I note that lemmy.cafe is one of the only instances I’ve ever heard of that is brave enough to defederate from all three of the largest tankie instances, despite the main devs of the Lemmy software also being the admins of some of those.
A complete cutoff of all communication between instances (servers). Theoretically should only be used as a last resort, where the instance admins refuse to moderate their userbase, but in practice there seem to be several instances that contribute mainly negative (i.e. trolling) content to the rest of the Fediverse, in which case losing everything from them - all the good but also all the bad too - becomes worth it.
See also the “Nazi bar” effect: YOU may not be a Nazi, nor any of your friends, and you may meet separately like a quiet corner or back room, but if you hang out in a bar that becomes known for being friendly to Nazis, then anyone you invite to join you at the bar is likely to deny your request. The possibility of goodness of conversations with you in that case gets outweighed by the likelihood of bad interactions with the Nazis that they would have to pass by on their way to you.
Although in the case of Lemmy, it is not Alt-Right Nazis, but Alt-Left tankies, at hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and to a lesser but still very significant degree lemmy.ml.
What does defederating mean?
A complete cutoff of all communication between instances (servers). Theoretically should only be used as a last resort, where the instance admins refuse to moderate their userbase, but in practice there seem to be several instances that contribute mainly negative (i.e. trolling) content to the rest of the Fediverse, in which case losing everything from them - all the good but also all the bad too - becomes worth it.
See also the “Nazi bar” effect: YOU may not be a Nazi, nor any of your friends, and you may meet separately like a quiet corner or back room, but if you hang out in a bar that becomes known for being friendly to Nazis, then anyone you invite to join you at the bar is likely to deny your request. The possibility of goodness of conversations with you in that case gets outweighed by the likelihood of bad interactions with the Nazis that they would have to pass by on their way to you.
Although in the case of Lemmy, it is not Alt-Right Nazis, but Alt-Left tankies, at hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and to a lesser but still very significant degree lemmy.ml.