The instance is currently federated with every instance (including places like lemmygrad and explodingheads) as the current stance is defederation should be a last resort with users being able to choose what they want to see instead
Exploding heads has some very questionable content though so its status is currently being discussed by the admins
Free speech absolutism is harmful. By remaining federated with them, you’re participating in distributing their content and giving them a platform. People do have a choice of what they want to see, they can choose to be a part of another instance without morals. I would hope that a programming instance of all places would understand the consequences of propaganda given so many programmers work in data collection and targeted advertising. If you show an ad to 1000 people and one of them buys the product, the ad worked. It’s no different for disinformation campaigns.
It’s not like they’re just sharing differing opinions or saying awful shit, they’re taking things out of context or making things up (or posting articles that make things up) and it’s very easy to prove if you do a tiny bit of googling. One article listed off a bunch of climate predictions that were wrong along with sources to look credible. If you checked the sources though, they were all wrong. Some of the predictions were actually made by humans (but not the claimed academic institutions) while others were straight up made up.
I hope the admins make the right decision here. Protecting free speech doesn’t mean allowing people to say whatever they want on your platform. It means allowing them to say it on their platform without being fined or put in jail.
False information is a global problem, but arguing against free speech absolutism sounds more dangerous to me.
I hear people say free speech absolutism is dangerous because it can lead to loud extremist voices overwhelm the more “moderate” ones, often referencing Nazi Germany and the success of their propaganda. However, any limiting of free speech can lead to censorship of voices falsely labeled extreme and fake. The entity regulating speech would need to be absolutely immune to corruption, which just isn’t possible.
Extremists voices often reach further because of how radical they are, but sometimes the radical ideas are the right ones, even if at the moment the general public disagree with them. After all, we have no idea of knowing that what we really hear is the general public opinion or bots deployed by a currently dominant entity, and the general public is not always correct. For example, in certain countries the general public still believe homosexuality is sinful and should be banned, which is horrible. In these places we need radical voices. If there is a regulatory system of speech, it could be skewing and mislabeling what is considered public opinion, and what is considered extreme views.
My views do not align with the right, but I am a strong advocate for free speech and privacy, especially on the internet. Free speech and privacy must be absolute, or it isn’t free speech or privacy.
I’m a very strong supporter of free speech. But free speech absolutism where you go out of your way to make all voices heard is not what free speech is about. It’s about the government not interfering. Just like people have a right to a gun, but Walmart has the right to kick you out for bringing one, rammy.site users have the right to say whatever they want, and other instances have the right to defederate.
If a teacher goes against the curriculum and teaches children that black people are all out to get them, I sure as hell hope the school would step in and stop or remove them.
That’s not a violation of free speech, but in your opinion above it would be.
I understand the reasoning but I think it’s not the same situation as lemmygrad, which I feel is a normal instance with an ideological bent. Exploding heads is just violent propaganda. I hope you defederate.
What about hexbear? Is programming.dev federated with them? Or are they intentionally defederated with everyone?
hexbear split off and has been running their own fork for awhile separate from the rest of lemmy (so they couldnt federate with lemmy instances). They are coming back now though so lemmy instances will start to be able to interact with them soon
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I am not a fan of reaching for defederation often; I actually came here from beehaw because I felt like they just pulled that trigger too fast and too frequently.
However, I do think that we should defederate from exploding-heads and hexbear. I don’t go looking for chances to be offended, but I do notice that when I see something truly distasteful on All it is almost exclusively from one of those two lately, and at this point removing them from All would make my lemmy experience just a bit more friendly.
It’s not even worth reporting content about them because when you do it seems like a common theme is that they just tag you so they can harass you. I tested this myself recently by reporting obvious misinformation/propaganda and the next time I logged in there were indeed items waiting in my inbox calling me a coward, etc.
Edit: fun fact, even if you block a user, and you block the community they are posting from, any time they mention you in a post you still get a message in your inbox, which seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight and a tool for harassment.
For those not aware of any drama, could you spill the beans?
Here’s the front page of exploding-heads.com. It has a picture of a trans person hanging themselves with slurs I censored with an emoji since it’s probably against the rules to post here
I thought this one was funnier tbh
They are not left wing, mainly.
Go find me a left wing instance that spreads hateful disinformation and incites violence and I’ll ask to defederate with them too. Just because the right is the only side doing it doesn’t mean they’d be removed for being on the right.
If someone goes to jail because they murdered someone, it wasn’t because of their political preferences.
Hexbear? A stretch, but lemmygrad?
Just looked at hexbear. I’d defederate them too. Though given they’re shitting all over liberals and saying how great Stalin was, I wouldn’t call them left wing either, other than liking communism. But maybe it counts as not right wing?
I’m sorry but liberals are not left wing, any socialist would shit on liberals. But I agree that their unironic defense of Russia is a about weird.
Side thought, it’s really weird that the right refers to the left as liberals, but the left refers to right-wing “centrists” as liberals, so everybody shits on liberals.
Dear programming.dev userbase,
Before downvoting me to hell please read this:
As you can see I’m an EH user and I really like to look around here. I don’t comment as much but if I ever want to coment I would like to be able to.
RN the communities where “harmful and dangeorus propaganda” is being actively posted on are !freeorum@exploding-heads.com, !dankmems@exploding-heads.com and one more which I can’t remember the name while writing this moment. If you don’t want to look at them please block them or ask the admins to purge them.
Defederation is not a good option. The fediverse was not made to be defederated from.
I’m ready for conversations
