Hello all,
This is a heads up that this weekend we will be asking the community to vote on defederating with Exploding Heads and Rammy.site, following an increase in their content making its way into our instance and moderation queue.
This content borders on illegal in my/the servers locality (if it was to be clearly iilegal we would have defederated with them immediately to protect the instance) and is usually hate-filled and targeted towards minorities.
So far we’ve had very little to do with them, but have come across some posts wishing (although not directly stating) harm on trans people and other minorities.
My personal take is the content being generated in those communities is not the content that this community needs to see or be a part of. Given the increasing visibility of this content coming over to us, I feel now is the time for the community to vote.
However, as I have said from the start, these decisions are not mine to take alone, and are for the community to come together to agree on. I never take defederation lightly, and have not defederated with any other instance (except threads) yet. Therefore this is a decision for the community to weigh in on.
In order to protect users here the vote will be held anonymously (we’ll release details on Friday), and we encourage discussion to be held on our Matrix space so as to prevent users here being targeted for any views.
The vote will be held at some point on Friday and run for 48 hours over the weekend to give everyone time to vote.
For transparency, I have not reached out to EH mods (and the rammy.site admin is no longer active or moderating their instance) as I don’t think this would produce any valuable discussion, they’re unlikely to change their instance’s purpose for us.
Unfortunately the moderation tools just aren’t there yet - ideally I’d love for users to set their own instance blocks and for us admin’s to leave that up to users (unless in the case of illegal/CSAM content) and if those tools ever do become available, then we’d probably refederate as an instance and allow users to decide.
As that isn’t the case currently we need to take broader steps towards moderation. If CSAM/illegal material makes its way on to this server, we’re just as much on the hook for it which jeopardises the instance.
In terms of what counts as illegal, I personally live in the UK which has stricter laws around this than some other countries, i.e. the USA, which are summarised here. Specifically, it is an offence to host: web pages with pictures, videos or descriptions that glorify violence against anyone due to their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or because they are transgender.
EH has posted “memes” which could be argued violate this law. I also need to be mindful of the content held in other countries as part of hosting the site, i.e. in Germany, and their local laws.
While I’m very unlikely to have my front door kicked in over a meme, it does in the long term risk the instance if content like this continues to be produced by EH.
Unlike many other instances, we haven’t defederated with anyone else (except threads) at all, instead allowing users to choose, but it does come to a point when I find myself asking the question about the risk vs the content, and then I feel it needs to go to the community to be involved in that decision.
Personally I don’t feel they produce anything of importance that we’ll miss by not being federated, but maybe I’m in a bubble, hence why we’re asking the community!
If we defederate now, is it possible/does it make sense to re-federate with those instances when the moderation tools have matured?
Yes, we should just be able to remove the block and federation would start again.