22
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
22 points (89.3% liked)
Fediverse
40658 readers
64 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I've noticed this too and have been following the conversation. However, I think self-isolation isn't the answer. Allowing r/The_Donald to go private didn't stop the far right.
What works is challenging these people, constantly. Mockery, abuse, whatever it takes. But building up echo-chambers, or allowing echo-chambers isn't the solution.
its not really an echo chamber, lemmy unlike reddit is decentralised, so nothing is stopping a dbzero user from just making an account on feddit.org and interacting with them, in reddit if the admins decide to ban a community that community is just gone.
also having an echochambers isnt bad, like an instance like blahaj should be allowed to exist and not federate with instances that have a lax policy on transphobia, and thanks to lemmy's decentralised nature you can join or make an instance that does have wide federation
Just because lemmy is decentralized doesn't mean it doesn't for echochambers. I mean look at ml. Or look at what squid did as a moderator to worldnews and political memes.
Echo chambers are absolutely a thing on lemmy. They exist at different scales (instance, sub, individual) but they absolutely exist.
Idk if it's building echo chambers in this case or just wanting to get away from a toxic admin.
See the comments and actively of them before the vote and then as it was happening
Plenty have alleged that db0 admins are toxic. I don't think that but plenty have. See the ptb sub.
People throw around all kinds of slanderous language all the time: it's the internet, our accent is hyperbole. It's fine.
The bigger issue that I see here is the cultural tendency to not want your viewpoint challenged, and that's coming from both sides on this one. It's also an issue on ml and hexbear; and those instances will throw the same accusations right back in the face of the broader fediverse, and not be wrong.
Every defederation hurts the fediverse, and substantially. The issues that came up in 23' between .world and .ml, things like that destroy these kinds of projects. Defederation also doesn't change the minds of those who are on feddit, and for the db0, and versus vice. If you think someone is wrong, you should tell them so, and you need to be able to tell them.
I think it's the wrong move. I think defederation is always the wrong move. It's more important to fight about important things than it is to be comfortable right now. If db0 users think feddit is a bunch of fascist Zionists, then get into the comments and call them out. Don't just let them comfortably be Zionists while you ignore the problem. And the same applies to feddit. If they've got the right of it, take the fight and defend your points.
But defederation is a lazy and community damaging move, not just to db0, but to the entire project. Defederation is how Lemmy dies.
No. Having instances with varying approaches to defederation is good for the fediverse. Having no defederation is how you end up with nostr.
Hard disagree, and thats thoroughly evidenced by the usership and engagement numbers.
The numbers of fediverse users have more to do with onboarding, VC funding for marketing and the inherent nature of federation itself than it has to do with defederation policies
Social networks thrive because they are networks. De-federation collapses the network. Its not more complicated than that.
Less content, less interactions, less engagement.
If my instance didn't defederate hexbear I wouldn't be on the fediverse at all.
What makes it different from just blocking the instance at user-level?
Defederating also blocks the users on Lemmy. Instance blocking at the user level just blocks the communities in Lemmy, you have to block each user individually.
It makes it so I don't have to individually block the myriad trolls that emanate from that cesspool. I was seriously a couple pig shit images from never opening this site again.
I think defederation only really makes sense if there is a concern of botting. Individual bad actors should be banned on a case by case basis, blanket banning seems shortsighted. However, I do believe there are bots on some instances now, compared to say a year ago where I believe they were more far and few between.
Part of my issue is also with bad actors “flooding the zone”. If enough noise is getting pushed constantly by bad actors/bots, it can sway public opinion just by virtue of people seeing those opinions more often. This was one of the things that killed Reddit for me, personally. Well that and a slew of other issues.
This is what I agree with. Regardless, I think almost the entire thread would agree that the fediverse/ lemmy is not fully cooked when it comes to the issue of federation.
Building an echo chamber isn't something done intentionally. Well... Sometimes it is.
It's most often created by avoiding people you find annoying, toxic, etc. As long as you keep up that reasoning you eventually only interact with people who mostly agree with you. You're blinding yourself to counter opinions. The definition of an echo chamber.
This is only the case if you're annoyed by people disagreeing with you. That's what makes echo chambers.
You’re right, we should continue listening to the opinions of fascists and Lolita Express passengers until the end of time, otherwise we’ll be blindly bumping into furniture in our echo chamber.
I think you misread my comment. I agree that we shouldn't let the fascists speak. I'm arguing against the comment above that says blocking fascists is a slippery slope to blocking everyone.
Oh my bad
First: your comment appears to be a reply to them not me. I think that's where the confusion came from.
Second: You seem to be conflating listening to ideas with supporting them.
Third: Blocking places with bad ideas doesn't silence the people there or eliminate their ideas. It contributes to their isolation and echo chamber. Often more then yours. You in fact end up helping make them worse. Which of course is worse for everyone.
When avoiding ideas or being challenged yes. When avoiding abuse no
The former often feels like the later.
Even more so when you're not used to it.
I mean, allowing echo chambers doesnt really seem avoidable on fedi tho? Like, only one side has to defederate to break two way communication, so if someone wants to avoid you, you cant really stop them, and the whole concept of moderation in a decentralized system relies on each instance being able to selectively view or block content from other instances based on the values of that instance. You cant really say "what works is challenging people" if the people you want to challenge have an "ignore" button for when you get too loud for their taste.
I mean it is. Look at .ml versus . world versus say.. hexbear.
Banning, defederation,anything to de-voice people: it's constantly being used to create local echo chambers. And it's not like we don't have a down vote button. We have a way to do "no" to content. But banning or defederation is saying "I don't think you should be able to form an opinion on this content". It's very different.
I've been banned from communities merely for downvoting posts in them. Such behavior is toxic (on the part of the community's mods, not me), but that doesn't stop it from happening.
💯 . As a project we've got some governance things to figure out.
What’s toxic is downvoting everything in a community you don’t like instead of curating your feed. It’s vote spam.
Maybe Im not saying this right: Im wasnt arguing for the virtues of echo chambers with that, Im saying, with how fedi is designed, there is no means to prevent someone that wants to make an echo chamber from doing so, so suggesting that one should not allow an echo chamber to exist is a fool's errand. In a more general sense, it seems to me that, either you let people decide what kind of content to see, in which case many if not most will naturally create echo chambers simply because they dont want to see views too different from their own, or you have some means to force people to see stuff they dont want to, which requires some difficult-to-escape authority have power over their media feed and as such is incompatible with decentralized federation (and of course risks that authority pushing everyone into their echo chamber). Both of those things lead to serious issues in my view, so its a bit of a "pick your poison" situation when it comes to social media design. Beyond that though, it does have to be acknowledged that there is simply more content, more messages and people wanting to spread their word, out there than any given person has the time or attention or mental capacity to process. That means that some system must exist that determines what fraction of it all you actually see (even if its just as simple as "the things most recently posted on a given platform when you looked at it"). I can see no way to do this that doesnt introduce biases.
ah gotcha. Now I understand.
I agree in principal but not in part. I do think its possible to set up echo chambers in the fediverse, and while its not impossible to break out of them, its definitely not convenient.
I agree entirely that its a design/ conceptual issue. I've long argued that the fediverse in its current format is very clearly a "1.0" conception.
The idealist, liberal myth of the “marketplace of ideas,” in the face of domestic and Israeli fascism.
Socialists—and in particular antifascists & Marxists—understand the paradox of tolerance.
Antifa: the Anti-fascist Handbook
You can't change the mind of someone you don't have access to.
Does no one here understand the younger generations access to ideas? I think the idea that every one claims of creating echo chambers is not an effective one. The law of diminishing returns (as a business term) states that all else held equal an increase in production( or the free debate or posting of opinions) will not produce more profit after a certain point ( or the changing of others opinions) . When it comes to people posting and espousing for state sponsored genocide I think we have hit the top of that curve. If you stop the flow of that information you are not creating echo chambers but more effectively stopping the spread of bullshit and hate. They have Xhitter. Fucking ban this genocidal shit every chance you get, either foundationally or personally. I dont get a whiff of this on shitjust works because I dont engage with it.
Feels an awful lot like "won't somebody think of the children?"
All that means is you've closed your eyes to the world around you. It doesn't mean that the world has changed. Avoidance doesn't help. It actually makes things worse because you cede the moral and intellectual territory.
Alternatively, you can actually take the fight to people instead of hiding from problems. And as far as what the younger generation sees, if you aren't providing arguments against fascism, against zionism, who is going to win that mind?
Its not won't somebody think of the children... Its get this shit out of their face. Block it. Thats the beauty of the fediverse.
The initial point was that younger generations feed off engagements. You block the conversation and it doesn't exist. Its not a matter of closing your eyes to the world. Its closing the gates to the exact statement I made. Does no one understand how the younger generation get the information? Engagement. Was the answer. Failure to allow a platform will stop the spread of the misinformation in the first place.
'Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference'.
E: these people and often misinformation machines are not trying to have a discourse. They are planting propaganda. ie. The qoute above. Stop the shit in your home. End the spread by denying a platform.
E2: I mean. I get what your saying on an institutional level, but fuck that this is a social media instance argument so. My first edit stands.
People love to criticize the marketplace of ideas and sure it's imperfect... but what's he alternative? Covering your ears and going lalalalala is even less effective than persuasion.
Some of the options can’t be discussed on lemmy.world because of rule 1.
I'm sad at how selectively they use that rule
Did you know that it’s illegal for you to say,
“I want to kill the president of the United States of America?”
Well I don't think that's very effective either but if we can't have a discussion then we'll just have to disagree.