The instance seems to be mostly right wing trolls. I know defederating is unpopular but I don't think much is to be lost in this case and it can save the mods some headaches.
Edit: the response on exploding-heads.com to my reporting of transphobia. Courtesy of the "second in command"
Don't de-federate unless they're allowing the planning of violence, CSAM material, or actual abuse.
As a leftist I see it like this:
Blocking someone is: "I don't want to see this"
De-federating is: "I don't want you to see this"
Blocking someone is: Ignoring a person saying bigoted things.
De-federating is: Jailing a person saying bigoted things.
If you can't handle people saying shit you don't like then you need thicker skin. If you can't engage in a conversation with a person who shares an opinion that you fine distasteful then you need to seek maturity.
If you can't disagree with someone without physically attacking them, then you don't deserve to be part of a community. If you can't exist without abusing another person, then you don't deserve to be part of a community.
As a leftist you should be familiar with the paradox of tolerance and the dangers of giving a platform to hateful ideas.
I'm familiar with the Paradox of Tolerance and its propensity to be wielded like a cudgel when someone wants to be intolerant of an idea.
Who gets to decide which ideas are the bad kind of intolerance and which are the good kind of intolerance?
I say we should be intolerant of people who use force to spread their message. I say we should be intolerant of people who would shut down a conversation over a disagreement.
We absolutely should not federate with instances who allow for the promotion of violence or other kinds of direct action against groups of people. If Exploding Heads allows that then I agree we should de-federate. From what I can see it's your standard right-wing instance. I disagree with a lot of opinions expressed there but I can handle blocking people and filtering my own reality. I don't need someone else to do it for me.
lol, defederating is not anything like jail
Now, in a tolerant society, we should be tolerant of people who are merely annoying. But not people who are normalizing violence and hate. There are people you fundamentally should not sit at a table with.
It's important to understand the difference between a good faith disagreement and bad faith propaganda and harassment campaigns, which is what the right wing troll farms deal in.
The issue is that you're no longer choosing who you interact with you're choosing who everyone interacts with. You're walking away with a table that other people are sitting at. This isn't Reddit you're not banning their subreddit, they're not deplatformed, you're just adding them to the block list of everyone on your instance.
You have no right to tell me what I can see and respond to anymore than I have a right to tell you who you can and cannot block.
That's also not what defederating is. Nobody's speech or ability to see speech is being restricted, since we are all free to set up accounts on other instances. Users are making a reasonable request to the instance owner for a normal moderation action that is in line with stated community standards and past defederation decisions (i.e., lemmygrad); the instance owner is free to honor it or not.
The basic question, which every fediverse instance has been having to deal with since inception, is how to draw the line on communities that willingly include bad actors. It has to be drawn somewhere, and where you draw it says a lot.
If you blocked everyone on that server, you'd never see them again.
If you de-defederate them then nobody here can see them and you've blocked everybody on that instance for everyone on this instance.
If you block them it doesn't affect what I can read and respond to. If you de-federate this instance from their instance then you are choosing who I can see and who I can read and who I can respond to.
From your point of view there is zero difference between them being de-federated and you blocking their users and communities. From my point of view there is a significant difference between them being de-federated and you blocking their users and communities.
If you were just worried about seeing what they write then you'd block them. If you run a community and are worried about their users posting in your community, you can set up a moderation script that blocks posts coming from their server.
You're trying to make choices that affect how other people on this instance interact with the entire Fediverse. It is not your role to decide what other users can read and respond to.
you can leave the instance if you don't like it; this allows you to access the rest of the fediverse; saying "you're blocked from the entire fediverse" is not a good reason to not defed because it's fundamentally not true
This isn't Reddit you're not banning their subreddit, they're not deplatformed, you're just adding them to the block list of everyone on your instance.
I can manage my own block list. You can manage your own block list.
You can't manage my block list, and I can't manage your block list. Fair?
No. You can start your own server if that's how you want it. That's fair as designed.
I'm not the one trying to change the server.
If you're not happy here then there are other instances for you.
As I quipped about earlier, based on what a lot of people are saying in here it's kinda bullshit that we de-federated lemmygrad then. But to your point we just need a short list of things that sh.it will defed over so that policy can be applied consistently.
These big discussion threads on the main community here have actually had a lot of healthy discussion in them which is encouraging. All of these things are just initial growing pains that the broader lemmysphere is going through right now to find its footing. Things will even out.
I don't know the lemmygrad situation but I'd likely agree. If they're not spreading violence or CSAM or engaging in abusive activity (doxing, SWATing, targeted harassment, etc) then I think the filtering of communities should be left to the users. Moderation is to ensure that an instance isn't overran by spam or bot postings so that the users can communicate.
I don't need a Big Brother deciding who I can and cannot talk to and which opinions I can and cannot be exposed to.
Wait, whats the argument against jailing shitty people? No one's abusing them or attacking them just nobody wants to hang with them in any way shape or form.
Then each person, individually, makes that choice.
If you choose to not hang out with a person in a cult that's fine. But you shouldn't block them off from every other person, what about the people who are trying to deconvert them. What about the people who are keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't do crazy things?
Your desire to interact with them should only control your actions, you shouldn't try to impose your desire to block a person or community on everyone who shares an instance with you.
Nah ppl should not stand by and watch literal human garbage thrive. Let them stew in their own hate, alone.
Sounds like you're painting with a mighty broad brush. Which specific people and posts are you talking about? Because if you find a 'literal human garbage' poster you can click their name and click 'Block User'.
I don't need you to curate my block list for me.