I’ve been talking with @pyarra@vlemmy.net, and we agreed it would be best to discuss this as a community. What are all of your thoughts on defederating instances with loli and shota? My thoughts will be posted in the comments.
Personally, I joined this instance because it hadn’t defederated anything. It leaves the power to us, the users, to decide what we do or don’t want to see, rather than an admin. Defederating goes against the principle of free speech, as loli/shota content, while most find it distasteful, is not illegal, at least in the US, and so it is up to the user if they want to see it or not. I’m aware that “free speech” is a loaded phrase nowadays, but it is a principle I personally believe in quite heavily. The users can decide what they want to see or not. I believe defederation should only be used for explicitly illegal content.
Same perspecitive here. Recently joined, and the main reason for choosing this instance was it hasn’t defederated with anyone. While most people might be fine with defederating with these specific instances it makes it harder to choose this over any other instance that hasn’t done so.
That’s a fair perspective. I’m a bit more in favor of admin curation specifically because lemmy allows people to self-host, which gives the users complete control over everything in their personal instance. With larger instances with lots of people though, I think that the admins have a bit more power to curate a specific type of atmosphere or try to remove elements that they think are toxic to the community of the instance at large.
Also, in this specific case it’s perhaps not illegal per say, but what happen if you federate with an instance that host illegal stuff ? Due to the way fediverse works, the illegal content may be replicated on the server you own, so you’re starting to host illegal stuff on your server. I’m not a lawyer but I think you can have problems with the law for this kind of stuff. Probably you will need to prove that you’ve done everything you could to prevent this type of content.
Yeah, this type of porn is illegal in several countries, which could potentially block our instance for redistribution.
Would it? Federation with vlemmy doesn’t mean federation with every instance vlemmy is federated with. As long as it’s not illegal where you are, you’re all set on that front, and the instances that federate with us would have to federate with the other instances to get their content.
Call me an outlier, but I want a wild west mindset here or else I will leave. Not saying I support this content, I just hate how over moderated reddit was and I want curation to be decided by the individual.
What’s next? Blocking piracy communities? I like piracy
Disagree with it, let people block what they want to block themselves.
I won’t pretend I’m knowledable enough to debate the pros and cons of defederating in the fediverse. I’ve just been blocking communities centered on topics that I don’t want to see, including the ones you’re talking about. I’ve been on the internet since the early days though, so a drawing before I can block the communities in question isn’t going to scar me.
I agree that this kind of content is disgusting. So the policy should be that it’s not allowed on this instance. It’s perfectly reasonable for you to not want this content directly on your server.
But, I don’t agree with defederation. I joined a general instance to be able to go wherever I want. It should be left up to me what content I don’t wish to see and simply block those communities myself. If you start deciding for me what I’m allowed to see or not see then I’ll leave to a different instance. Today it’s the obvious “no loli or child porn or w\e” and everyone hops on board because it’s easy to just not be a pedophile. But that opens the door to defederation in general. Tomorrow it could be something else.
Do what you will but make sure to state it publicly so I can know whether or not I should bother sticking around with this instance.
If you want that level of control, why aren’t you self-hosting an instance?
Not everyone has the resources I would guess
I’m in favor of defederating as well. I’m a very hardcore free speech/expression advocate, but this is where my line is personally.
Being connected with those communities invites problems on multiple levels, from being exposed to those things without inviting it, all the way to possible legality concerns depending on the content they share.
It also is a huge reputational risk for instances that are willingly federated to instances that allow that content. I can already imagine news stories about communities that host that content and all the other ones that chose to stay federated with them.
The Fediverse already has enough trouble seeming approachable from a technical perspective and Lemmy itself has somewhat of a stigma about hosting extremists like tankies. I don’t think we need to do things to potentially add to reasons why people wouldn’t want to join up.
Those instances are still legal depending on where they are hosted and still accessible for the few people that want to access that, nasty as I think it is. We don’t need to help others have access to that kind of content.
By defederating with them, we might offend an extremely small minority of users, but by staying federated, we will alienate a massive majority of users. The benefits vastly outweigh the risks IMO.
Loli and Shota is pedophilia and disgusting. It should not be allowed on any platform whatsoever. It is a definite ban. Not only is it morally abhorrent, but not banning it may even be criminal.
I came here because of the lack of defederated instances, if we start to do so I will simply migrate to some other instance
I don’t want anyone to filter my content, I agree lolis are disgusting and I think it should be banned from existence but I don’t want anyone to chose for me what to show
Defederation only for illegal content
I’m new here (literally got approved 6 minutes ago) and as a culture creator my opinion might be skewed but:
Much of the point of loli and shota is that as a design model it’s a “in the eyes of the beholder” thing. It is, basically, characters who are made to look “like children” despite their age, but this “like” is much of the problem, where (when) does exactly a “child” end? Whose definition are we using? How does it account for values dissonance for art that was made years, maybe decades ago? Trying to go into a blocking stance with hard lines that are too tightly defined only really benefits christofascists, antis and that “ilk”.
It’s the same problem that happens with antis and purist that are all yell about “nudes” and “female presenting nipples” yet they conveniently do gymnastics around the fact that the female body is natural and present in art since the Greek and Roman times thosr christofascists “cherish” so much. Ultimately it harms people who discuss culture and creation more than it hurts any sort of would-be purist.
There’s another factor that there’s a difference between a character being a loli / shota which is a matter of art/design and it is ultimately one facet of afictional character, versus a show or a work being loli / shota, which involves not only the characters but the narrative elements and the plot going about so it’s a wider gamut of “things that can go wrong”. My limited understanding is the latter is pr0n but the former isn’t, but I’m open to being mistaken.
All in all from that perspective, I’d be Fine But Careful about defederating from instances allowing loli / shota. They might be doing it for the pr0n, but also for a matter of Open Culture, “first they came for the minority” et al. I’d prefer a lighter step to be taken first, something like Mastodon’s suspend / mute (where you don’t block the connection but also you don’t advertise / forward it), but my understanding is ATM this kind of platform don’t have such option.
I personally support the defederation of communities that allow that type of pornography, especially the types that advertise themselves for it. Beyond not liking it when animated CSAM appears in my feed when I sort by new, I think that communities built around those types of porn invite multiple forms of toxicity that can rot away an instance from the inside. While I think defederation should be used sparingly, I still think it’s a useful tool to remove bad elements from our community and in this case, I think its use would be appropriate.
New to lemmy and vlemmy so I don’t yet understands the implications and possibilities around defederating, blocking, filtering? etc. Personally I hope to never get anything like that in my feed, even if I were a moderator. I’m here to learn if there is (or will be) viable non-proprietary alternatives to the current locked in platforms. I’d like to find places that I honestly recommend people to try out instead of what they use today.
So, Lemmy isn’t a single monolithic thing like say Twitter or Facebook. Lemmy is more like the old usenet or like email where you have a bunch of individual servers each with their own users and communities, they just talk to each other seamlessly allowing any user on a given Lemmy server to participate in any community on any Lemmy server. This is what they mean by “federation”, it’s the mechanism by which this kind of decentralized system functions.
Defederating is essentially when a server blocks another server from being federated with it - if VLemmy defederates from Burggit (which is what was proposed) then VLemmy users will not be able to see or participate in any community or with any user on Burggit and Burggit users will not be able to see or participate in any community or with any user on VLemmy.
Blocking/filtering is just marking the communities in question as “I don’t want to see this” and not having to see it ever again, or doing likewise but from the main new/all/hot feeds. The idea I support is letting the server admin for each server set a default list of blocked communities that can be overridden by each user if desired. Keeps the benefits of federation while giving users the most power to tailor their experience and also allowing server admins to curate the default experience
There are some things that are just so abhorrent that only absolute zero tolerance is an acceptable position.
Pedophilia is one of those things. Ban it all.
ESPECIALLY considering the massive amount of spillover between “lolicons” and fascists.
The two types of instances people should seek to defederate from are ones for fascism and abusers. I know a lot of the Loli(and I presume Shota) defenses are claims that these characters only have childlike bodies. I disagree personally though. In any anime I’ve seen a Lolita character, they also behave like a child. They may claim she’s a 2000 year old vampire, but she’s acting like a child. That character is an abuser fantasy. They want to take advantage of that ignorance. There are probably plenty of people who like that body type innocently, but I believe there are many more who’s intentions are vile to say the least.
I get the kid stuff, but why would you ban fascism? Next you want to band monarchy and communism, right?
As a socialist I do not like this mindset when poor content would be drowned out anyway
Indeed. I like free speech as much as the next guy, but fascists and abusers don’t like free speech and only use it as a cover to spread their ideology. Once they reach critical mass in a community, they flip and ban speech they don’t like.
While I agree with you, I feel like acting on something that hasn’t happened yet is the falling victim to the same sort of ideology.
*Edit: Grammer
Is it? It’s happened before, and it’s the sort of thing where you can’t be reactionary towards it because once it’s happened you’ve already lost.
I’m a brand new refugee fleeing reddit for the federation, and ended up on this server purely by the luck of the draw. So I don’t know anyone here, or anything about any of you yet. And that’s OK. It’s nice to meet new people.
I do have my list of topics I’m OK with, and topics I’m not. I never want to see abuse depicted, whether real, simulated, AI generated, or hand drawn. That means no loli, no fascists, no gangsters. And I’m not particularly interested in being a part of a community that tolerates those topics, even under the guise of free speech. It’s not that you’re bad for wanting to discuss it, I just personally want no part of it ever.
If they aren’t cut off at the source, that means I’ll have to spend time hunting them down and blocking them. Ideally I don’t want to have to do that even once, let alone on a regular basis.
One other thing to consider is the health of the admins. If the bad apples aren’t defederated, the mods may also have to deal with that content on a more frequent basis. I’d rather they not have to spend their limited time and mental health on them either.
So they aren’t defederated here, then I’ll want to quietly move to a different server now, one where they aren’t tolerated. I want to spend as little time possible being exposed to them.
