The instance seems to be mostly right wing trolls. I know defederating is unpopular but I don’t think much is to be lost in this case and it can save the mods some headaches.
Edit: the response on exploding-heads.com to my reporting of transphobia. Courtesy of the “second in command”
Yeah I must confess I recently went over there and agitated them a bit. I just wanted to see what their deal was because I saw a few of them over here.
TLDR they are basically like r/thedonald, libertarian types. Use slurs as a badge of honor. Angry, sad people. Fully in favor of defederation. But I get that it’s early days, and defederation is a sensitive topic. I just don’t see any path to that server becoming something of value that I’d want to interact with.
I dont see why defederation is seen as a sensitive topic.
Its a great feature, designed for specifically this purpose.
Over time people will migrate between instances and land where they fit. Some people want to be abrasive cunts, and they will land with the other abrasive cunts. Thats great, they have an instance they can do what they want on.
For the rest of us though, we dont want to see their bad faith articles and abrasiveness on our feeds. No one is being limited in their speech, but they might be limited in their reach. If they want to expand their reach, they can join a more broadly federated instance and ditch the bad faith arguments and abrasiveness.
Its the kids table at the dinner party. You can join the adults table if you behave in a way that is suitable for the adults, if not go back and play with the kids and everyone is happy.
The example that introduced me to federation was like an instance getting overrun with Nazis, and everyone deciding to just cut that instance loose; let it float alone as “the Nazi instance” that nobody has to interact with.
I thought that stuff like bad actors and assholes was one of the main reasons for the idea of federation, really surprised how many people thought differently
I think people would be surprised at the amount of instances that have already been broadly defederated.
Its just that the beehaw defederation is the first “big” incident since broader adoption, and thats for very understandable reasons with a roadmap to refederation already in place.
The only people who get angry about an instance being defederated are the types who want to act in bad faith. They know if they join the instance they got defederated from they will be banned if they spruik the shit that got the instance defederated in the first place, so they are angry that no one wants to listen to their shit.
It sucks for legitimate users that get caught up, but if youre a good user willing to participate in good faith, just join another instance and carry on.
If you genuinely think libertarians are equivalent to r/thedonald posters, you have no clue what you’re talking about. Which is why defederating based on politics is stupid.
I never said they were equivalent. One of the most popular posts on the server is about creating an index of libertarian/right-leaning instances.
https://exploding-heads.com/post/92733
One of the most prominent users (4 month acount!) is named maga_force.
What term would you use to describe their users?
Comma separation implies a list of traits (users are both r/thedonald users and libertarian) whereas or/and would imply that libertarians and r/thedonald users both exist in the instance
Conservative/MAGA fits the majority of the content a lot better
Lol fair enough, thats true.
I honestly thought libertarian was the more flattering descriptor, but sure we can go with Conservative/MAGA
Yeah, so do they - that’s why they try to co-opt the term lol
Ok word. Yeah libertarians usually have some kind of rationale and principles while MAGA people are just walking memes that regurgitate spam.
Honestly most self-described right-libertarians are really differing levels of feudalists. With the uber-feudalists being the “anarcho-capitalists”. Which is the dumbest term ever but that’s not the point.
So I’m always very very suspicious of someone who says they are a libertarian…
I don’t necessarily disagree, but its helpful to remember that not everyone is at the same point in their intellectual progression. I tend to assume that libertarians haven’t really gotten into the weeds yet, and they could potentially be brought around to a more sophisticated understanding by discussion and reading more. Whereas MAGA I generally have no hope of getting through to them because they don’t even pretend to be rational.
Most people who think they are “libertarians” have no clue what they are talking about.
Proudly planting the libertarian flag on top of a few pet peeves.
Then watch them cry foul whenever libertarianism strikes in any of the soft spots they don’t want touched, or don’t understand through lazy ignorance. An extreme cartoonish (yet sadly real) example being something like “Keep your dirty government hands off my Medicare”.
Or perhaps you just didn’t see those who don’t bother engaging in conflict?
I fully understand why you don’t expect to find content there in the future, but is that a good argument to deny access to those who already have?
Exploding heads have gotten subscribers from here as well. There’s an extensive backlog of topics some people find quite important - even if others don’t.
Radicalisation starts with people “just asking questions” or “just pointing out an issue with X without having anything against them”, that’s enough to hook some people that will go way down the rabbit hole.
In the screenshot you see exactly what I’m talking about, “I’m not racist, but I can point out issues with the BLM movement”. Alright they just opened the door to people that are a bit more radical to try and find out where the tolerance ends and to others to start looking for answers with a biased premise in mind.
I invite you to watch this video (and the whole series really) that covers all of that:
https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g
I don’t have a problem with you personally. You’ve been fairly reasonable in our interactions. But the people on your server are not great. Maybe you should make an account here.
I don’t care for them myself, but unless they’re causing problems outside for everyone else, why defederate?
If there are communities you don’t want to see, you can block them as they appear.
The argument being that if they aren’t blocked at an instance-level, due to how the federation works, those comments could very easily spill over into these threads. Those that do want to participate in good faith would need to create an account with an instance that is federated.
How do you block them? Not a feature on kbin yet as far as I know.
If you’d like to block them here on kbin, go to to their domain page:
https://kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com
and then click the “cancel” circle/crossout button over in the sidebar next to “subscribe”. That’ll block the entire domain.