Exploding-heads.com is another instance on Lemmy where alt-right MAGA types tend to reside. Some people on this server want us to defederate from them immediately, some people want to save defederation as a last resort. They have 104 active users (more stats below).
It seems that exploding-heads has also experienced a recent botswarm invasion. This is obviously another point in favor of defederating them, assuming you are worried about botswarms, which is currently being discussed here.
My advice to you all is please try to discuss this in a civil manner, we need not allow them to create divisive conflict inside our communities. No matter how the vote turns out, you’re not going to be able to defederate from your fellow sh.itheads so be nice.
I’ve linked many of the previous discussions below so people who are out of the loop can get a general sense of the situation.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888 https://sh.itjust.works/post/225714 https://sh.itjust.works/post/281126 https://sh.itjust.works/post/410325
Lemmy.world just recently defederated them.
https://lemmy.world/post/747912
https://lemmy.world/post/577526
Although this could be considered a point in favor of defederation, it actually means even if we vote to remain federated, people have a great alternative in lemmy.world where they can still participate in our communities and simultaneously be protected from exploding-heads.
Ensuring diversity of servers is beneficial to the platform as a whole, but it is also not our responsibility to bear that burden.
TLDR, just wrap up any last points in this thread before we open the vote tomorrow. Please be civil.
EDIT: To clarify, this isn’t the official vote, this is the final discussion. The vote thread will be posted tomorrow and you will only be allowed to make a single comment saying Aye or Nay.
EDIT2: Vote thread is up, this thread is now locked. Very lively discussion thread sh.itheads. Please try to be more respectful next time.
Based on our positive interactions thus far, I’ll respect the spirit of the question and try to answer truthfully.
I live in a blue city in a very red state. Many of my friends and most of my family are deeply conservative. I have a lot of empathy towards poor, rural, (mostly white) conservatives. They are told since birth by their parents, teachers, pastors, and other authority figures that if they work hard and pray harder they’ll have a good life. Of course, this rarely works out because various demagogues like Trump abuse their loyalty by promising the moon and then robbing them blind.
The majority of these folks aren’t inherently bad people. They’re poorly educated, economically oppressed, and sick and tired of being told that they are the part of the problem because their ancestors owned slaves and Reagan was an asshole. They’ve gotten the short end of the stick for years! Is it any wonder that they cling to misinformation that gives them a common enemy or insists that the shitty state of the world is not their fault? Can you blame them for making a distasteful joke out of ignorance?
Hate is never acceptable. But all too often, “liberal” communities go straight to demonization and never attempt to open an honest discourse or rehabilitate people from years of lies and misinformation. Poor rural conservatives are victims too and deserve our respect and our empathy. Many are too deeply indoctrinated to engage meaningfully. But some aren’t. And shunning them, refusing to talk to them, leaving them alone in their echo chambers doesn’t do anyone much good. At the point where nearly half of Americans think that Trump is a good idea, the rest of us need to take a long hard look at ourselves and our institutions and ask how things got this way. I refuse to accept that it’s because people are inherently assholes, there must be more to it than that.
I don’t blame anyone who just wants to come online and look at pictures of cats and unwind and not deal with all this heavy bullshit. But I think the world would be a better place with a little more empathy. Call me naïve. Call me idealistic. But for my part I’ll keep trying. Thanks for the meaningful dialogue on the subject.
I don’t disagree with any of this in principle, but I don’t think any of it applies here. Time, evidence, and even some sociology have shown us that all we gain from trying to mix alt right communities online with other ones is an increase in conflict, alienation of people disgusted by alt right, and strengthening of the alt right as a result. This isn’t a place for conversation and conversion in those regards. Helping someone through ignorance and extremism requires an empathy and understanding that is almost impossible to achieve online, and certainly isn’t suited to this kind of environment.
As I said, I deal with this stuff in real life all the time. I talk to these people often, and have I think even opened a few minds now and then. I don’t even attempt it online. It’s fruitless. That doesn’t mean I think they’re all lost causes individually, but it does mean I don’t want their distasteful opinions stanking up my leisure time as well as my professional time.