this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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This seems obvious to everyone else, but not to me. Why would we want to do that instead of just dealing with them one by one when needed or just individually blocking communities/users?
I'm extremely uncomfortable with an authority deciding for me what I may see in my feed and what not.
Two things.
First, you can opt to follow that instance still, but I don't know why you would want to hang out with a bunch of Nazis.
Second, I liken it to cutting out a cancerous growth. If you have an instance infested with Nazis and those Nazis are not being stopped due to a lack of admin and/or mods or worse actively being promoted by an admin then defederate them to keep the Nazis from spreading.
Look at the incel and redpill movements that happened on Reddit. Failure to act quick enough helped the movements grow. They were vitriolic to most people but most of them didn't break any rules. They were destructive in nature and validated misogyny but Reddit didn't act until it was a very vocal and well established community on its platform. Now, even after closing down their major subreddits, those users who weren't the most extreme still actively espouse the values of those communities and have created new subreddits.
Or in this case Beehaw has some very progressive ideals, with rules that require a lot more active moderation, they can't handle the influx of everyone jumping ship from Reddit. Instead of leaving the gate open for people who will ignore the rules it's better to shut it and open a smaller "apply to join" door creating a protective barrier from individuals that may be Nazis.
In closing, I've both been a shitty redditor and seen shitty redditors and I appreciate that the fediverse has tools to decouple and recouple as needed. And again, if you like hanging out with Nazis that instance still exists and you can willingly hang out with Nazis.
I understand all this but I just don't personally see it as a problem the same way many others seem to. I constantly read comments I strongly disagree with (for example when discussing this topic) and it's fine. A racist comment here and there doesn't bother me much. If it's written in "good faith" but I disagree with it I'll either downvote or not engage. If it's just pure hate with no content I block the user and I don't need to deal with them ever again. I'm an adult capable of deciding myself what I don't mind seeing on my feed and what I do. I view it as a kind of a science experiement. I like exposing myself to ideologies even if I strongly disagree with them. I find it interesting when people have a completely different world view to me.
When it comes to stuff that's illegal it's a different story. Ofcourse I need to deal with it wether it personally affects me or not.
Also nazis are not the point here. It's just an extreme example. We could be speaking of flat earthers aswell.
There are also instances made to host spam bots (when they host it themselves they can make as many bots as they want and as fast as they want without having to worry about captcha) and instead of blocking each bot manually, our admins have the option to block that bot instance entirely. That's a pretty powerful moderation tool. They may of course also use this to block communities with a different ideology than them to avoid conflict. If you don't want this, you can join an instance that doesn't do this (that choice is the cool thing about the fediverse) and you could even host your own instance if you have the know how.
He didn't say anything about spammers though, just dissenting opinions. Obviously if your instance is filled with 99% spam you ban the spam. Nothing to do with the nazis thing he was talking about.