
No conversation on here is exclusively people that want Lemmy to succeed, and thus cannot be fully trusted. Ruud, on the other hand, has managed to earn my trust so far with his financial disclosures and open communication style.
4am@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ok
Ok, so you actually don’t
Candelestine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They said the owner should not be beholden to the users. I feel we are overall in agreement.
I’m not against dialogue and conversation. Just against the expectation it should have any kind of power over him. That’s all.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Voting is literally the heart of the platform.
But more importantly no one is asking for direct democracy. They’re asking the leadership to have a code and abide by it if they’re going to be the person running the largest instance, and if they can’t do that, then Lemmy as platform has some issues it needs to iron out because communities will get locked into instances as time goes on.