Lately we have been dealing with a few abusive members from Feddit.nl and we were unable to get in touch with the instance administrator.
Part of the problem is the instance’s open registrations which do not require you to enter an e-mail address during signup. This in combination with an inactive admin is a recipe for abuse.
We hope this is only temporary but we have to do this to protect our users.
Edit: we use fediseer, have a look https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world
Edit 2: We got in touch with the Feddit.nl admin. Email requirements were added to the sign-up process and we’re setting up a communication channel. So that means we are federating with Feddit.nl again!
What about abusive users that post in communities outside of their home instance? I think that’s what we’re talking about here. I can block instances, but there are communities in Lemmy.world that I enjoy and I appreciate the admins effort to keep abusive users out.
Each user can block other users. Moderators can block users. It can be handled the same way that other sites (yes, like reddit) do it. I’m also not opposed to defederation when it is essentially a single-user ban- for example, if there is an instance with no communities, no signup requirement, and has nothing but malicious bots- that’s banning a bot farm, not “defederation” as it’s commonly understood. But with something like this- where feddit.nl is actually a rather large instance- so many people are essentially being punished for absolutely no fault of their own.
Do you understand that when CSAM images are uploaded to an instance, they are federated to other instances as well?
Even if users have the option to block whole instances themselves, there are STILL going to be instances Lemmy World will not be federating with because we don’t want to risk having any of that on our server.
And feddit.nl had a user that posted csam on our instance, which then federates to other instances. So basically everyone gets a copy.
I do understand. I’m expressing a worry that things like this will lead to trouble for the fediverse’s user retention. Nowhere did I say that I didn’t understand the reasoning. It’s not a requirement to have a solution at hand when pointing out a problem. An instance as large as lemmy.world defederating from an instance as large as feddit.nl is a problem. Is the solution giving moderators better tools? Stopping the automatic proliferation of images? Removing the image hosting entirely to rely on external hosts? Or is this an insurmountable problem with no solution? The specific answer, or even existence of an answer, does not determine whether the problem itself exists.
There would not be a problem if the instance was managed. Everyone can start an instance but it takes a lot more to keep it running and moderated. Check the problems beehaw.org are currently going through.
And as you point out, feddit.nl is quite a big instance but it only has ONE admin. That is a problem. And that is also something to remember when you decide on which instance you want to host your community.
I don’t host a community. At a basic level, I would like the ability to view (and I mean VIEW, not even necessarily interact with- I cannot force my interaction on anyone) the entire fediverse for myself. If other people want others to tell them which areas align with their views, they can join instances that block other instances from being able to participate. I just wish that didn’t mean the defederated instance could no longer even view the blocking instance.
It sounds like you should host an instance. This will give you the abilities you want, unless you provoke defederation from someone.
I’m unfortunately unable to host an instance. I wish I could, honestly.