Why was lemmygrad blocked? - sh.itjust.works
sh.itjust.works
Did the admins poll the community about it? Why was such measure so needed? If the tankie content is so annoying why not let users decide what they want to see or not and what they want to block? I don’t like that the admins want to censor the content I can view or not. You guys are not protecting us nor doing us a favor, you’re imposing your views over everyone else by limiting the information we are able to receive. I don’t support the devs views or the views in lemmygrad, but this is a dangerous precedent. I’ve read several of the “arguments” for blocking the instance and all I can see is a bunch of people talking about politics and arguing about “floods in the frontpage”. Well, let the user block communities if that’s the case, same way I’m already blocking communities I’m not interested. I think the admins want to feel like Facebook moderation. I’d be OK with it if any instance repeatedly generated spam, security, doxxing or any other concern that couldn’t be solved by banning individuals, otherwise it’s just plain censorship. I just don’t want the admins to use their power to decide what I can see or not. If this is going to be like this, I’ll leave for a better instance because I can see where this is going to.

EDIT: It seems that I have may have gotten the wrong impression about the community structure here from the @TheDude comment I listed below. It looks like this should have been posted to The Agora. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Now I must go find fresh air and see if I can find this grass thing that I have heard so much about.

First, let me say thank you for spending your time and money on creating and maintaining this instance.

Second, the name sh.itjust.works is great. It gives me a little half smile every time I type it.

Third, I am hoping this can be my Fediverse home base but I have a single concern.

Now on to the meat:

I have been over on lemmy.world for the last few days and really enjoying the content and experience, but as I was learning more about the Fediverse I realized they have blocked a whole slew of other instances. Most of the reason I have grown to dislike and distrust reddit over the years was because of their random subreddit bans that didn’t follow their own rules and processes, so it was a pretty big turn-off for me looking at the lemmy.world Instances List.

When I heard this instance only had two blocked instances, I immediately came here to check it out. I quickly saw like-minded individuals genuinely engaging in reasonable discussion about what should and should not be defederated, so I decided to go ahead and make an account. It didn’t take long though before I decided to look into why each of the instances were banned.

It seems like burggit allows simulated CP which is a pretty decent reason for blocking them in my mind. On the other hand, the only thing I could find about lemmygrad.ml was this (https://sh.itjust.works/comment/130474) post that says you blocked it because of your personal convictions.

Given that this instance is your own personal project, I certainly don’t fault you for choosing what is acceptable and what is not, but I am concerned about making sh.itjust.works my home base if it is just the start. Based on the previous post it doesn’t seem like something you are going to change your mind about, nor do I have an interest in trying to convince you to do so. What I would like to know is if this is going to be a regular thing.

Are you intending to block any instances with political opinions that you are staunchly against? Further, are you planning to create any sort of standard for what kind of instance you are likely or unlikely to ban in the future?

Bonus question for my curiosity: What makes lemmygrad so against your personal convictions? While I have a basic understanding of Marxism/Communism and am aware that current communist countries have a pretty questionable history of violence and suppressing personal and political freedoms, I think an objective viewer might say the same thing about the representative republic that I live in.

tl;dr: Are you going to block other instances for personal reasons? Also, are you going to create any standards to indicate which instances may be blocked in the future?

  • Shit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I think part of it had to do with genocide denial being pretty rampant there and way outnumbering the number of users in new instances when the reddit blackout started. One of the top posts here when the instance was new was asking if the admin even allowed discussing the topic. I think @god made the post I’ll see if I can find it.

  • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Firstly, welcome. I hope you choose to stick around.

    Lemmygrad.ml is blocked and will almost certainly remain blocked. Any further discussion of that topic is moot. I understand your point, but to be frank, they only have about 700 active users. They simply don’t have very much to contribute, even if they were commenting in good faith. And they obviously aren’t, given how many instances have defederated them.

    Going forward, the decision to defederate instances is not going to be taken lightly. I don’t speak for TheDude, but my understanding of defederation is that it should be utilized defensively, rather than aggressively. If another server is harassing our users, disrupting our communities, or otherwise preventing our server from flourishing, then we will consider defederation.

    Barring that extent of conflict, the block functionality exists so that individual users can protect themselves from unwanted content without compromising the integrity of the federated model.

    You will have the opportunity to raise any arguments in favor of or against defederation in the relevant discussion thread that will be posted to the Agora prior to the vote.

    https://sh.itjust.works/c/agora

    We do not have any intention of becoming beehaw here, but we also need to protect the standard of discourse that has already emerged on this server.

    I hope I have addressed your concerns. Let me know if there’s anything I left out.

  • Aviandelight @lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    This shit is so tiresome already. If you don’t like the atmosphere of one instance then find another. It really is that simple. Quit harassing the instance admins they don’t owe you shit.

    • Nahvi@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Seems like you didn’t actually read my post.

      This is the new parking lot that I am checking out. It seems pretty nice so far, but there is a weird statue in the corner. If it is just a one off that is cool. If it is the first among many then maybe I need to keep driving around.

      Edit: Seems like I combined the two posts when responding, but I think I am going to leave it as is.

      • HaveYouTriedCats@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        You’re asking a person with a day job who is doing a cool thing for the fediverse community and set up a community in sh.itjustworks (Agora) to handle these possible future blocks to give you a granular breakdown of the blocking of one instance in a justification they don’t really owe you.

        The community itself is trying to be chill and just vibe. If what we’re doing fits what you’re looking for, welcome.

        • Nahvi@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          And you are repeating my own words back to me in a different order as if it will surprise me into keeping my questions to myself.

          Pardon me for trying to find out if I just wandered into an environment that is as chill and welcoming as it seems from the outside or another reddit where many genuine questions will get shouted down.

          • HaveYouTriedCats@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Genuine apologies, as that’s not my intent.

            We’ve had what has seemed (to me) an influx of just really bad faith and downright trolling type stuff going down recently and it’s perhaps colored my take on things more than I realized, and it probably has for others as well.

            We really did just come here for the chill vibe, read the thing, and were like “yeah, this works for me.”

            Other things may get added to that block list in the future, yes. I pointed you to the Agora because you may not, as a new user, be aware of it, as the Dude set it up as the place where these kinds of decisions will most likely be made in the future and where community discussions tend to be focused.

            However, as a Canadian based instance, they have different laws on what does and doesn’t put them at risk, so there are times where those calls may be his and his to make alone (which is why there are two where there was only one on the list of defederated).

  • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    When I first made an account on lemmy.ml, I looked over at the lemmygrad.ml “Introduce yourself” thread. Heavily upvoted hot comment was somebody saying “Joined up to troll and fight liberals! Gonna show those libtards how stupid they are” (paraphrasing, don’t remember the exact words).

    When I eventually moved here, I was happy to see it defederated already. Celebrating trolling and “fighting” people isn’t something I want to see here.

    • Nahvi@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      That sounds like a good reason to block that idiot or maybe even that community from my own thread, but I would rather make my own choice as to when someone or a community is not acting in good faith. I don’t need someone with different values than my own trying to protect me from some words I might find offensive.

      On the other hand, blocking burggit so I don’t have simulated CP showing up in my feed is not the kind of choice that I need clarification about.

      • Lols [they/them]@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        I don’t need someone with different values than my own trying to protect me from some words I might find offensive.

        it seems like you have a fundamental issue with instances like sh.itjust.works and would be better off joining a different one, or even better making your own then

        • Nahvi@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Seems like I would save myself sometime by creating a dozen different logins through the various instances. I am up to four now.

          I guess using current number of blocked instances was not as useful of an indicator for finding an instance that was free-speech leaning, but not purists, as I thought it was.

            • Nahvi@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              Thank you for the suggestion, but their blocked instances list is about the same length as the one from lemmy.world

              I hadn’t really considered that whole instances would be banned for nothing more than having bots. I may need to look more into what lemmy.world was banning for.

              • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                0·
                1 year ago

                Lemm.ee is only banning instances that have abnormal growth (i.e. They didn’t enable captcha, have maybe 7 active users, and suddenly go from 30 total registrations to 52000 in a couple of days). Other than that there is nothing banned for ideological reasons unlike sh.itjust.works and other instances.

                • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  01·
                  1 year ago

                  I would argue that even lemmygrad isn’t an ideological ban, it’s an anti-brigading/trolling ban. There are plenty of marxist-leninist folk on lemmy.ml that share the same philosophy, but don’t go full “ATTACK THE HEATHEN” like lemmygrad does.

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        I should clarify that this wasn’t just 1 user that was isolated. This was an upvoted comment, with many other users congratulating him on his commitment to “trolling the libtards”.