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2y ago

r/The_Donald now on Lemmy (edit: not anymore)

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 :)

350 comments

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.
  
  Nah. Users need to ability to block entire instances. It's crazy this is overlooked.
  
  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.
  
  Hm, is it possible the community was already kicked by the instance? I don't find it.
- Leave it to Redditors to be OK with everything turning into a Nazi bar.
  
  No it's not that. Lots of us never interacted with that sub. Just block them no need to defederate a while instance
  
  Dude, it is one community with a whopping 9 subscribers and every single post is sitting at negative.
  Y'all need to calm down.
  
  a better analogy is dropping the whole town the nazi bar is in
  
  Yes, the vast universe of Lemmy is like a fucking bar lmao. Great analogy
- I don't think it is. R/The_Donald was a cancer on Reddit, spreading around and harming other communities. If an instance is willing to tolerate a community like that, I don't see the value of anything else in that instance.
  
  when i was a christian there was this story that would be told that went something like this:
  "one day a kid was caught by their parent doing something they knew they weren't supposed to do. it was just a small thing with no real consequences, but it was against the rules of the house and therefore the kid was being disobedient. when the parent confronted the kid about the behavior the kid argued that it was harmless and that it was ok. the parent, seeing an opportunity to teach the kid a lesson, said 'ok' and left. several hours later the parent called the kid into the kitchen where they'd made brownies. the parent offered the kid a brownie who readily accepted. as the kid reached for a brownie the parent stopped them and said 'oh, but first you should know, theres a small piece of cat poop in there, but it's ok, it's just a small piece and i put it in that corner over there'. the kid reeled in disgust and said they didn't want the brownies anymore. 'why?' the parent inquired, 'it's just a small piece and won't hurt anyone as long as they stay away from that small corner'. the kid, then realized the importance of obedience in every way."
  total bullshit story, but like all christian bullshit there's a kernel of truth in there. one small nazi ruins the whole batch of brownies.
  
  Welp, spin up an instance and block everything you dislike
- The problem isn't just that community, it's the people who follow. They're not the kind of people we should try to attract here.
  They're probably the same people who were active in fatpeoplehate and other malicious subs too, and it's better not to wait for them to establish themselves.
  If it doesn't get handled now, their toxicity will likely spill over into other communities, and once they realize they are safe, they'll start making other worse communities and become disproportionately engrained in the conversations.
  If a server isn't banning them (or at least making a strong statement/warning that nonsense won't be tolerated by the community here), then we should likely be considering whether that server is good for us anyway
  
  FWIW, I certainly don't support that shit even though I made that instance my "home", not knowing that one guy's cesspool even existed there.
  I chose that one because it's near me, hosted in a local datacenter, uses hydro power and has good performance.
  I will be glad to let my voice be heard when we discuss and vote about this troll's fate in the Agora over there (which feels very much like the polar opposite of that troll's bullshit).
  As far as I can tell it has no support from the instance's members.
  I think our admin was busy upgrading to 0.18 while this was posted, hopefully this gets addressed soon and I'm prepared to move on from there if it isn't.
  Having interacted with decent people there, I hope we'll sort this out.
- If they want that community on their instance I don't want to interact with their instance. I guess at this point I should just spin up my own instance and federate via whitelist.
  
  it's really easy, I spun up my own instance in a morning. Ok, I am a sysadmin and programmer, but it really wasn't very difficult and didn't require much beyond creating a VPS and DNS entry along with basic abilities at the command line to use the ansible playbook.
- 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.
  
  Users can block individuals and communities, but not instances. I think if we give users the power to block instances, then everyone has the tools they need to ignore the content they don't want to see. Blocking users is nice because they don't realize their being blocked and are less likely to get around it. It also has the added benefit of only blocking them for you, so nobody gets control over what others see.
  
  its entirely overblown, the smallest band-aid in the the world is entirely appropriate for one user shitposting
- I promise you lemmygrad will be faster because they don't play with kid gloves when it comes to "respectable" reactionaries.

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.
  
  Thank you
  
  Thank you for doing so. It is important that we keep what we have here and you doing that is a very important step to that.
  Admin management of instances is important.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  I think we can handle these things on a per case bases no? That is just adding another roadblock in having someone interact with the community. If it becomes a problem where someone spams these then yeah I can see the issue.
- 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.
- Ban, defederate, whatever, I don't mind the method – I do not want this server to have these "people" on our server and able to interact with/see us.

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.

OP may come across a little alarmist, but it's really easy for online communities to become Nazi bars if the admins aren't carefully weeding out the ne'er-do-wells. Especially in places with open signups. Taking a hands-off approach and simply hoping that everyone is going to be a mature adult and behave themselves is effectively voting to surrender the site to assholes.
And yeah, they follow "the rules", and free speech and all that, until they don't. The thing to keep in mind is that these are not folks who, as a community, are interested in engaging in good-faith discussion. They are looking for a platform to spread disinformation and troll the libz, and any platform that facilitates it is also complicit.
- Actively purging communities of reactionaries is pretty important and the hands-off attitude that some Free Speech Warriors inherited from Reddit advocate for is only going to spread reaction. If they care so much about Free Speech, they can go back to their pedophile website and talk about how r/jailbait needed to be kept up for the sake of free speech.

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.
- 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.
- It's currently a couple of users posting "liberal tears" memes. They're trolling, but (last time I checked) haven't posted anything that crosses the line.
  When they cross the line, zap em. Until then, don't give them the satisfaction.

Everyone keeps repeating that defederation should be a last resort. Fine, but we should also acknowledge that the list of resorts is very short:
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;
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
  
  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.

Have you looked at the content of that sub? There are a total of 3 posts about the twice-impeached, twice- indicted, single-term, sexual predator.
I was on Reddit when the_donald was spewing their bile and have no wish to see it duplicated on Lemmy or anywhere else. Even so, I think that any alarm at this point is extraordinarily premature.
- I disagree. Shit like this needs to be snuffed out in its infancy.
  
  Not arguing with that, but sounding an alarm about defederation when there are instant fixes to the issue is absurd.
  
  And just like that it appears that /c/thedonald is gone, which makes all the hand-wringing over it all the more ridiculous.

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.
- 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.
  
  Voat was about 50% fatpeoplehate, 35% T_D, and 15% 'free speech' enthusiasts. The 15% were quickly pushed out by the overwhelming amount of content generated by fatpeoplehate, but eventually they got tired of posting the same things over and over and only T_D was left.
  
  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.
- 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.

Wasn't The Donald originally a subreddit making fun of trump? I saw that TD was created here but my assumption was they wanted to restore the original purpose. I haven't looked at it since then though.
Edit: Nope. It is in fact a pro trump community.
- Trump was a joke until suddenly he wasn't.
  
  He's still a joke, just one that stopped being funny a long time ago.
  
  No, he's still a joke. It's just America is a joke too.
- At the very beginning, yes. The tricky thing with having fun pretending to be bigots is that you eventually find yourself surrounded by actual bigots who very much missed the fact that you were joking.
  
  “Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.”
  
  see also: gamersriseup
- Maybe for the first few weeks, then it stopped being a joke.
- theres a antifascist placeholder on https://lemmy.world/c/the_donald
  
  Friggin hilarious that one
  undefined
  
  This community exists solely to document Trumps crimes. If you support tr*mp. If you were a member of reddit’s biggest hate community, then you will cry. You. Are. Not. Welcome. Here. Fascism is a curse on this world. This is a safe space for those who oppose conservatives scum. support abortion rights. support trans rights. support women. support minorities. Destroy fascism. Destroy hate.
  Amazing sidebar
  
  I think that's the one I saw originally.

Nazis shouldn't be able to do what they want on their own instances either, they should be crushed there as they should in every space
But also blacklisting is a basic first step that everyone should do, so you aren't wrong there.
In defense of some instance admins, I think they can just literally not know because it's hard to keep tabs on every instance that gets made, but that also means that, if you use that instance, you should totally DM them to let them know (I've had to do this with certain other instances). If the admins persistently ignore those warnings, they should be treated as complicit.

Defederate their asses. Fascism is a cancer.
Anyone who's been on Reddit or Twitter knows what happens if you give those psychopaths an inch.
Deplatforming works. That's why the chuds whine about it.
- If three men sit at a table with a Nazi and don't protest, there are four Nazis at the table.

So this is a quick way to ruin the fediverse: Create a TheDonald community on the big instances.
- There's one on lemmy.world I believe, but it's not what you're expecting.
  
  I was kinda hoping it would just be dedicated solely to Donald Duck but I guess this is also fine, haha
  
  I was expecting a community about Donald Duck, but it is even better.
- No, why would it? The instance could simply enforce its moderation guidelines and block the community.
  
  It would ruin the Fediverse because, if this post is any indication, it takes nothing but a user shouting 'Nazi!' to get people ready to accept de-federation. Most users who are commenting appear to not have looked into the issue or viewed the community before giving their opinion. They're more than willing to buy the 'Nazi bad, de-federate' argument with zero evidence.
  If you look into the community that the OP is referring to... it is made up of a single user's posts and less than 30 comments across the entire community (most by the same user). None of the posts or comments in that community/by that user violates any rules on sh.itjust.works or kbin.
  There is no there there, as they say. This is a 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' tale. There's no wolf, there's no Nazi bar. One user created, one community and now we have a 200+ comment thread discussing de-federation. I cannot find any other word to describe the situation other than: kneejerk.

I'd imagine this is one of the many reasons why beehaw went ahead and defederated from sh.itjust.works. It's a bit TOO lenient over there in some ways.
- Nah. Beehaw just has an agenda to push. I'm glad they defederate though. I want nothing to do with those Nazis.
- Agreed. And Beehaw didn't say they were kicking any instance to the curb permanently. They're simply waiting on Lemmy to add more effective moderation tools, like the ability to defederate communities rather than entire instances, and for bot checks to become the norm.
  
  Users aren't tied to communities, but instances.
- Beehaw is more concerned about people to their left than to their right, and the endless agitation users did on lemmy.ml demonstrates that.

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 🤷
- hoping to avoid viewpoints you don’t agree with entirely
  the viewpoint "these immigrants need to be gunned down and trans people need to be eradicated" are not things i "dont agree with entirely" they are a vile evil toxin that cannot be tolerated.
  the sh.itjust.works admin has the right to administer their instance however they want yeah obviously, idk who is pretending otherwise?
  
  You have no room to talk, your instance bends over backwards to be a safe space for neoliberals who support unipolarity and the exploitation of the third world.
  "But some users disavow the US, etc."
  Yeah, but virtually all of them nonetheless parrot the State Department's talking points about its enemies. That token "both sides" bullshit only supports the status quo while undermining the possibility of a positive alternative.
  
  That's the great thing.
  SIJW admins are admining their instance how they choose. They choose to allow TD.
  Other instance admins can choose to admin their instance how they want.
  If they don't want TD, they can choose to not have any TD communities in their instance, and they can choose to defederate from any instances that choose to have TD communities.

I just preemptively blocked the community for my account. I'd recommend everyone do the same until, and if they prove to be a problem.
I think instead of calling for pre-blocks or defederation of entire instances, we have to be vigilant and keep a close eye on the discussions going on around us.
I'm saying this not because I'm an "enlightened centrist" living in a delusion of tolerance or a fascist in disguise. I am as left leaning, antifascist, and antiauthoritarian as they get. I'm just saying this as I know from experience that there's no real way to eliminate people with bigoted views from our communities other than on an individual basis.
Ban an entire instance, you'll still have to block the individuals if they come one by one to stir shit up on your turf. Just skip the first part and go for the individual communities and users. They will simply find each other and form groups, as instances or otherwise anyway.
I know it's not ideal, but there's no real way to prevent these fascist groups from forming anywhere there's a large enough number of people. We can only block our own interaction with them and form counter groups, and actively fight against their bigotry.
I believe this is the sad truth we all have to live with, at least for the time being, because I can't see defederation as an effective tool.
- This is a fantastic comment. Defederation just causes more problems, as counterintuitive as that seems.
  The threadiverse as a whole has a great number of smart, reasonable people. I would like to believe that we can build a system that allows us to flourish and them to simply exist.
  But if we can't then we always have the option
  
  What's the "more" when you defederate from problematic instances?
  It's cowardice if you ban hate speech from your platform but don't moderate the content coming from other instances that aren't up to your standard. It's having your cake and eating it too.
  It doesn't make sense that you don't trust your instance to moderate the content. Besides, isn't defederation public knowledge? So you can't just gaslight your instance's users willynilly, you'll be caught if you start defederating from pettiness.
  
  Why should they get a platform? Why should they be allowed "to simply exist"? Because the Marketplace of Ideas will sort itself out and make sure the best ideas "flourish"? I regret to inform you that the real world doesn't work like the thought experiments of classical liberalism, and TD's namesake is ironically a great demonstration of that.
  Reactionary spaces should be stamped out.
- @CynAq you don't have to defed entire instances, if the instance themselves are willing to keep to their own principles. If that's not kept or they've changed their position, it is actually Fedi culture to date, to defed (this is on instance to instance basis). Federation isn't being connected to everyone, it's practicing the right to associate. That's why if you don't agree with your instance, unlike closed systems, you have the right/freedom to move.
  (The problem is the moving so far only carries your social graph not post history. So yes there is a penalty - but this also incentivize users to also push their admins to act more representatively. Assuming that's what the majority wants)
  
  Anyway, what does then tend to shake out is that the bigger instances need to decide if it's open for all or not, and the social consequences of that, and more small to midsized instances émerge.
- Totally agreeing. I remember of my BBS and Usenet days and we're facing a somewhat similar situation: in a distributed architecture we will be dealing with unsavory individuals and communities. We definitely will.
  I was talking about this exact situation the other day with a reddit-migrant (net)friend of mine. We were debating on how and where to move the (somewhat important) France subreddit, as for now the most populated French community in the verse is hosted on an instance relaying lemmygrad - which raises some concern.
  Well, I talked to him about the UN. Sorry to get a bit pseudo-political here but I think you'll get the idea.
  The comparison I used is that while it is quite irritating (at the moment, but not only) that Russia is sitting at the security council, it is still a good thing that it is still a member of the UN. Because what matters in the end is that we all can discuss issues and overcome conflicts in order to keep on living all together.
  And here in the fediverse we don't even have to deal with a network-wide veto from any unsavory community. Worst case, they're sitting on their "local security council" - meaning they're ruling within their own node, but as a federation we don't have to comply if thing s get really ugly.
  However in the end what matters is the federation - the UN. When talking about server-to-server or server-to-federation conflicts defederation must be the last resort, because what really matters in the end is the federation surviving. Without it we're just powerless and will soon get back to some shady reddit clone à la squabbles.
  Now, to get back to these usenet days. If you remember those days we had newsgroups varying from gardening to politics, but wa also had some less civil newsgroups including cp and alike. Most of these "worst contenders" were only relayed by a few major nodes but still they made their way through Usenet because of its very distributed architecture.
  People not wanting to have any interaction with those newsgroups could either connect to a node ralaying them while not downloading their headers, or they could connect to a more "safe space" node. And on the other hand people who wished to interact with those newsgroups had to connect to anode relaying them, just as simple as that.
  I am convinced we're heading towards a similar architecture and situation. As the fediverse grows we definitely will encounter bad people and bad communities, and sometimes we will look as bad people or bad communities to others. This is my truth, tell me yours, that's the way it goes. And it's not really a big deal.
  I'm saying it's not a big deal because in the end, with a distributed architecture, the only censorship that really matters is yours. Your own filters, your choice of either connecting instance or followed communities and individuals. Due to its very nature, in a distributed architecture you are the one setting up your own barriers. Hardware and network distribution cannot and shall not do this part of the job for you, and server-to-server defed should only be the worst-case scenario in order - for instance not to relay (and mirror) cp, and for openly bot-friendly instances.
  Now mind you, am I saying there is no safe space? Well, to a certain extent. Just as in a centralized architecture each of us will make their own "nest" so to speak and will interact with the people and communities we choose. We can board a plane with a nazi without being "tainted" by its naziness and if it really unsettles us we can always ask for a separation curtain - as in, individual defederation. Those are already programmed and will be available in the next versions, allowing any user to just ignore some communities even if they are relayed by their instance.
  In a distributed architecture, we must all deal with this double-edged paradigm: We WILL encounter people and communities we don't like, but we do NOT HAVE TO suffer from them. Individual filters (and soon, individual defed) are here to help us establish our personal way of cherry-picking whatever this network has to offer.
  This is usenet on steroids. There is no premade safe space and it shouldn't be, because what matters in the end is the network and not its junk. In a distributed architecture it's mostly up to the end user to set their own junk filters.

I'm not informed enough on Trump to know if "Trump supporter" automatically implies "Nazi". The r/TD community itself was cancer, I believe. Still - for the sake of the argument, let's pretend that all Trump supporters are Nazi, and that the comm is about people genuinely supporting Trump.
The main problem here is that you got exactly two subscribers in a rather large instance. From the PoV of other instances, to defederalise shitjustworks is the same as using a nuclear bomb to get rid of a cockroach. At least at this stage, IMO actions in other instances should be towards that community and its users, not the whole instance.
And, within shitjustworks: if the admins have a laissez faire approach, I think that actions are up to the users.
Also I wouldn't generally link my own blog here, given that I use it mostly to vent, but this might be food for thought for the folks here. I think that analogies between ants in a kitchen and undesired users are specially useful: you don't want to nuke the kitchen because of a single ant, but you don't want to leave it do as it pleases either.
- If the admins have a laissez faire approach, then they can go fuck themselves. The difference between a nuke and defederation (well, there are many, but the main one here) is that defederation can be undone. If the admins don't like their instance being isolated, they can fix the problem by getting rid of the comm. If they are that committed to allowing the comm, then it is correct to keep them defederated.
  The one caveat I will give is that it would be incumbent on the other instances to follow through on overturning the blacklist -- and making sure their peer instances do -- if shitjustworks actually does comply eventually.
  
  If the admins have a laissez faire approach, then they can go fuck themselves.
  Note that, by laissez faire approach, I don't mean "do nothing at all"; that's incompetence, and incompetent admins go fuck themselves, as you said. For me, laissez faire means "keep a close watch on the situation, and intervene if necessary, but otherwise let the userbase handle it".
  And in this case you got a rather engaged community, who's most likely prone to engage those Nazi, and tell them to fuck off. Is admin intervention necessary in this case?
  I'm not sure if a laissez faire approach would be a good approach in this specific case, but it's generally a good "default" - often people managing communities cause more harm than good when they're trying to proactively solve issues that didn't appear yet.
  The difference between a nuke and defederation (well, there are many, but the main one here) is that defederation can be undone.
  That's a great point - the reversibility makes the option less drastic. Still annoying for legitimate users and admins of other instances.

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.

Mate just block it and move on. # You can't stop communities from being what they want to be. It will just form somewhere else. There's a fine line between keeping illegal stuff, harmful trolling and bots off the instance and just straight up policing free speech. At least there everyone knows where they are and can block them once.
I'd much rather that than play whackamole everytime the Donald pops up under a new banner.

If you go to your settings, you'll see "Blocks" at the top. There you can search "donald" on the right side and you can block all three that currently exist. I just found that out a few minutes ago.

The absolute hypocrisy of sh.itjust.works banning lemmygrad, a communist instance dedicated to the working people of the world and the antithesis of fascism, yet allowing the potential for fascists to find a community on their server.
- you can cry about this when the community in question defends genocide and racism as openly as lemmygrad lol
- "Tankies are the antithesis of fascism", top /c/shittankiessay material right there.

Perhaps cool down a bit. You can always block a community that you don't want to see. Taking the nuke out on a whole instance (which is btw. about to install full democracy), just because you dont like a fringe group on there? That's just not the purpose of the defed tool. -- And TD is definitely fringe there and constantly mocked. Sh.itjust.works buddies are making a sport of it, just going there and trying to get thrown out as quickly as possible. They did not break the rules yet so there was no reason to kick them off. If you want to start a discussion on the topic, you can do so at https://sh.itjust.works/c/agora

Maybe you should switch to beehaw. I think they align more with your interests
- Haha, you likely have a point. Judging from most of the whinging responses, a lot should consider joining beehaw.

... Stop fearmongering.
The_Donald, isn't on lemmy. It's here: https://patriots.win/
After reddit booted them, they built their own reddit. I am pretty sure, they aren't interested in moving here, as that would ruin their echo-chamber.
Defederation is not the solution to your problem. sh.itjust.works is one of the larger lemmy instances, hosting lots of users, and lots of content.
The best solution for you, if you don't want to see https://sh.itjust.works/c/thedonald is to block the community. (Or the ONE USER who posts stuff in it)
You cannot defederate every instance, that hosts a community which you do not agree with or like.
(Also- unrelated- c/thedonald isn't going places.... after it breaks the fediverse record of negative downvotes, it will prob disappear soon......)
- @xtremeownage Downvotes do nothing here to trigger deletion or admin action.
  
  I know, but eventually, the user posting that content should figure out- it's not going anywhere...
  Unless- there are users actively subscribing to that community.
- @Tsinc@feddit.de Care to share your viewpoint?
  
  They might have a main community on patriots.win, that doesn't mean they wont try to spread their ideology into other social media. I don't think TD on sh.it.just.works will be successfull, but I hoped for a wider agreement here, that racism should not be activly shared. I can block them, I can move to another instance, but what i really want is to minimize the range of this and future extreme-right communities in the lemmyverse.
  I think we have the amazing new tool of a federated space to build really nice communities. Why dont we use it? The admins of sh.itjust.works have the choice. If they are in favour of nazis, we better not wait longer until they are even bigger and more difficult to defederate.
  You cannot defederate every instance, that hosts a community which you do not agree with or like.
  sounds to me like it's my problem to not like nazis
- Defederation may be the only solution to the problem without changing the source code to allow for better administration tools.
  
  Defederation may be the only solution to the problem without changing the source code to allow for better administration tools.
  Do note, posts from that community, will ONLY federate to your instance, if somebody is actively subscribed to it.
  If nobody is subscribed to that community, then posts from that community WILL NOT flow to your instance.
- You can and should defederate from things you don't want to see. That's the whole point of the entire project, that you can control your experience and choose to interact with whatever communities you wish. The Donald has a history of brigading and generally being a barbarian horde of racist dickheads, so defederating from them makes absolute sense. This isn't just "I don't like your opinion", it's absolutely "these people have a proven history of ruining every group they go near."
  
  https://sh.itjust.works/ isn't just c/thedonald.
  Reddit, wasn't just r/thedonald.
  c/thedonald, is a SINGLE USER on an entire instance.
  
  Defederating the entire instance, to block the content of a single user, ONLY HURTS the thousands of users on that server, who want to see content elsewhere, and ONLY HURTS the users elsewhere, who want to see content on THAT server.
  
  Absolutely! Defederation is the prime weapon against these choad warriors.
  Fuck fascists, and fuck any instance which would host them!

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.

I hope that newcomers to the fediverse come to understand that defederation is a feature, not a bug.

Users definitely need the ability to block entire instances themselves. That way we don't have to rely on others to do it for us or potentially block content we may want to see.

Currently blocking everyone that downvotes this post, wish me luck!
- Thanks for doing me the favor. Since I will get blocked shortly let me just say before I go, Donald Trump is the biggest piece of shit ever elected. He is a national embarrassment and you all look like fucking sheep following him as he steals your money and makes fun of you! Peace out dumb asses!
- Careful, some people might be downvoting because they don't want the community to get attention
  
  True, and I thought of that as well, but I'll just have to take the chance that 1 of those 16 people is like you said because I don't want to have anything to do with the other 15
- Where is that info available?
  
  If you're on kbin hover over "more" below your comment, click activity and then look at "reduces" which are the downvotes. I'm unsure how to do it on lemmy though I will have to look.
  Edit: same works on posts (all posts not just yours)
- Took me a while :-)

Well that's unfortunate.

FYI 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.
- I think conspiracy theorists and nazis should feel persecuted.
  I don't think the answer is to give them a platform as if their ideas are somehow valid or worth discussing. To treat those ideas as equal to others is to elevate them.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  We have to be intolerant of intolerance. The paradox of tolerance is a great read.
  
  That's fine, but understand you don't speak for everyone. That's why individually blocking users and instances is the right move. Falling down the path of dictating what others get to see is tyranny. Users should have the option to block entire instances as well.
- It's good to be able to block a community. Unfortunately, some children think they should get to dictate what others want to see. It's also bad that users don't have the ability to block entire instances.
  
  Blocking indivuals, communities, and instances is helpful for the individual, but it does not deal with the root of the problem. Allowing a space for bigotry to grow.
  This isn't the same as people wanting to block your favorite hobby or something. I don't think it's a good thing to provide a space for bigots to share their ideas.

Well I think that is strength of Lemmy, everyone can have space on their own without anyone shutting them down, of course if crimes are commited this is a question for law authorities. If you don't want to see their content, you can either defederate or block their community.
I really don't understand this thinking that you cannot tolerate people with different opinion than yours to exist on the internet. Again if they break any laws, you can report it to authorities.
- Everybody likes to preach tolerance to all, until they run into somebody who’s actually different from them
  
  The Paradox of Tolerance as defined by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies:
  Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
- Wild how the government can dictate what is bannable but users can't

I don't get how this whole federated thing works, but as soon as I'm able to figure out how, I'll be blocking that group.
I recently got suspended from Reddit for three days for telling one of these knuckle-dragging creeps that if Jews COULD replace his kind, I'd be all for it, and anything would be a step up, including a fetid clump of wet algae. I had deleted the rant in a haze of sobriety and good judgment, but Spez probably put it back up, as he's been doing with so many other comments, and that's likely how I got stung.
Fine, you horse-teethed, lemur-eyed, slave labor exploiting numbnuts, we can do things that way. Once I have access to it again, I'll just delete my Reddit account. I'm not even fucking around with social networks intent on giving me the hot beef injection until I'm bleeding from the rectum. I'm here to enjoy myself, not get abused. I'll take my account and burn it all down with a flick of a match and my middle finger. Don't push me, punk! I shot my Neopet just to watch it die!

Admins can remove single remote communities instead of having to defederate the whole instance completely.
- This seems like a good compromise; defederation is an extreme step and ought to mostly be reserved for behavior that threatens the whole network (rampant spambots e.g.).
- How does that work, exactly? I though defederation at the instance level was the only real tool.
  
  If you're an admin you can visit any remote community and click on "remove". You can even remote comments or posts from being visible to users of your instance. It's not ideal because it's on a case by case basis instead of it being an instance-wide silence which is often a better solution that doesn't require you to hunt down remote instances and remove them manually while it also doesn't break federation.

9 subscribers, 1 shitposter.
I'm not worried yet

I think this type of posts will have an opposite impact to what we want, we are just giving it the attention it needs to become what it was on Reddit, my recommendation? Block it immediately.
- Doing nothing and hope that not many will find them? No, spotlight on them. The instance has to act.
  
  I understand, there's many people that want nothing to do with a community like that, me included, but ultimately it will being attention to it, because some sympathize with these points of view. Hopefully the admins of shitjustworks take measures to make sure there's no racism on their instance.
- I had no idea it existed so I went ahead and subscribed. I like to get my news from across the spectrum.

Just downvote them if you see them. On reddit they abused certain features to get to the front page and once that method of manipulation was killed by reddit you rarely saw their posts.

Is the community gone now?
- no, https://sh.itjust.works/c/thedonald
  
  90% posts from the same account. Hardly a community.
  
  That was easy to block :)
  Thanks for that.
  But, being real, this post also makes it very easy to discover it exists. That increases the chances of it getting enough users to cause trouble.
  Kinda sticky in that regard. I'd have gone with a nice message to admins myself.

There are actually moderated instances that have similar views as yours, you should look at beehaw.org. No reason for you to be exposed to the content you are sensitive to if you don't want to. This is the beauty of lemmy in my opinion
- Great point! I think beehaw is a wonderful place for those who want others to dictate what they see. This solves the problem for everyone, except those who are going out of their way to push an agenda on others.

I'm pretty far left leaning, and I honestly hope the last part of Trump's life is spent in jail, but the fact is that a giant hunk of the US population is pro-Trump, and it seems insane to me to say that those people shouldn't be allowed a place to talk about their candidate as long as no other rules are broken. I'll just block the community and move on.

Antifa members have commited actual crimes, including some that costed lives, and supported those who did so. They use terror tactics on a regular basis coercing and silencing others. Even though I think their behavior is more fascistic than any current far right organization, I don't think they should be banned or silenced. In any case, I don't expect them to be banned here in any shape or form because they support and enforce the message currently approved by every major public institution and corporation.

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.
- Bigotry loses you diversity. You eventually lose all the people who don't want to be around people dehumanising them.
  So you trade off all the diverse opinions and experiences of those people, in exchange for... what exactly?
- diversity shouldn't include bigots
- Bigoted extremists that spread disinformation aren't contributing towards diversity.
- Hate speech stands opposite of diversity.
- In general, I agree. Diversity is a good thing, and I tend to prefer giving users tools for self-moderation rather than seeing instance admins use a blunt instrument like defederation which will inevitably have spillover consequences for communities that aren't even associated with TheDonald.
  HOWEVER, this is still a good debate to have. The issue shouldn't be "allow all federation" vs "allow no federation" at the instance level, but rather "where do we draw the line?" Too lax and you've got child porn, hate speech, and weaponized disinformation. Too strict and you stifle free speech. I think we can all agree that a middle ground is the goal. So where is the line in this case?
  Political communities? Great! Bring 'em on. We need an open "marketplace of ideas." But you can have a political debate without devolving into hate speech, provably false disinformation, calls to lynch politicians, and doxing. It doesn't matter if they're coming from the left or the right, death threats are not okay. That's not a political statement. It's just a fact. TheDonald has a long and sordid history on Reddit, and I doubt very much that it's even capable of staying on the right side of that line. But we should judge their Lemmy community by their moderation policy, not their history on another platform. Do they regularly allow hate speech? Death threats? Provably false disinformation? If so, that's exactly why defederation exists. Yes, there might be spillover consequences for the other communities on that instance, but if the instance mods don't have a problem with hate speech in their communities then it is an instance-wide problem that should be addressed at the instance level.
  So far they're tiny and haven't done anything one way or the other. I don't think anyone should kick them out just for existing. But I do think we should talk about our community-wide lines in the sand, and then hold instances we federate with to those standards. Including TheDonald.
- The meaning of Diversity certainly does NOT include "tolerating the intolerant".
  These mouth-breathing worse-than-deadweights worship a grotesque wanna-be dictator who wipes the orange shit on his ass with any and every ideal of law and order, who incites violence to feed the endless void of his self-loathing.
  They target minorities for harassment and violence.
  They stormed the Capitol, with kidnapping and murder on their tiny insane minds, because they didn't like the results of an election they lost in a landslide.
  They attempt to exploit the flexibility of free speech and democracy, to subvert and corrode it.
  These sick people don't deserve a space ANYWHERE.
- I clicked the link so I could block it, it went to a 404. The system works!

Okay, if The Donald is welcome here, and people are just coping by blocking, how about r/watchpeopledie?
Personally I detest Drumph and his Nascar possum farmer fans, but I loved seeing people eaten by escalators. If Lemmy's cool with the one, I'm recreating the other. I mean why not.
I'd happily live without the joy of gore, if it meant that flat earthers and conspiracy theorists weren't welcome either. But if the one is fine, then the other should be too.
- I have no problem with people who like gore. They usually keep their interests to their community.
  But I don't want the fedeverse I'm in to become a Nazi bar.

Feel free to leave and go back to Reddit. You don't get to decide what any other user here interacts with.

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