Lemmy.world Admin Response to Defederation from Exploding Heads

We're closing this thread. Everything that could be said has been said. Thank you

Original Post:
Today, we want to inform everyone that we have decided to defederate from https://exploding-heads.com/. We understand that defederating should always be a last resort, and individuals can certainly block communities. However, blocking alone does not prevent potential harm to vulnerable communities.

After carefully reviewing the instance, reported posts, and multiple comments from the community, we have concluded that exploding-heads is not adhering to the Lemmy or Citizen Code of Conduct. Therefore, we cannot, in good faith, continue to federate with an instance that consistently promotes hate, racism, and bullying.

Examples:
https://lemmy.world/post/577526 - Community Moderator Harassment
https://exploding-heads.com/post/92194 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/90780 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/91488 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/93725 - Community Moderator Post

Again, deciding to defederate from an instance is not taken lightly. In the future, we will continue to review instances on a case-by-case bases.

As for our community, please refrain from posting or commenting with hateful words as well. Arguing back and calling people names is not the solution. The best course of action is to report the posts or comments violating our server rules.

Lemmy Code of Conduct
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
Citizen Code of Conduct https://github.com/stumpsyn/policies/blob/master/citizen_code_of_conduct.md

“We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.”

genoxidedev1,
genoxidedev1 avatar

It's crazy to me that people find those types of racist and distasteful posts funny. Does anyone here know if kbin has already defederated with exploding-heads? And yes I have already blocked the domain. This type of shit doesn't belong on the fediverse.

exohuman,
exohuman avatar

I saw them from kbin a few days ago.

gmtom,

Do they find it funny or are they just shit people that like being cunts?

May,
May avatar

Those dont have lots of upvotes so i dont think even the people on there think its funny but idk

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

At this point, I’m past caring. I just take them at face value and move on.

Syltti,
Syltti avatar

Ernest commented on the situation, but I think he had a fair bit on his plate at the time.

genoxidedev1,
genoxidedev1 avatar

Yeah I'm not urging him to do anything, he shall taketh as much time as he needs. Was just asking, but meanwhile blocking the domain individually suffices I'm pretty sure.

Ragnell,
Ragnell avatar

I'm on kbin.social and I've never seen an exploding heads post.

gamers_Mate,

I saw one once but I cannot remember if it was kbin.social or lemmy.world because I have tried both.

Teppic, (edited )
Teppic avatar

I don't think they've targeted kbin in the same way exploding-heads seem to have targeted other Lemmy instances, but when I checked a day or so ago we were still federated. I blocked the whole instance ...but I can't now remember how that was done. Somehow you can make an instance appear like a magazine from kbin, then you can follow or block it in much the same way too.

Edit:
From the comments below, head to https://kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com
Then at the bottom of the page, or from the kbin menu, choose the no-entry (i.e. block) symbol which is next to the subscribe button.

genoxidedev1, (edited )
genoxidedev1 avatar

Yes you have to go to kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com and it should show up as a "magazine" then you can block it (For anyone that hasn't done it yet)

edit: forgot .com at the end of the domain, thanks jalda

jalda,
jalda avatar

you have to add the .com at the end of the domain name

genoxidedev1,
genoxidedev1 avatar

Oh true I forgot that wait

AnonTwo,

One thing worth mentioning is that this only blocks the threads. You'll still see users if they hop into a thread on an instance you haven't blocked.

Tested this by temporarily blocking lemmy-world and checking some redditmigration (a kbin magazine) threads. The users on lemmy-world will still show even if it's blocked.

JasSmith,

That's the magazine on kbin. It's not their instance. If it were federated with kbin.social it would be accessible like this: https://kbin.social/m/main@exploding-heads.com, but it's not. There's no way to see which instances are federated on kbin, so maybe it's already gone.

genoxidedev1,
genoxidedev1 avatar

Perchance. But I'm pretty sure blocking /d/exploding-heads won't hurt anyone.

SpacemanSpiff,
SpacemanSpiff avatar

The “d” in the URL actually stands for domain. It’s actually the entire instance not a magazine. It’s the correct way to block an entire instance individually as a Kbin user.

Kaldo,
Kaldo avatar

This is wrong, the reason it doesn't load your link is because there is no community/magazine called "main" on that domain. If you go to https://kbin.social/m/freeforum@exploding-heads.com instead, you will see it as normal.

Also, the user above is indeed talking about blocking the whole instance, not just one magazine. If you go to that link with /d/ it is for the whole domain.

JasSmith,

There is a community called main on exploding-heads: https://exploding-heads.com/c/main

funkyb,

wouldn't you have had to subscribe to one of their communities to see those posts? If that's true, your observation isn't evidence they are deferderated and you may still be seeing their users comments on other posts.

Ragnell,
Ragnell avatar

Point. None of their posts are getting to the front page.

Kaldo,
Kaldo avatar

Since you can see their users' posts I think it means they aren't defederated yet, I think ernest is a bit overwhelmed at the moment to deal with stuff like this but it should be brought up, sooner better than later.

hypelightfly,

It's been brought up and is on his radar it seems. Until he can address it kbin does at least have the ability for users to individually block instances.

https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/103709/Antiwoke-magazin-on-kbin-social-posting-bullshit-like-how-to-end#entry-comment-420377

Dangdoggo,
Dangdoggo avatar

This response is really great. Part of the reason I stuck with Kbin was Ernest

Ragnell,
Ragnell avatar

I think I'll go ahead and find and block them, thanks. Both of you.

AngrilyEatingMuffins,
AngrilyEatingMuffins avatar

Ty

Nepenthe,
Nepenthe avatar

Thank you for linking that. I'd seen the original thread before he'd had a chance to reply. Even with help, I worry about his workload, but I'm always grateful to have such an open and dedicated admin

kjr,
kjr avatar

@hypelightfly
Yes, but to block an instance as a user doesn't offer the same level of protection that to defederate the instance. If a user blocks an instance, she/he doesn't see the posts coming from this instance in her/his thread. But the user cannot avoid being seen from the blocked instance and potentially being harassed.
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/375

@lwadmin @genoxidedev1 @Ragnell @Kaldo

Nepenthe,
Nepenthe avatar

They may be getting drowned out by the huge lemmy instances. I've only seen a bare handful of content from them, but the quality of every one made me refresh my memory on blocking instances. I really never thought I'd be advocating defederation so quickly, but we already have a 4chan and it's not kbin

beefcat,
beefcat avatar

When I was like 16 I thought this stuff was funny, but I also believed that it was all a big joke and that few if any people actually bought into it. Teenage me was an idiot, and for a lot more reasons than just this.

TeaHands,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

I'm no fan of defederating over minor disagreements but yeah, some types of people are just incompatible with building a welcoming space. Good choice.

WorkIsSlow,

I agree with you that it was a good choice and that it's necessary to foster a friendly online culture.

I haven't seen any calls for defederation over, "minor disagreements," though. I have seen lots of people saying that we should defederate from places like exploding heads so that we dont allow them to get bigger and then those people being told that they shouldn't call for defederation over minor disagreements.

TeaHands,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

I've seen a few around the place but they tend to get shut down pretty quick so I guess that means most of us are on the same page, which is nice.

DelvianSeek,

Thank you for your diligence, transparency, and for being proactive about this. I, for one, am glad to see that racism, bigotry, and homophobia are not welcome on lemmy.world, and that the admin team takes that seriously.

JigglySackles,

That seems like the right choice. Those seem to be some pretty vile people. They can have their free speech, but it doesn't mean we have to listen to it. Normally I'd not be in agreeance about defederating, but hate speech shouldn't have a safe haven among us. Thanks, for defederating from them.

lixus98,
lixus98 avatar

Block them if you are in kbin https://kbin.social/d/exploding-heads.com

BaroqueInMind,
BaroqueInMind avatar

I agree with this decision.

Sphyrycal,

Great communication, I think this is a smart move.

Rogue_General,

Thank you. One of those dudes were over on sh.itjust.works when they defederated it, arguing that the exploding heads community was totally fine! As you can see... no, it was not: https://lemmy.world/comment/577634

You can expand the rest comment section for context but the screenshot in the link speaks for itself.

Edit: here come the downvotes! The exploding heads guys really hate that I screenshotted & exposed the cesspit they call home. Lol

eramseth,

Yikes. Good riddance.

Tontoz,

Genuinely curious, whats wrong this post: https://exploding-heads.com/post/90780? Seems like they are making fun of the actress, and even then thats a edited picture. All the other ones make sense in violating the rules, but not sure why this was flagged as inappropriate?

davidgro,

Fine, I'll assume good faith and answer this: They are clearly making fun of that actress (in that role) specifically because she's black, and in a way that makes fun of her appearance because to them black means primitive or unsophisticated or something.

aski3252,

They are clearly making fun of that actress (in that role) specifically because she’s black

Even if we assume for a moment that they don't have a racist bone in their bodies and were making fun of a white person in the exact same meme, it would still be making fun of a person based on their physical appearance, which goes against lemmy's, lemmy.world's and officially even against their own spirit..

And you can argue that this is taking it too far or being too sensitive, and if that was the only meme posted here, I would probably agree with you. But all the memes together show a clear trend and show that when it comes to this admin at least, there is no interest in creating a healthy community. When you have rules like:

"Be authentic. Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. No threats or personal insults No discrimination"

and then have admins who, at the very least, bend those rules and post provocating and controversial content only to then go "oh no, we are not edgelords, we actually care about our community very very much and want everyone to be friendly", it does not signal responsibility at all.

And the most important part with this post is that it wasn't posted by a random immature internet troll, it was posted by one of the site admins.. If they can't even moderate their own admin's actions according to their own stated rules, they are either incredibly incompetent, they are not committed to actually creating a non-toxic community or they aren't really interested in following their rules in the first place..

davidgro,

Well said. I didn't even look into it enough to realize those aspects of it.

aski3252,

Seems like they are making fun of the actress

Yeah, based on her physical appearance.. Lemmy.world does not even allow namecalling, so it shouldn't be hard to understand that "making fun of people" based on their looks (some would call that bullying) is not in the spirit of this community and lemmy overall..

And we also should keep in mind that this post was made by an admin, not by a random troll in their community. This clearly shows that the admin has no interest in creating a community that is compatible with lemmy's values.

Vorticity,

I'm not an instance admin, so I don't speak for them.

From my perspective, I don't want to see that kind of meme in my feed, but I also don't think that alone is enough to defederate. That meme along side all of the rest, though, shows that this particular admin enjoys posting troll content, rage bait, and hateful material.

Now, go take a look at the rest of the content on the instance. It isn't all bad but there is a high ratio of hateful content there relative to other instances.

So, while that one particular post may not have been the worst thing in the world, it could be seen as falling under "harassment" in the Citizen Code of Conduct and shows the general mindset of the instance admins. When taken together with the admin's other posts and the prevalence of hateful material on their instance, it indicates that the instance is unlikely to be a welcoming place and will likely continue to violate the Lemmy Code of Conduct and the Citizen Code of Conduct.

I'm happy that lemmy.world has defederated from exploding heads and might have moved to a different instance if they hadn't.

Tontoz,

Ah got it, was really looking for place in the code of conducts here that I missed. Thank you for the explanation!

Dark_Blade,
@Dark_Blade@lemmy.world avatar

And this right here is what separates Lemmy from voat: active community moderation that works to limit the reach of hateful bigots. While I’m a big proponent of free speech myself, I do agree that many kinds of ‘speech’ aren’t the most conductive thing for building a welcoming platform; especially one that caters to many vulnerable groups.

This move also highlights the core strength of a decentralized platform, by the way: while people who no longer want to engage with this content can stay safe, nobody was deplatformed! We achieved a clean break without banning or ‘silencing’ anybody.

So, good job on responsibly using the defed hammer!

markr,

Free speech includes my right to not listen to you.

rarkgrames,
@rarkgrames@lemmy.world avatar

Good call. I think within my first day or two here some idiot from exploding heads was commenting on here about being banned by beehaw and just acting like a complete tool. We’re better off without them.

yunggwailo,
yunggwailo avatar

Good. Nazi punks fuck off

realcaseyrollins,

Huh. Those posts actually don't seem too bad. I actually am a user over there, and seen some actual racism there from time to time.

I'm always not happy whenever a free speech instance gets blocked, but as was the case with Poast, I can't be too mad about it if the users are participating in racism.

I was hoping to change the culture over there but I'm just too busy IRL to change the overall tenor of that instance on my own.

!deleted233369,

deleted_by_author

    •
    realcaseyrollins,

    If there's an instance or group that has racists in it, there are two things that can be done;

    1. You can join that instance, diluting the racist content on the site, if not pushing back against it, preventing the racists from posting racist stuff without being challenged
    2. You can leave/ignore the community, effectively allowing the instance to continue being racist

    I try not to participate in the second option, because that's how things like /pol/ came to be the way they are today. And again I have a life, but if I didn't, I'd spend more time pushing back against the racism (which seems pretty rare cuz the only time I came across it was in one post where someone was posting reasons to defederate from the instance; they were a bit worse than what's included here, but I never saw that content in any of my feeds).

    nameless_prole,

    No, things like /pol/ came to be what they are because people like you disregarded awful, horrific shit because it was couched in something that reassembled a joke. If the "free speech absolutist" folks would have left the community, rather than explicitly defend their "right" (to be clear, the right to free speech does not extend to private locations or forums. In fact, a platform removing hateful speech is literally them exercising their right to free speech) to say it, the site would have disappeared into obscurity a long time ago.

    ThunderingJerboa,
    ThunderingJerboa avatar

    Fundamentally disagree, many of these radical spaces recruit off the "normal" spaces quite often. By having them be separate they will have a hard time growing, sure the population who is radicalized will stay but these ideas need constant growth and they pray on young men who honestly don't know their place in a world and are increasingly feeling helpless and sometimes they are given "easy" answers for rather complex issues. "Free Speech" social media typically end up drifting off to the right because those who are normal typically don't want to be associated with the "racist shithole" part of the internet.

    Edit: You probably already know the "nazi bar" example thing and yeah that is how it typically goes, no normal person wants to be associated going to the bloody nazi bar unless you are a weirdo.

    uncivil,
    uncivil avatar

    Lmao thinking option 1 is actually viable tells me you don't understand the experience of being a member of a marginalized group and having to be the spokesperson and educator for every small-minded or even benevolently curious outsider. It is not the responsibility of the LGBTQ, Black, Indigenous, AAPI, Jewish, women, disabled, or any other community to educate racists. In fact, it's really fucking exhausting for people in these marginalized groups to explain for the billionth time why they deserve the same rights as cishet white Christian men, or that xyz term is hurtful, that George Soros and Bill Gates are not trying to depopulate the planet, etc.

    These racists get an endorphin rush from bullying. You can go ahead and put a target on your back but I assure you, they know they're saying awful shit and they do not care about who it hurts because that's the point. You're not going to be able to dilute that content because you will burn out.

    Letting them have their racist hellhole without giving them further visibility is absolutely fine. If they get a reputation for saying horrible shit, they'll only attract more horrible people, and then fewer horrible people will invade the spaces where everyone is respected.

    Consider the paradox of tolerance as well. Defederating sends a clear message that hate speech is not permitted here.

    exohuman,
    exohuman avatar

    I responded to some threads from over there that appeared in my feed. I didn’t know the whole instance was a bunch of Nazis. I just thought the thread was asking a question and I responded in good faith. Those guys over there aren’t worth your time. They aren’t interested in plain talk. They just want to be assholes.

    Buffalox,

    https://exploding-heads.com/post/159228?scrollToComments=true

    Kapow: (moderator)

    a tyrannical minority are trying to stamp out anything that does not align with their views.

    This being lemmy.world not accepting things like bigotry, transphobia, racism and sexism.

    @Wigglehard: (admin)

    certain levels of racism and offensive material is allowed

    posting so called offensive material is ok in these rooms

    They are not talking about not liking girl bands, when they say offensive, they are talking about exactly the bigotry, transphobia, racism and sexism.

    Nough said, and this was just from the first post first 2 comments on their front page!

    magnetosphere,
    magnetosphere avatar

    This may not be true in your particular case, but A LOT of assholes think that “free speech” is a license to be deliberately ignorant and hateful, while facing zero consequences.

    By trying to rebrand hate speech as “free speech”, they’re ignoring other fundamental principles of society. The US Constitution, most religions, and numerous laws can be boiled down to one guideline: don’t be a dick.

    Dropping n-bombs with impunity is NOT what free speech was intended to be used for. It was meant to protect those who criticized the government or needed religious freedom, and is supposed to prevent the government from retaliating against them. In short, free speech was intended to make people more tolerant, not less.

    Don’t put up with closed-minded assholes because they “don’t seem too bad”. Racism is NOT something you want to desensitize yourself to. Ditch them and don’t go back.

    snooggums,
    snooggums avatar

    You say "free speech" but really mean hate speech.

    Fuck off.

    MonsieurHedge,
    MonsieurHedge avatar

    I expect to see a decent surge in Nazi instances for a good while, but it'll die down once the initial wave is pushed back. Keep at it, and good work.

    Candoo,

    Absolutely justified

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