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[discussion] Proposal to defederate from maga.place

7mon 28d ago by sh.itjust.works/u/QuinnyCoded in agora@sh.itjust.works

I saw that a post was made in main@sh.itjust.works about defederation about a month ago, an admin commented to make a post here to discuss defederation, but the post was never made.

https://maga.place/is very obviously a small community with no real substance to it, but I saw an antivax post to science_memes@mander.xyz and was surprised it still exists.

Anyways I don't really have a lot to say but uh, I recently hit a full year on this great instance 😊 (old account @TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works)

I'm reminded of a story about a bartender, who immediately kicked out a Nazi simply for entering the establishment. The Nazi wasn't causing any trouble. But the rationale was that once you start allowing Nazis in "because they're nice", they'll start inviting their friends, who might not be so nice. Now your bar is a Nazi bar, and they become much harder to kick out because "you already let us in, why do you have a problem now?"

Nazis (and fascists in general) use the same tricks as narcissistic people, by holding you to your words because you believe in words. They don't, so they happily trample all over you once you let your guard down.

Nazism, by definition, is hateful and violent ideology. Maga is following in their footsteps. They have no place in this world.

That's the one!

😁

That's a really poor analogy here though. Here's one that I think is better:

  • instance = country
  • community = bar
  • federation = visa agreements

Communities can block individual users that are undesirable without the instance getting involved. That's the Nazi bar example, and it's totally reasonable for communities to have strict moderation for who they let in.

Instances should only get involved if admins from another instance refuse to take action against their users who cause issues. And an instance can block another with minimal drama, it's like border security not accepting visas from that country any more. Until we have evidence that an instance isn't capable of enforcing rules on its users, there's no reason to ban them.

Well that's why we're voting, isn't it? This isn't the admins making a decision to defederate, it's the users.

And jesus fucking christ the amount of FUD going on over this is more enough to show that it should be defederated.

Yes, and that's why I'm making my case for not defederating. I don't like their content, and honestly wouldn't be sad to see them go, but I'm against defederation decisions being made based on political views, and that seems to be what's happening here.

FUD going on over this is more enough to show that it should be defederated.

Weird, I came to the opposite conclusion. Here's the process I followed:

  1. Saw the post in main asking if we should defederate, and I pointed them here
  2. Saw voting thread pinned and saw only yes votes
  3. Looked at the post body and the linked posts and saw zero evidence posted
  4. Looked at the actual instance and saw a bunch of conservative talking points and very little discussion or votes; total users were 26 or so, and they pretty much only had a conservative community

The negative impact to users seemed exceedingly small, since they didn't even have engagement on their own posts, and I haven't seen anyone discussing issues with the few users they have.

So why defederate? This seems like a bunch of people virtue signaling over pretty much nothing, mostly based on the domain (WTF?), and somewhat based on conservative views.

I think we should stay federated on principle to remind people that civility has value. We don't want to be like Lemmy.ml that bans people over content critical to the CCP or Russia, and how is defederating from this instance any different?

Maybe we need to defederate later if their instance causes issues, but then we'd be absolutely justified.

What their homepage looks like...

Defed that nonsense please

A screenshot made for ants? Am I doing something wrong if I only see blurred text and large pixels when I zoom in in voyager?

That's weird. I swear it was legible when I made that comment

This just happens sometimes. I don't know if it's a client thing or a server thing. Opening and closing the image repeatedly will often coax it into loading properly.

Agreed

They should be defederated.

Their hateful ideas should have no place here.

Defederate, we saw what the_donald become. If anything, to avoid the bots and agitators.

Why should users of this instance spend their leisure time with people who not only want to take away their rights, but label themselves as such? A label that tags their user name regardless of what they're saying.

Why should we, as users of this instance, ever allow someone who visibly declares their support for hateful politics, to engage with the most vulnerable among us in the first place?

MAGA policies are killing women. I'm a woman. I see someone calling themselves MAGA and I see someone who supports stripping away my autonomy and letting me die.

Everyone can join as many instances as they want if they believe defederating from hate speech enthusiasts is creating an echo chamber.

Completely agreed. Also history would dictate that giving literal nazis a space/platform with which they can influence people is a bad fuckin idea. We don't owe them tolerance and they should be censored because they are a cult and don't intend on good faith discussion.

Call me radical, I'll say hang loose 🤙

The post on Science Memes got downvoted into oblivion, which is funny.

But yeah, we should probably defed these pos.

Defederate. Let the right-wingers have their echo-chambers in isolation

And keep your own echo-chamber? I'm very disappointed in this community... I haven't come across any posts from that community but their front page looks no worse than news@lemmy.ml just with a different slant. They don't even have any comments so the community must be tiny.

Lemmy.ml is still 10 times better (Even with all it's flaws) than the misanthropic filth that is MAGA. The term you're looking for is Discourse Hygiene

As a general rule, I am against defederation unless the instance is going to cause liability or technical problems (bot spamming, illegal content, etc.)

This instance in particular is closer to banning a user that is self hosting. It is closed, requires account approval, and thusly defederation will not catch any unknowing users in a dragnet.

So I think defederation is a reasonable exception for this instance, especially given the community vote in progress.

I haven't seen any evidence of their users consistently violating rules of other instances, I've only seen intolerant communities on their instance. That should not be grounds for defederation, we should only defederate if their instance refuses to deal with reported abuse from their users.

So I'll vote no on this. While I very much disagree politically w/ that instance, I don't think that's enough to defederate.

The only interactions I've had with them was a user trolling.

If you have evidence, post it. If we have any mods who have experience working w/ their admins, we should have that evidence as well.

meh, I'm not going to convince you. Just vote no. Besides:

Bait?

If we make decisions based on a difference of opinion, we'll just create a massive echo chamber. To avoid that, defederation needs to be based on actual rules, and I think those rules should center around moderation. Regardless of the other instance's views, if their moderation keeps up with reports, we should stay federated. I don't know if that's the case, hence the ask for evidence.

Nazis shouldn't be given a seat at the table. That's my take.

When your "opinions" consist of racism and hate, they cease to be opinion.

As long as they keep their opinions in whatever community they choose and don't force it down anyone's throat, I'm fine with it existing. I'd rather have ugly opinions openly debated instead of festering in the background where others get sucked in and we get a pathway to extremism. It's pretty easy to just block the odd community that pops up all you never see it again.

Debate them or ignore them, but completely blocking them just kneecaps this burgeoning platform. Nobody is going to join if the standard is "only leftists that meet this litmus test".

Obviously you can vote however you choose, I personally prefer to lean on the side of allowing content vs blocking it outright, at least until they refuse to obey our rules when in our communities.

You're making a valid point, on the other hand

Nobody is going to join if the standard is "only leftists that meet this litmus test".

What if the standard was not "only leftists" but "everyone but the far-right"? They are allowed on most (?) major platforms these days, and it hasn't helped them become better places.

The same is true. Echo chambers are bad, and it you want evidence of that on the left, look no further than Lemmy.ml.

Quite often people with extreme views violate the rules, so they get banned. The rest tend to improve my experience overall. I've had good and bad discussions with people on all extremes of the political spectrum on Reddit, and that's because there were communities for everyone. I'd avoid the toxic communities like the_donald, but I very much enjoyed many of the others. My favorite subreddits were the neutral* subreddits (esp. neutral news), which contrary to the name didn't enforce neutrality, but required sources for every claim, and people from all over the political spectrum would provide fantastic evidence for their claims.

I would avoid all of the above communities be ajse I don't think segregating myself by gender and biological sex fosters good discussion, nor do I crave acceptance. But others obviously disagree, and I think that's fine. It shouldn't be on the platform to decide how people self-organize, it should only step in if people are breaking the rules.

Defederate!

Being "MAGA" is not associated with conservatism, it's claiming your support for a openly fascist president at war with his a part of his own people. MAGA is not a political view, it's an aggregate of hate against pretty much all minorities: immigrants, LGBTQ, muslims,...

Here I'm going to point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_lawIt takes much more energy to prove an "alternative fact" as wrong than to dump it in a post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toleranceIf you tolerate the intolerant, you enable intolerance.

Don't we have minorities on this instance? Are we really advocating for a constructive dialogue between groups of people who just want to exist and people who wish these other groups could be exterminated?

I beleive we need to debate that filth and fight them everywhere. However, if I want to do that, I can always create a user somewhere else that allows me to do so and not pollute this instance. I want this instance to be a nice place that I can show to people as a good alternative to reddit and other social media platforms wihout puting them at risk of being brainwashed by fascists. In short, I support to defederate.

But my issue is how does one debate someone who doesn't care about truth or debate regulation or debating in good faith at all? All they do is bowl over people and that just makes them more confidently wrong.

I know you're not arguing that we should remain federated with them, im just curious why you enjoy debating them because I get so frustrated and I'd much rather not raise my blood pressure unnecessarily so I just don't get it lol. It feels like a losing game.

I understand you 100%, it can be frustrating and is something I do rarely. When I decide to do it is because I already feel frustrated by the situation people like them are creating and I release some of that frustration by debating them. Maybe the person that you debate doesnt care about the truth as you said, but maybe other people reading the conversation do. You dont have to debate them until the end, just to contradict them from time to time to break the illusion that everybody agrees with them.

I would like the option to vote to defer to the moderators. Reason being while I think it is valid to keep their community exposed to outside, less supportive, takes on their ideology, I also understand that the community has potential to be a particularly toxic and hostile one, so I understand if our moderators (who I am very appreciative of) don't want to take on the task of keeping them in check on this community.

Also, those of you upvoting and downvoting votes are wild.

We have an openly fascist president who reads Mein Kampf and administration members who combined have made Nazis comfortable literally doing Nazi salutes on international broadcast TV. IMO the U.S. IS the Nazi bar in the story - we let one Nazi in and now they've brought all their friends. Let's not repeat that mistake on Lemmy.

Give them the boot.

Let MAGAs read and engage with reasonable content as long as possible so long as they aren't dickheads. You never know when someone will say something that makes them rethink their position.

Yup, my mind was changed around the time I found Reddit and was exposed to new ideas. Before that point, I considered myself conservative because I thought they actually wanted smaller government, but then I found I'm closer to libertarian, specifically Penn Jillette's flavor, and found communities on Reddit to that extent. Since then, I've probably voted more Democrat than Republican in my red state, at least for contested offices.

We need more discussion across political lines, not less.

If they are coming in good faith, willing to discuss and empathise, engagement is good and everyone can learn from each other. If it's in bad faith, then block or mock.

Yup, I 100% agree. It just takes time to figure out which it is.

I can go ahead and shut you all down now, there's plenty of evidence suggesting that this instance is a Russian propaganda outlet.

Others have explained in more detail above. Nothing that comes from this instance is in good faith.

I can go ahead and shut you all down now, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that this instance is a Russian propaganda outlet.

Others have explained in more detail above. Nothing that comes from this instance is in good faith.

Are you about this comment where they're claiming the admin self identifies as Russian?

I don't think that's sufficient. Not all Russians work for or even agree with the Russian government, and a lot of Russians live outside of Russia. I grew up in the PNW and there were a lot of Russians in my school. That IP address seems to be in the US, so there's a decent chance the admin lives in the US.

If them claiming to be Russian is enough to label them a Russian propagandist, I guess the Japanese internment program was justifiable too.

You know, for a lot of us, the title MAGA is just as good as Fascist.

They could have called themselves "conservatives", "right-wingers" etc. But they chose "MAGA", the fascist's branch of the GOP.

I don't need to engage with them to figure anything more than I would engage a nazi.place or fascist.place.

I don't know her Mariah smile

But honestly, if someone has an account on that instance it's probably good for them to be able to read posts and comments on other instances. Of course once in a while that will lead to some trolling and individual users will be banned. If that's too much then the whole instance should be defederated. But I don't think it should be preemptive. I see more potential for good than harm.

Things that should be preemptive: accessibility, codes of conduct.

They can still read all of the instances without logging in. The entire reason to have an instance like that is because they can do what they want there. Other instances won't put up with it.

Come on, isn't maga.place a Russian information operation? It's not founded by MAGA people, but by a foreign power whose goal is to pose as MAGAts in order to expand the gap within USA's population.

I've literally never gone on that instance and have blocked it for obvious reasons, but I'm curious where you got this information from. Like how do you know this, or is it speculation? Or is this a joke that went over my head?

Well, its admin is Russian and joined Lemmy around when the Russia was cranking up its troll efforts in 2023. Or, here he at least claims that he is Russian: https://lemmy.world/post/76070.

Also, the letter "Z" is used in the Russia in the same meaning as the swastika was used in Nazi Germany. No Russian would call himself "ArtemZ" in year 2023 without meaning that he is proud of Putin. And if you are a big fan of MAGA-ism, why do you choose a nickname that promotes Putin instead of one that promotes Trump?

You can also just read what he has been writing with his previous accounts. And how he first was talking good about the Russia and then bad. Depending on what he figured would work best for MAGAts.

Ok yeah I can see now, thanks!

Thanks for starting this discussion. I've linked this post in meta@slrpnk.net.

Please defed them if my vote is allowed.

i appreciate your input, but I have a question. did you just find this post or was there a link to it somewhere?
the comments are so active for an 8 day old post and idk why

I have been not well. Was catching up and the post was in my All.

Seeing as your on lemmy.ca, this thread might be more useful to you as your vote wouldn't be counted in SJW.

https://lemmy.ca/post/52042753

ah I see. Wishing you the best of luck

The vote links to this as the discussion thread.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/48944191

Yes for defederation

I navigated the instance some. The amount of disinformation on its posts is concerning to me. I hadent personally been effected but the potential is worrisome.

Okay I had to think on this one a while. It seems like their community is microscopic. There really is barely anything there. The stuff that is there isn't even really offensive or objectionable just conservative. I do get what people are saying that we need to fight facism everywhere but I tend to err on the side of more speech unless I see evidence of harm coming from a community so I will vote nay but I also don't think there is going to be any loss if people to vote to ban it as there is nearly no posts on there or discussions.

I'm exactly the same way. I want to err on the side of more speech, since it's pretty easy to defederate from them later if they cause problems. I'm not going to join any of their communities, and I probably won't notice if they engage on ones I'm part of unless they're being a jerk. I tend to not really look at usernames anyway.

So yeah, I probably won't notice regardless of the outcome of this vote. So the extent of my feelings on this is that I prefer more speech rather than less. If our mods and admins can work with their mods and admins, then we good.

I say no, just like college, the point is to expose yourself to the enemy, learn what they say, or otherwise you're just existing in a bubble

The left is becoming convinced that anything less than a bubble is a "nazi bar".

I grew up in a conservative home and I saw the left bubble from the outside. If it weren't for that I'm sure I would have moved left earlier because honestly socialism is much more in line with my beliefs than the hyperindividualism, greed, consumption, and learned psychopathy of neoliberalism.

Some people willing to engage with me would have been nice. I try to be that person now.

Absolutely get rid of the fascists

Personally I think that we deserve the respect to make our own decisions on this issue. Defederation should be reserved for situations where actual laws are broken that would jeopardize the existence of this instance or even Lemmy as a whole.

As a former mod on a larger subreddit and then a mod on a decent lemmy community, and now a sad mod trying to pick up the pieces (RIP lemm.ee), I've seen how hate can be pervasive in most every sphere. If we start locking things down because we want a hate free Internet, well... We won't have much of an Internet anymore.

My modding style was always the "let 'em cook" method. Unless doxxing, impersonation of a mod, spam, bots, and the like are happening, the community would dogpile the user, and frankly as a bystander seeing coherent arguments against hate was more convincing than just censoring it all together.

No.

I'm fine with staying federated, until it either breaks the law, threatens the instance, or maga.place users start brigading or whatever.

Whatever is decided, I blocked the instance for myself.

Have they violated any of SJW's rules ^[1]^?

References
  1. Type: Screenshot. Publisher: [Type: Website. Title: "sh.itjust.works". URI: https://sh.itjust.works/.]. Accessed: 2025-11-04T21:46Z.

:::

I think we should be wary and keep them on a short leash, but I don't see them causing enough trouble here in October 2025 to defederate. If I'd wanted a safe space I would have gone to Beehaw.

I voted no. I strongly disagree with maga fucks, but I also don't want an echo chamber. Discussion and debate benefit from disagreement.

There are far more moderate views on here that keep it from being an echo chamber that we don't need to include nazis

I think its reasonable for me and those i care about to not want to be pressured to debate the morality of our existence in every space, and that is exactly what they want to debate, and for them it's fun because it does not affect them, but for us it just means another fuckin place that is not safe. It's not easy to ignore them, and they make sure of that, and tolerating them just enables them to take over spaces.

There are enough liberals (read: centrists) in here that this is a controversial discussion, thats reason enough for me to believe defederating won't cause this to be an echo chamber.

I believe in an open internet so my vote is no

"Open internet" and fascism aren't compatible.

Cool story

as long as they're small and not annoying, it's better to keep them, so ppl can influence them

This is the logic that keeps them and their hateful ideas in the community.

Let them go live in their own bubble.

Locking them out of the broader community is the right choice

Users can defederate from instances. Just use the tools you already have.

iirc that only works for subs made on that instance, not users from that instance. I'm on Voyager though, so it might be different for me idk

That blocks comms, not users. Which is exactly what the comment you replied to is saying. How did your non-answer pick up so many upvotes?

Just block them. It can't be that hard seeing it's only 26 of them. Once again, you have tools to solve the problem for yourself. Use them.

Defederation is also a tool.

You (and others like you) want to push your will and opinions on to other users by asking the admins to do a instance wide defederation of the instance. Got it. Because once again, you have tools to solve the problem for yourself.

You (and others like you) want to push your will and opinions on to other users

Paradox of tolerance. We're not the ones who refuse to tolerate the existence of others.

are you being affected by them?

every fuckin day

ooooh i also love banning everyone with an opinion that differs from mine. I do it in all my communities. Cleanse the nonbelievers! Purify our echo chamber!

chants

Purify our echo chamber!

Purify our echo chamber!

That 'differing opinion' is somebody else's right to exist

Hate is not an opinion and hate is all that maga stands for.

Removed by mod right back at ya!

Says the person who wants an echo-chamber