Yes, this is still necessary.
It wouldn’t make sense to put the onus to block every bad instance onto every single user.
Consider the extreme use case, which is obviously CSAM. I rely on my instance admins to handle that for me. If I had to painstakingly block every instance that has poor moderation (or worse), I’d simply stop using Lemmy. The “all” feed would be utterly unusable.
Also, admins need control over what’s in their own database, potentially for legal reasons.
This is where I’m currently at with “not technically nsfw but I don’t want people thinking I’m like that” trying to block anime communities centered around not-technically-nude pictures.
Yeah as an instance admin sorry not sorry I defederated most anime things like that. You want that? You host it. I don’t need the feds knocking down my door.
Lol wtf? The feds are going to knock down your door because of anime pics of people that aren’t even nude?
Honestly if the feds are going to even take the effort to move personnel to your house and knock your door, when it’s quite unlikely the server is hosted physically at your house in the first place, you could take the opportunity to offer them cheap consulting on technology, international cultures (anime and stuff) and federation.
Heck, you can aim at their ego. “I tricked you, right guys? That means I’m pretty good.”
An onus is a responsibility. A responsibility is power. It’s a simple fact that someone who chooses their own content source blocklists has more personal power than a person for whom someone else makes the selection.
And, it takes time and mental energy which we certainly don’t have to spare. It’s a very heavy onus that way
edge lords, tankies, paedophiles, and alt-righters should always be defederated from
defedding pedos make sense but defedding the others you mentioned are a very slippery slope into making an echo chamber
Sorry, you keep saying “echo chamber” when you wanted to type “usable instance”. Something seems broken with your autocorrect.
Yes. As an admin of an instance who really doesn’t want child porn on my server, I’m gonna defederate the shit out of any instance that doesn’t take care of such content in a reasonable time. And in my opinion, loli is child porn, so defederating there as well.
Other than that, anything that’s illegal in my jurisdiction.
And the last category, spam and bigotry. Basically anything that puts too much work on my plate - if I get dozens of reports a day for users of a single instance (and I agree with the reports), I’ll defederate, because no one’s paying for my time.
So these are some valid reasons for me to defederate. There are probably more.
Yes.
Instance admins should defederate as often as they feel is necessary, and users should learn to avoid relying on instances that do it too much.