It was banned on Reddit because it is racist, hatefull and spread Conspiracies.
In my new community I expect the exclution of racist communities. It is easy now with defederation. Nazis can do whatever they want on their instances, but the instances I want to be part of should not amplify their shit and flush it into our timelines.
The instance-admin of !thedonald@sh.itjust.works did not reply to my message. Big instances seem not to defederate with them.
The new TD may not be a success, the point is not to give Nazis a platform like it is happening now. Fans of TD are racists.
Where are the instances that show face against racism?
edit: to contact the admins: @donut @TheDude @smorks
edit2: @TheDude deleted the community :)
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Personally, I’m subscribing to the belief that the fediverse’s attribute of “true censorship is impossible” is a benefit, not a curse. Every prior example of censorship has just morphed into “advertiser palatable”. Which is bad for everyone.
More than happy to have access to instances that will take the kind of drastic action you’re suggesting, access to my own “block” function, etc. Let them come.
The fediverse will inevitably host some messed up stuff. Counting it a blessing that those people have a clear place to go to and sequester themselves off.
So ultimately? More than happy to have an instance that agrees with this extreme anti-censorship posture. Sh.itjustworks is fine in my books. I can block the community, just like I could block subreddits on Reddit without abandoning the whole platform. Hell, even write a script to block everyone who’s subscribed to the community. The power is yours now, and nobody can take that away. That’s the fediverse.
I think deleting the sub is the right call simply because it’s trying to replace a community that did enough in the past to deserve a ban on any platform.
Tired of all the calls for defederation though.
It is easy now with defederation.
De-federation isn’t the tool to solve this specific problem. That community has 34 posts, all by a single user, and under 30 total comments across all threads. I cannot find a single post or comment in that community that would violate any rules on lemmy.ml.
A single user posting content in a community that shares a name with a banned community on another social media platform seems like a very very low bar to push for de-federation.
This is like saying that it’s no big deal if you only have a little cancer.
It’s more like saying that we shouldn’t jump to amputation as the first step after diagnosis.
Everyone keeps repeating that defederation should be a last resort. Fine, but we should also acknowledge that the list of resorts is very short:
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Server admins talk to the admins of the server hosting the offending community, in an attempt to get them to clean their house. If they don’t;
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Defederate.
There really isn’t anything else for server operators to do that isn’t just letting the offending community continue unabated.
Offloading the responsibility to individual users to block users / communities is lazy. Most of us don’t want to spend our limited time playing whack-a-mole.
I suspect we’ll see user accounts shuffling around so that they land on a home server whose defederation policy matches their preferences.
I think instance owners need to be able to block specific communities in other instances instance-wide.
So, if lemmy.ml wants to block c/the Donald!sh.itjust.works they should be able to block that community for all users of lemmy.ml, but not the rest of the sh.itjust works instance.
Best of both worlds IMO
this is already an option, as shitjustworks pointed out in the update post
It’s not about ignoring them or not having to see the content. It’s about not providing them a platform.
They would seep into other communities
You’re probably right that blocking a single community should probably be an option.
That said, if an instance is willing to allow hateful communities like TD, I expect their comment sections will be more toxic than other instances. I like the idea of defederating from instances that allow hateful communities.
its 3 people
suggesting that shitjustworks is bound to be more toxic because the modteam didnt immediately ban a shitposting community consisting of 3 people is ridiculous
I wasn’t talking about this one specific instance really. I was using it as an example while talking about the tools needed for managing federation and what a user sees.
nothing about ‘if an instance is willing to allow hateful communities like TD, I expect their comment sections will be more toxic’ or ‘i like the idea of defederating from instances that allow hateful communities’ indicated that you werent actually talking about the instance currently under fire for supposedly (but not actually) allowing hateful communities like TD
To be fair I’ve been reading a lot of hateful comments about reddit CEO and certain billionaires during the past few days so I’d say that our stance on such content is a bit hypocritical.
“Go see the titanic” meme is a good example
Are you seeing angry comments about /u/spez or hateful comments? While I can understand and condone angry comments I would hope that hateful or threatening comments are being moderated appropriately.
I guess I don’t see “go see the titanic” memes as “hateful” given that they’re coming from a acute sense of betrayal rather than something like racism or nationalism. That’s probably because I’m angry too and see some of the distasteful comments and memes as somewhat justified in this case. I don’t post shit like that but I don’t see it as the same as the hate speech that used to come from /r/the_donald.
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I wouldn’t de-federate sh.itjust.works for that now. But stuff like this doesn’t look good and the “Just ignore it bro” crowd shows that they never had to deal with organized harassment themselves. The_Donald wasn’t just a harmless sub with a little bit of trolling, it was responsible for extreme radicalization and people died because of it. The reality is that such hate groups never stay in their place and behave everywhere else. They brigade and harass every time. Should the community grow and attract more people, it’s just a disaster waiting to happen. People are responsible for their own instance and are free to choose whatever they want but that’s the same for other servers if they should decide to de-federate.
If it develops into something that breaks the instance’s rules, it should be shut down. Until then, don’t just assume because of the name that it’s going to break the rules.
If it’s supporting some shitheel Republican’s cult of personality and names itself after the most infamous online instance of the cult of that shitheel, it doesn’t need to be given benefit of the doubt. If it’s some wholesome uwu satire, then it can bear that fucking cross and negotiate being removed from blacklists.
A Hilldawg 2024 instance should be treated in just the same way, before some stupid American asks.
And that was indicated when they migrated to Voat. Nobody else used Voat, it was just them. Also when reddit changed their policies to prevent one sub from appearing on the front page more than once.
The whole point is to be obnoxious in spaces where it isn’t welcome. When they realized they couldn’t do that on a platform that only consisted of them, there was no incentive to engage. The whole point is to shit up a platform enjoyed by others, and that’s exactly what they’ll do here.
Well said @catshit_dogfart@lemmy.ml.
This is a single user, not the ghost of The_Donald subreddit, who appears to be trolling. If that’s the accepted bar for de-federation then lemmy.ml is going to quickly become a single instance federation.
Hey all,
This community is being reviewed and will likely be a discussion point to in our Agora community where we discuss about issues like this as a community.
Post that are breaking rules will be removed. If its a regular occurrence so will the TheDonald community. Please continue reporting inappropriate posts and its difficult to maintain visibility on everything that is going on at all times.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Reading through the replies and I have to say ya’ll don’t take prisoners here. sheesh.
Anyway, I went through went through the community in question and reviewed not only the posts in the community and the comments made by the mods of the community and they weren’t aligned with the kind of negativity I want to see on the instance. I have since purged the community and the mods.
deleted by creator
Thank you
Fwiw, I hereby volunteer to take the c/ over, and dedicate it to the worship of our disney duck overload, the real Donald.
That’s not a joke. The best way to deal with the history behind the subreddit is to defang it. There’s always gong to be some troll or someone that actually worships the cheeto trying to make that community somewhere.
If instances preempt that by making communities with that name that are about some other Donald explicitly, it ceases to be able to be weaponized.
And there’s a ton of Donalds worthy of a c/. There’s the duck, there’s the amazing actor, Mr Glover, the other great actors Cheadle, and Sutherland; the McDonald’s even.
You pick which Donald you prefer, I’ll take the heat from the c/existing.
dedicate it to the worship of our disney duck overload, the real Donald.
A noble cause worth pursuing.
and dedicate it to the worship of our disney duck overload
I refuse to believe this was a typo.
I may be dyslexic, or duckslexic as the case may be
If they were acting in good faith they would not have started in such trappings. The Donald has an ugly history and it started with harmless memes. Will the next antisemitic tiki-torch march organized on your instance? The next 1/6? It’s not worth the risk.
It’s also not worth giving them attention to get started. While I mostly agree with the OP, I’d rather they just languish in obscurity for now. Come back to it if/when they become a problem.
Thanks for the reply. I’ve been side-eyeing instances that have open community creation due to how easy it is for bad actors to come and start shit, especially if instance admins aren’t constantly on top of things.
As other people in this thread have pointed out, if you allow Nazis to hang out in your bar for long enough, you become a Nazi bar. Given your instance’s stated rules against bigotry, I would advocate for proactive action in cases like this. Donald Trump is a champion of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia - all the things you don’t allow. I wouldn’t think you’d want a community that champions him as a dogwhistle for all of those things.
Have you considered disabling open community creation and having it be a function of your Agora discussion space?
Blocking open community creation is a mistake and that will be abused down the line. It’s also taking power away from users to make Lemmy their own.
First off, community creation is not the problem here. Anybody can make a community called the Donald, the problem are the people that will fill it. Those people are coming here regardless of what community they find themselves in. Blocking community creation doesn’t stop them, only actual monitoring of individual users will do it.
There really has to be a line here between combating this kind of toxic hateful bullshit and completely locking down a social media platform so that everything must be pre-scanned and approved before it sees the light of day. Pre-approving content means moderation controls the site directly and obliquely. Before users can even cast a vote, mods can unilaterally and silently strike it down.
I just generally don’t care for the overall notion that Lemmy needs to be carefully curated like a garden right out of the gate. Ban the obvious shit like the Donald but there has to be a fundamental acknowledgment that the users, the people, need to have the ability to make the space their own without some council pre-judging them.
Definitely better to just block the community in other instances instead of total defederation. Admins can do so pretty easily. I know beehaw is usually pretty proactive about this kind of stuff.
And yeah…fuck Donald Trump. He’s fucked up the US so hard and has put our country into such a mess. I hope they nail his ass straight to jail.
Seriously. Defederation should be a last resort against spammers and outright attacks on other instances, not because you dont agree with a single community.
Historically this group has been responsible for an absolute shitload of spam and outright attacks.
I was doxxed by them. They had links to a discord group that included my full name, address, email, and phone number. There was a whole list, it’s one of the first reasons they were quarantined. There was a comment that read “anyone with spare bullets can send them here”.
This is a lot more than “I simply don’t agree with that community”. They are trash who will trash up any platform they can reach.
Sounds like a great place to practice OPSEC. But sucks if you get doxxed for real. I hope you’re safe.
Defederation should be a last resort against spammers and outright attacks on other instances, not because you dont agree with a single community.
100% agree
Also, it should be noted that this ‘The_Donald’ community is literally just one user making posts.
I support defederatiom personally because it sends a stronger message from the community. Blocking the community is “I don’t want to see this.” Defederating is “we don’t want to see this.”
So, from what I’ve gathered, many consider the broad lesson learnt from various defederation dramas over on mastodon is that making a genuine attempt to voice concern with the instance admins prior to defederation is almost always the better way to go. It avoids drama and inconvenience while promoting a better ecosystem of cooperation between instance admins and their users.
Obviously at some point when there aren’t better options and users need to be protected, use defederation, that’s what it’s for.
But at this point, I’d try to talk or have our admins talk to the instance admin first.
Exactly, defederation is a nuclear option that affects everyone on both instances.
Yeah I guess it does put pressure on instance admins to remove the offending community from their instance. I am just not sure if we want to cross that line into penalizing everybody on an instance for simply being near a bad community though. I also think doing this kind of proactive censorship also forces these people into deeper echo chambers as they get more and more isolated.
Yeah I guess it does put pressure on instance admins to remove the offending community from their instance.
Yup. And that’s the point. Clean up your shit, or get cut off.
I am just not sure if we want to cross that line into penalizing everybody on an instance for simply being near a bad community though.
Yes, we do. We need to skip gayly over that line with laughter and mirth. It needs to be common decency to stamp that shit out at the roots. If a nazi starts showing up at parties, do NOT stay quiet about it. That’s how these hate groups worm their way in. Acceptance through ambivalence is absolutely a thing and they bank on it every time. “Oh, it’s just a nazi. Ignore him.” NO. Shout that fucker out of your community. Don’t let them get comfortable. Let them know that their shit will NOT be tolerated.
I also think doing this kind of proactive censorship also forces these people into deeper echo chambers as they get more and more isolated.
Good. Keeps them isolated and out of vulnerable youths ears. Let them echo til their little hearts explode. They aren’t welcome in decent society.
#MakeBigotryTabooAgain
While I understand where the sentiment is coming from and hate Trump with the passion of a thousand suns, I have never once found that to be a way forward in real life. It leads to the kind of divisive politics that we see in America today, where people draw these hardcore lines that divide us and as a result we don’t actually talk and figure out the root cause of our issues and instead seem content on screaming our side is better, our side is right.
Fascism is a disgusting thing, but there’s a socioeconomic reason why people in the US are getting radicalized towards it and we aren’t going to figure that out if we’re all busy generalizing that group as disgusting people. Just my two cents.
They lose their shit at the thought of federating with Facebook, but when it comes to nazis they pump the brakes. Shows peoples true colors.
No tolerance for intolerance, lest tolerance be destroyed completely. No quarter for hate.
Just blocking the community doesn’t prevent the users in that community from harassing minorities and generally spreading disinformation and hate. It’s offloading extra moderation work to every instance who federates with them. Unless that instance is also okay with fascists interacting in bad faith, of course.
It could be extra moderation work, but I think it’s a bad line to cross to assume everyone on an instance is guilty before they’ve actually done something bad.
Bad comments can come from anywhere though and mods still have to remove them.
No one is saying everyone in the instance is guilty; people are saying that the instance is going to become toxic to the point where it becomes hard to tell.
If you are in that instance and don’t want to tied to this rhetoric, talk to your admin about banning the Donald.
No one is saying everyone in the instance is guilty
Defederation is basically treating them like so. I mean, I get it, moderation is hard AF, but pre-emptive defederation when we haven’t even seen a ton of toxicity from sh.itjust.works yet is not a good precedent.
Yes! Hold the instance owners accountable for allowing that shit to fester and be rebroadcast.
Nine people dining at a table with a Nazi means you have ten Nazis.
Nine people dining at a table with a Nazi means you have ten Nazis.
This doesn’t make any sense.
One of my long time friends is a genuine racist. Am I a racist then too because I’m friends with him even though our views on this topic (and many others) differ quite dramatically?
Depends. Do you just keep your silence or do you call them out when they’re being shitty?
I agree that it depends. However such nuance was not included in the original statement. It was absolute
Oh, no, it is absolute: if you say and do nothing, then at best, you’re allowing the harm they cause to happen, and at worse reinforcing their behavior.
So yes, if you have racist friends and you sit silently then yes, you’re a racist supporter.
I just don’t get it.
Block the c/TheDonald community. That’s it. That’s all you need to do.
When it gets no visits, no views, and only it’s handful of users meme-ing each other, it’ll die. One of the big reasons TheDonald took off on Reddit was because of all the attention it got.
So, don’t give them attention. Don’t feed the trolls.
I’m not saying to tolerate neo-nazis. But running from them isn’t exactly a time proven strategy, either. They will exist, and it’s up to all of us to remind them that their views are garbage.
Exactly. I don’t feel obligated to read all the subs on an instance, I just read the ones I’m interested in.
I never knew that community existed since I don’t read All (too spammy) nor do I search for alt-right topics. No idea how OP found it unless they were simply looking for shit to stir up.
I’m guessing it’s as you suggested, they looked for a reason to be offended.
I don’t think I’ll ever see any content from it even though I don’t block it (not going to put in the effort to find it so in can block it). I have my subscriptions and largely stick to those.
So eh, I don’t really care. However, if the cause problems in places I frequent, I’ll report and block them.
deleted by creator
AFAIK, the community is now gone. The user was deemed in violation of the instance’s rules and banned from the instance. It wasn’t banned because the community name matched a troublesome community on Reddit, it was because of actual rule breakage.
And that’s how moderation should work imo, and that’s why I stick with that instance. I appreciate transparency and restraint. I like how the admin is giving up a lot of decision making to the community instead of deciding everything himself (see !agora@sh.itjust.works). The only intolerance I’ve seen has been from users responding to posts like these, and those users end up either deleting their accounts or getting banned (not sure which, I’m still learning about lemmy moderation).
In short, it isn’t a problem and it likely won’t be a problem. Don’t bail on a community because it takes a day or two to respond to an issue, bail because the admin isn’t resolving concerns at all. I’ve heard email signups are also live on sh.itjust.works, and I’m guessing 2FA will be an option soon as well (haven’t checked, I’ve been heads down working on lemmy-adjacent projects).
Taking swift actions to oppose neo-nazis being able to spread their ideology is not running from them. Quite the opposite. Anyways it’s banned now so this is all moot.
Defederating from an entire instance for one community seems a bit overblown tbh. Blocking would prob be effective enough. That said, beehaw will likely be most proactive in removing td nonsense from its feed
sh.itjust.works hosts it. They should kick them out.
As soon as they brake rules they absolutely should be banned.
Yeah, defederation isn’t an answer to this, or if it is, it’s an absolute last resort. First they have to do something wrong, then the instance should ban them, if they fail to act and the community is doing something wrong, then you talk about defederating.
Nah. Users need to ability to block entire instances. It’s crazy this is overlooked.
It’s not overblown. It’s sending a message to the admins of that instance.
Blocking the community itself is the smallest Band-Aid in the world. The kinds of users who join that instance for that community aren’t going to be quarantined to just that community.
its entirely overblown, the smallest band-aid in the the world is entirely appropriate for one user shitposting
Leave it to Redditors to be OK with everything turning into a Nazi bar.
Dude, it is one community with a whopping 9 subscribers and every single post is sitting at negative.
Y’all need to calm down.
Have you read the linked story? Because it stands exactly counter to what you are saying.
a better analogy is dropping the whole town the nazi bar is in
No it’s not that. Lots of us never interacted with that sub. Just block them no need to defederate a while instance
If the instance won’t kill the sub, the members of the sub will take over that instance.
I’m seeing some people testing the waters of some subs to see what they can get away with.
so because the donald was on reddit, the entire reddit community was taken over?
At the height of it, yes. It filled up the front page every single day and made the site absolutely reek.
It’s what made me stop browsing /r/all, drop off most default subs, and stick to only my subscribed subs. Brigading and spamming is the whole point.
It had a massive impact on the “culture” of the website and would have kept spreading quite effectively if the admins weren’t pressured to quarantine it for PR reasons.
I don’t give a shit what they do.
I can block them, just like every other community I don’t want in my timeline.
Hopefully at some point, if we see entire servers being a problem and not just the one community on that server,
we can have the ability to block the server in its entirety, even our server doesn’t decide to de-fed with them.
Ideally, kbin will allow us to decide for ourselves what servers/communities to block instead of deciding for us.
If you don’t like something, there is a block feature. It is good that the fediverse gains some diversity instead of staying an echochamber.
diversity shouldn’t include bigots
God please just stop with your whining. Just block them and be done with it. How self-centered can you be to demand defederation just bc you can’t deal with a political worldview thats different than yours? Screw you dude.
You’re probably going to have a bad time in the Fediverse if you’re hoping to avoid viewpoints you don’t agree with entirely. The best advice I can give you for now is to just block that community and move on with your life. As much as I hate TD and its members, the sh.itjust.works admin has the right to administer their instance however they want. If they end up with a sufficiently toxic total userbase where their users are causing problems on other instances to the point they are a net negative, they will end up being defederated by other more reasonable instances. Beehaw is being pretty aggressive with defederation for things like this, so if you’re looking for the safest of spaces in the Lemmyverse they really might be more your speed. Or you can start your own personal instance and defederate whoever you want 🤷
9 subscribers, 1 shitposter.
I’m not worried yetFYI you can block a community. And I’m not a fan of echo-chambers. Whether you like Donald or not, I believe that as long as the content is not illegal, users should just block that community if they don’t wish to see or amplify their posts. You’re merely reinforcing their belief that they’re being “persecuted” on the internet.
