Seeing people here pushing back for once against the trigger-happy defederating mindset actually gives me hope in the future of this instance.

Firstly, the alt-right is far from a modern issue. And secondly it’s nothing to do with feeling bad for them. I couldn’t agree less with the nonsense they’re saying there. I’m saying that defederating them doesn’t “prevent the issue in the first place” at all. Isolating communities only makes them get more extreme over time. Refusing to let them interact with us only causes their beliefs to be echoed and amplified in their communities. And I should clarify again, by no means am I saying that they should be allowed to promote their hateful messages here. If they break the rules of our instance, here in our instance, they should be banned, simple.

I agree with this. Isolating communities that have odious beliefs only lead to those beliefs being echoed and intensified in their small spaces, and hence become more extreme over time. It’s not “nipping the issue in the bud” like many people seem to think it is, it’s the complete opposite. Past a certain line we definitely should cut ties, but I guess it’s debatable where that line should be drawn.

Our instance’s rules are for our own instance. If they come over here and start spewing ridiculous nonsense, then sure, we should start banning them. For now they aren’t even causing much trouble. If they do in the future then I’d support defederating, but I disagree with jumping the gun.

No one is forcing anything. You’re allowed to block them, so do just that. If anything, defederating is the more “forcing” course of action.

I agree. I don’t like this whole principle of dictating what members are or are not allowed to see. Defederating should be a last resort. Everyone has a block button.

I’m honestly amazed by all of this, watching the birth of a platform unfold. I think I’ve been chronically online on Lemmy for the past few days xD Here’s hoping Lemmy will really take off.

Edit: one other thing I really hope to see is ex-Reddit 3PA devs picking this up! I’m not sure how many devs will ever want to make that gamble again after being brutally fucked over by Reddit, but I can only hope someday.

I find it ironic that they say fake niceness will only scare people off, but all the “ethos engineering” only promotes a culture of fake niceness. I don’t buy all this “walled utopia” idealism, especially since this place isn’t like Discord with private servers, but a public interconnected forum. Why choose to set up on the Fediverse if you’re not open to ”strangers” accessing your community? But oh well, I think they’ll probably defederate more and more over time (or switch to whitelist).

It’s a feature that’s already been requested that the Lemmy devs are looking at iirc

I don’t think we should reevaluate our policy just to get 1 specific instance to refederate us…. Anyway, Beehaw’s mindset has always been exclusive and restrictive, despite being a larger instance. Even if we switch to closed registration, they may disagree with our vetting process. It’s just part of their community ideals of creating a “safe space” aligned with their “community values”. I completely disagree with their course, but it’s their instance, so whatever, their call.

Well, yes and no. For instance (no pun intended), the site for your home instance is a page you’re going to be landing on a lot, so you’d want one which loads smoothly and reliably for you, and this often depends on your instance’s server infrastructure. Some larger instances are already being overloaded. Another concern is probably stability and longevity, since the fate of your account is tied to the instance that hosts it, so you’d have to choose one you trust. And the last one is moderation: you don’t want to join an instance where the admin is known for being shady and randomly banning people or blocking lots of instances. That being said, so long you choose a reliable instance it doesn’t matter too much which one it is.

This is the first instance that immediately accepted me when I tried to register. I tried other auto accept instances but my applications literally wouldn’t get through and I’d be stuck on the application page. Anyway, so far I find this site really neat and the loading speed is the best I’ve tried. Thank you for setting up this instance, admins. Hope the Fediverse grows.