Tame your inner dictator!

- I dunno. I just stumbled on a movement to push instance owners to defederate any instance that doesn't defederate Threads.
  This seems very much in the vein of dictatorialism / authoritarianism. It's honestly just gross. This whole "you're either with us or against us" tribalism is what has made social media so awful these last several years.
  
  Not exactly. state actors and political party-sponsored troll farms have nurtured that tribalism and dialed it up for the past decade while the companies running the platforms stood by and raked in the cash because anger is engagement is money.
  
  I think it’s more like the instances are countries, admins are governments, and defederation is embargo. Information and influence are the resources. Eventually, you’ll have instances that keep to themselves and others that throw their weight around regardless of any real world political alignment.
  
  Technically the concept you’re referring to is totalitarianism.
  Generally speaking that’s the view that there is one truth, one set of morally-correct beliefs, and that because What Is Good is known, it can be assumed those who don’t agree are Bad People.
  The basic seed of totalitarianism is this idea: “We know everything that needs to be known”
  An example of a totalitarian culture is Nazism: they thought that they’d worked out The Truth and that gave them the confidence that they were doing the right thing even as they did horrible things.
  Another view on totalitarian belief is this common argument against capital punishment: “Given there are errors in determining guilt, a system of killing people determined to be guilty, will in fact kill some innocent people.”
  That’s an anti-totalitarian argument. Basically it says “Given that we don’t have omniscience, let’s take it easy on the drastic action”
  The totalitarian view on capital punishment relies on this implicit argument: “Our courts have determined that guy is guilty, and our courts are always right, so the only ethical move is to kill him”. Then you might ask “why’s it okay to kill that guy but not other people?” and the totalitarian say “that’s different, because the first guy is guilty and the second guy is innocent”.
  It’s that certainty that defines totalitarianism.
  And the way it leads to dictatorships is this: If determining the correct move is a finite process that proceeds deterministically from observations and the already-determined set of moral rules, there’s no reason to ask multiple people’s opinion about this law. Therefore it will be law because we know it’s right.
  The non-totalitarian stance is open to new information, and doubts the ability of any one individual to have final knowledge of the right move, and so polls everyone on major decisions. ie democracy, or the distribution of power.
  
  Who is this this dictator/authority you refer to that’s forcing instances to defederate?
- I mean someone from the “outside” might go to lemmy.world and see a page full of poop and beans and argue the same thing. Just saying.
- I have no problem with people making educated decisions or ask for change based on facts. Fully agree about quality over quantity as well. My issue is FUD, having no idea what you're talking about and still trying to convince everyone of that is harmful. When people working day and night on these protocols say there are no privacy concerns and no one can show you ads etc. and yet someone with literally zero understanding of the matter claims otherwise.
  
  The ol’ “you know not of what you speak,” syndrome. Know-it-all’s with an axe to grind are the minority, but man, are they disruptive.

Defederation is a feature, not a weakness.
- True! Defederation is great sometimes, if you have a niche community and there is some other instance directly opposing your values or if content there is illegal in your jurisdiction etc.
  Nagging about every single instance with a few bad actors on the other hand is problematic in my opinion
  
  Nagging about every single instance with a few bad actors...
  Yup. Tells the admins to do their jobs and get rid of bad actors.
  Too many of y'all are perfectly fine with hate seeping in through the seams. It needs to be stamped out like a smoldering ember before it grows to an uncontrollable wildfire. They aren't here to engage in constructive conversations. They want to do two things: spread their bullshit, and recruit edgy teenagers. Neither of these things can happen when admins do their duty and smite the hate. And if a federation isn't doing their duty, cut em off. They can come back when they straighten their shit out.

Defederation is an important tool and is part of what makes the fediverse work. In my experience, people who are strongly defederation averse are mostly either quite new to the fediverse or have the relative privilege of never having to really deal with bad actors especially en masse.
- I'm not new to this, though usually not very active poster. so yes I have not experienced much harassment tbh.
  About defederation

We are trying to prevent a repeat of Google with xmpp.
- This and having a fuckton of scummy users being sent our way by accounts like Libs of TikTok. Harassment will be unbearable and large-scale, especially for tiny instances.

Defederating "from this and that" is actually sometimes problematic here. It's about instance admins finding balance between freedom and usability (limiting spam and hate). Beehaw.org defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world defederated from exploding-heads.com etc. These decisions were controversial, but they weren't bold. On the contrary, much thought and care went into these and that can be seen in communities' support for them (in case of Beehaw, along with hopeful awaiting of refederation by users and admins alike).
But that seems not to be the main issue you're presenting. Defederating from Threads specifically is an entirely different matter. And people who advocate for it, including myself, have more arguments for it than just privacy.
- Thanks for this great comment! Yes, I totally agree with your arguments and personally hate meta. My problem is posts like this and misinformation about underlying tech (like privacy and ads). Meta will do anything to be the sole winner, but as I've pointed here it's a dilemma and defederating can actually encourage more users to stop using Fediverse to begin with!
  
  We have a unique opportunity. Hitching ourselves to the same corporate social media we're trying to avoid is counterproductive.
  We don't need everyone and their cousin to be federated. There's plenty of other social media if you want that experience.

If an instance you’re in defederates, just start your own. Why complain about what people want to do in their instances? Just find another one.
Yes, that’s exactly how you sound.
- But I literally said the opposite!

The general public does not understand federation. When Threads makes content that I have created via kbin.social visible on Threads, very many people are going to think that that content was created on Threads. And Meta then takes that content, aggregated with all the other non-Threads initiated fediverse content, and monetizes it. They are using "not their content" to enhance the desirability of their portal, and certainly placing ads in its vicinity. As with any instance, they can also curate that content to promote their chosen agenda, which is surely in part "increasing engagement."
We've seen how "increasing engagement" has been done by Meta and other companies already: ragebaiting and misinformation. While there is no way to completely prevent this, I want to avoid content that I have created from being used in that way. If there was a way for me to individually defederate from Threads, so that Threads could not see my content, I would turn that switch on in an instant. So far as I know, the only way for my content to be excluded from being viewed via Threads is for the instance my account is on to defederate. I'm not in any way asking for kbin.social to defed from Threads, just noting that that is currently the only functional way to accomplish the stated goal.
I do understand that there are already instances that have done that very thing, and I am certainly able to jump over and use one of those instead. I may do that at some point, but I am pleased with the interface at kbin.social, and developer of kbin's work. For the moment, I want to watch and see how things play out, becoming more informed before I make a decision about how I interact with the fediverse.
- You realize that defederating prevents you from seeing their content but not the other way around right? Meta will see your content regardless. So many people are confused about this
- Thanks, I get your point and have the same concern. But again, simply defederating will not solve this (in most cases). We need to make a case good enough, so people would willingly join these instances and stop using threads and such. I'm all for freedom, and yes freedom comes with a cost, there might be some bad actors here and there but thinking for rational actors and censoring is not a solution.
  
  ... simply defederating will not solve this (in most cases).
  Oh it would address that concern, but it's a very heavy-handed action. At present, I don't think there's enough reason for instances to defed from Threads, even when there are good reasons for me to want myself to be. That really plays into my not jumping over to some instance which has already taken that step; I would wonder about how such an instance was being shepherded in other ways.
  Once there are proven and reliable mobile apps for lemmy and kbin and whatever, the barrier to entry for the general public will be much lower. But the general public also needs to know that there are ways to get to fediverse content outside of the Meta environment. You and I and those like us here now are still pretty early adopters.

Aren’t the people demanding that no instance ever defederate for any reason and that defederation shouldn’t be allowed the ones who have an inner dictator that needs to be tamed? I thought the entire point of things being decentralized is that individual instances can operate the way they want, including choosing which other instances to federate with. But for some reason, this freedom shouldn’t be allowed? Am I missing something here?
- If you cared enough to read my post (or comments under maybe) you would've seen that I have no problem with defederation in general. My issue is defederation of general instances with 10s of thousands of users for literally no reason but FUD. If you can prove that some other instance is harmful, you should definitely consider defederating
  
  I read your post, which equated calls for defederation to being a dictator.

Copying this from another comment I made. Defederating would pretty much cut off a lot of potential new users that want to see posts on Threads while also not wanting to have a Meta account and all the issues that come with it. People here need to realize that they are in an echo chamber. Mastodon and Lemmy needs users and content. Cutting a big portion of that would kill it in the long run. There would be nothing to "extinguish" in the first place in their complaints of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
- I had a minor debate here re: Usenet, where OP said we basically had an “easy to use” internet 30+ years ago, and AOL won by blanketing people with CDs.
  I’m a techie who first got online with a 2400baud modem and I am fully aware that nothing I do can be extrapolated to the general population. Now that I work in the field, designing for “normies” is how and why services grow. The winners are the most usable services, not the most ideologically righteous ones.
  (Also normies is a ridiculous elitist term, users of lemmy and mastodon are not special or smart…in this moment in time we’re primarily idealists with strong opinions on centralized tech that most people couldn’t care less about lol)
  
  Also normies is a ridiculous elitist term
  I just think it acknowledges that we're abnormal in how we're approaching all of this.
- Defederating would pretty much cut off a lot of potential new users that want to see posts on Threads while also not wanting to have a Meta account and all the issues that come with it.
  Kinda the point, no? Kill Threads in the cradle by denying it access to the fediverse.
  
  Threads already has over ~~10 million~~ 30 million users who mostly haven't even heard of the Fediverse.
  Nobody will kill it in its giant cradle by blocking from their few-thousand-user instance.
- Exactly, I have a lot of normie friends that use threads, I don't want to use it but would love to interact with them. Best of both worlds
  
  if you interact with them, you’re “using” threads
  
  No one is stopping you from interacting with them on threads separately from lemmy/kbin/federated sites.

If meta or any other company manages to create a better product it’s just natural that people tend to use it. ... It’s about having options
We can't rely on the illusion of an even playing field to limit the influence of predatory capital like zukerberg's. Big social media products are designed around the chemistry of decision making in the brain - they can win using an inferior, exploitative product with the worst user experience that could possibly bear profits.
I'm not necessarily in favor of defed-ing anything that zuck's claws are in, but I think it's very important to be wary of what opening the door for one of the world's most genocide-encouraging social media companies could mean.
- You know what else is designed around “the chemistry of decision-making in the brain”?
  Every attempt at persuasion. All debate, marketing, art, seduction, all of it.
  The brain makes decisions via chemistry.
  As one of my favorite psych professors always likes to say: “The question isn’t why people do cocaine. That’s completely obvious. The question is why doesn’t everybody do cocaine all day every day.”
  And his answer to that question is that there are higher-order patterns which can exert even more powerful decision-making influence than dopaminergic drugs. The thing is, those patterns are called “meaning” and they’re nicely aligned with personal health and happiness.
  Cocaine hacks the brain. Meaning uses it.
  I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that a person can cultivate the ability to tell when they’re being fed short term dopamine hits, and I think it’s better if we try to develop the ability to say no to cocaine (via developing the reason no to) rather than trying to create a cocaine-free environment.

Do you get what’s the point of decentralized social media
Do you?
It certainly doesn't mean "everything from everywhere can reside on the server I pay for". Nor does it mean "we can't vote them off the island if they're negatively impacting us".
It means exactly the opposite, in fact. It means we get to say "no" at whatever level we choose, and that includes at the server level.
If you don't like the choices the admins on your server make, find a new one, or start your own. That is the promise of federation.
- Totally get your point. But I think this notion of I'm paying, so I will decide what you can do is not a good mindset. If you've started a general instance with tens of thousand of users, you have a responsibility, no one forced you to do this. And with no easy option to migrate accounts, yes this is authoritarian.
  
  The foundation of free speech is that you cannot force someone to say something they do not want to. This is a lot more foundational than the "you can say what you want" aspect of free speech. You can't force someone to agree with you, you can't force someone to publish or say something in their name, you can't force someone to host content on their website.
  Similarly, you can't force an owner of a Lemmy instance to host or say something they don't want to. If an owner said "you know what, I don't want to host this" or "I don't want to federate with X" then you can disagree with them sure, but you can't force them to say/do something they don't want to.
  Whether this is or isn't authoritarian, the alternative is that someone can force a Lemmy owner to host things they don't want in their server. Imagine if some really repugnant communities showed up on your instance and you couldn't remove them. Now that really would be authoritarianism - it's removing your freedom to choose what you say... Just because someone can say something, doesn't mean you as an owner/individual have to listen to it, like it, agree with it, or host it.
  The big free instances are running off of good will, they don't owe you anything, they certainly don't owe your view a voice unconditionally. If you don't like it, especially with Lemmy, you can set up your own instance/club and say and not say what you like.

Part of being free and accessible for everyone is allowing defederation.

This might be what finally drives me to roll my own instance of Mastodon, and potentially Lemmy. I just worry that it'll pummel my internet bandwidth and/or limited server capacity.
All of this yearning for drama and tribalism is exhausting... I thought I escaped it by leaving Twitter/Reddit, but it's just bubbling its way back to the surface.
- it shouldn’t pummel your bandwidth from what i understand: your instance will receive all updates and data only from things you follow; not the entire fediverse!
  think of it kind of like just reading everything posted to every magazine you subscribe to!
  it’s text and a few images: a single youtube video is probably bigger than a day of your fediverse subs
  … assumptions and educated guesses above :)
  
  The problem comes from the 1000s of other instances that ping you to extract the content you've created.
  I kind of wish there was a simple reference saying what the required resources are for just a single-user Mastodon & Lemmy instance. That's really all I want. Will the 3GB of free RAM & few hundred GB of free SSD app-space on my NAS be enough?
  (it probably exists... I just haven't found it...)
- Dispel some misconception and help you make the choice: I run an instance that gets updates from everywhere and (because of the way activitypub works) it’s a stream of < 0.5 mbit average. Yes, that could double for every doubling of users, but it’s a far cry from the overwhelming overload of data people think is being federated.
- Exactly. Some people are just looking for drama
  
  With a fair cohort moving here to escape the creep of corporate internet, it doesn’t seem, on the face of it, like they’re looking for drama. Saying they are is a handy way of dismissing them out of hand, though.
  
  Like say for instance, calling people little dictators?

Glad you said this. People demanding large instances like this one defederate from stuff they don't personally like are, frankly, very mislead and trying to be little dictators. That's not their decision to make.
- who wanted to defederate from meta only because they personally don't like meta content
  
  There's two separate issues here. There's some people demanding their instance defederate from others because it had one or two nsfw communities, or one poster on one thread in one community said something they don't like. These people are ridiculous and need to touch grass.
  Then there's some people demanding defederation from Meta because of how demonstrably horrible they are.
  This thread is conflating the two, possibly on purpose. The former group is ridiculous, the latter group is sensible.

A lot of it is people wanting to avoid another Eternal September .
If you have a community you've built, and like, a flood of people who don't understand the culture and behavioral expectations swarming in can be viewed as, frankly, an unwanted invasion.
I also think if this was some new startup (say, Bluesky) instead of Meta, there'd be a different tune, but that's because a good portion of the people who run the communities and invest their time and money into building the community they want were burned by the aggressive enshittification that Meta is basically synonymous with at this point.
TLDR: this has happened before, and it's absolutely destroyed communities just due to the sheer volume of people who don't understand how to behave swarming in and drowning out everyone who the community originally belonged to.
- Now, this is a great case! I totally understand culture and overall vibe of communities, and I think if you have a very special niche or different community, it's fine to defederate. Problem is general instances like lemmy.world
  
  Yeah in that case I'd agree; if you're on a giant public server that anyone can sign up to, I'm not sure there's any particular value to be found in defederating anyone, other than places with uh, questionable content.
- There has to be a middle ground. Applying to be in communities sounds good but what’s the point of a public forum that isn’t public. At some point if you continually defederate others, don’t you become the defederated one?
  
  I think that defederation is the middle ground.
  One extreme is The Algorithm tells you who you're going to talk to, and shoves junk at you nonstop, and the other is that you have to just accept and filter through whatever gets posted with no filtering at all.
  Defederation puts the control back in the hands of, if not the users, then at least the administrators and mods of a community; if you can control who can see your content, and what posts you see then and only then do you own the platform instead of being a faceless number that's only there to be shoved into a dashboard to calculate your revenue value.

But what do you do when a known Dictator walks in?
Meta is going to establish itself, and go back to old habits once it's on top in the fediverse.

people can choose not to interact with things that are bad for them, and bad for the group (the fediverse as a technology platform) sure
… just like people can choose to ignore misinformation
… or vote in their best interests
it’s definitely a fine line! but let’s not kid ourselves: people aren’t always rational actors, and refusing to admit that is dangerous

The argument for defederating is that Meta has an enormous technological and userbase advantage for capturing up all the activity in the fediverse. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the overwhelming majority of future activity on the fediverse happens on Meta controlled instances, if we let them have free reign capturing as much of the fediverse as they can. In that case, with Meta effectively controlling the fediverse, then they don't really need to play nice anymore. They can introduce a breaking API change and hold all of the non-Meta instances ransom saying to upgrade to their new API, or you won't be able to participate with their fediverse communities anymore.
So it's basically a question of do we nip the Meta issue in the bud and preemptively defederate from them, or do we wait until they take over and force us to restart from scratch two years from now.
- After 1 day, they already have more users, so I don't understand how defederating can help us grow?! It will just make more sense for more people to use threads instead, since much more users are there.
  
  You're not understanding that growth on fediverse instances run by Meta is ultimately bad for the fediverse in the long run.
  Let me try explaining like this: Imagine there's an instance called meta.world and it gets hugely popular. Whenever you browse the all feed, it seems like 95% of the posts are from meta.world. Everybody hates that it ended up this way, and everybody tried to fight it, but it just inevitably happened because Meta has the fastest and most stable servers, and because there are a ton of funny users on Threads who only post to meta.world because Threads heavily favors those communities in their app. Then one day Meta decides that they don't want to support the fediverse anymore, so they close off access to meta.world. So effectively 95% of the "fediverse" as we knew it vanishes, and you have to join Threads if you want access to those communities again.
  It's the threat of that scenario that has a lot of people wanting to block Meta from the start.

Aren’t the people demanding that no instance ever defederate for any reason and that defederation shouldn’t be allowed the ones who have an inner dictator that needs to be tamed? I thought the entire point of things being decentralized is that individual instances can operate the way they want, including choosing which other instances to federate with. But for some reason, this freedom shouldn’t be allowed? Am I missing something here?

Huh, "The Fediverse" ? No, no, it says "Defediverse" here.

Is there a service where you can see who defederation from whom?