submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by problematicconsumer@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

122 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Everywhere I look there are people advocating for defederation from this and that! Do you even understand what you're suggesting? Do you get what's the point of decentralized social media and activity pub?

This is supposed to be free and accessible for everyone. We all have brains and can decide who to interact with.

If meta or any other company manages to create a better product it's just natural that people tend to use it. I won't use it, you may not use it and it's totally fine! It's about having options. Also as Mastodon's CEO pointed out there's no privacy concern, everything stays on your instance.

Edit: after reading and responding to many comments, I should point out that I'm not against defederation in general. It's a great feature if used properly. Problem is General Instances with open sign-ups and tens of thousands of users making decisions on par of users and deciding what they can and can not see.

If you have a niche or small community with shared and agreed upon values, defederating can be great. But I believe individual users are intelligent enough to choose.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] cstine@lemmy.uncomfortable.business 5 points 1 year ago

A lot of it is people wanting to avoid another Eternal September .

If you have a community you've built, and like, a flood of people who don't understand the culture and behavioral expectations swarming in can be viewed as, frankly, an unwanted invasion.

I also think if this was some new startup (say, Bluesky) instead of Meta, there'd be a different tune, but that's because a good portion of the people who run the communities and invest their time and money into building the community they want were burned by the aggressive enshittification that Meta is basically synonymous with at this point.

TLDR: this has happened before, and it's absolutely destroyed communities just due to the sheer volume of people who don't understand how to behave swarming in and drowning out everyone who the community originally belonged to.

[-] problematicconsumer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Now, this is a great case! I totally understand culture and overall vibe of communities, and I think if you have a very special niche or different community, it's fine to defederate. Problem is general instances like lemmy.world

[-] cstine@lemmy.uncomfortable.business 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah in that case I'd agree; if you're on a giant public server that anyone can sign up to, I'm not sure there's any particular value to be found in defederating anyone, other than places with uh, questionable content.

[-] NuMetalAlchemist@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Thing is, define "questionable content." Then look at it the way a bad actor would. How can it be abused. To some, any LGBT+ content is "questionable." To others, advancement of minorities. Who gets to draw the line? Who gets to decide what's "questionable."