Allow a community to ban an instance

[ShadowJonathan]

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Describe the feature request below

Sometimes it is that a particular community (Such as LGBTQ+ or other hot topics) will attract a particular kind of user to harass them, and while instance admins might object to banning them to the whole instance, community moderators might want to stem the flow of users from that instance, and ban those users from that specific community.

[krestenlaust]

I believe this would introduce a weird dynamic, with the main effect of fragmenting the fediverse further and creating echo chambers. How would it even work, would it be like a shadow ban?

The same way that the opinion of a community might not align with its instance (like in the example you provided), the opposite can be true as well. A user can be a member of an instance without being affiliated with its communities. An instance isn't meant to attract one type of person, that's the purpose of a community. Consequently, the notion of communities banning other communities seems impractical within the architecture of Lemmy, as my understanding is that individuals are not considered 'users' of a community, but rather subscribers.

In my opinion, this responsibility seems more suited to a moderator bot rather than being a backend function.

(P.s. I would like to clarify that I'm not a spokesperson of lemmy)

[ShadowJonathan]

I believe this would introduce a weird dynamic, with the main effect of fragmenting the fediverse further and creating echo chambers.

FWIW ive heard this same opinion over Mastodon's fediblock feature, and as a moderator of one of the bigger instances i can say that it absolutely fulfils a vital purpose in social terms; segregating harmful actors from a wider community.

Echo chambers are formed when everyone segregates themselves from these actors, and the difference between conventional echo chambers and the fediverse is that there is not a total exclusion, even with the most vile nazi instances, because there'll always be a spectrum of ideological differences between instances and their users, which create a tapestry, which then allow those users to get through at least some information (albeit filtered) from outside of their bubble, which is already way better than either total polarisation or total segregation.

[servoparmi]

Unfortunately I think the idea that a user can be banned from the whole fediverse by their home instance without easy migration tools currently imposes a high cost to a user in selecting the wrong home instance. Therefore users will eventually self-select to build their long-term accounts on instances that are unlikely to ban them for their activities around the fediverse. Therefore an instance will, over time, gradually gain a reputation for allowing a certain type of participation without banning the users.

If you don't want instances to gain userbase reputations, then there MUST be easy migration tools so a banned user can migrate to an alternate server and pay a lower cost in time/effort from picking the "wrong" instance, keeping the residency of their user profiles a little more transient and the policing activity centred solely within communities and the style of participation seen therein, as the posters above me have stated the concept is supposed to operate.

[ShadowJonathan]

Is there an Lemmy issue which talks about migration, btw?

[Nothing4You]

kinda #506

[krestenlaust]

FWIW ive heard this same opinion over Mastodon's fediblock feature, and as a moderator of one of the bigger instances i can say that it absolutely fulfils a vital purpose in social terms; segregating harmful actors from a wider community.

The difference I see, is that Mastodon doesn't have communities, they only have users. As I see it, the fediblock feature is equivalent to the current instance blocking feature. Communities don't possess the same administrative abilities as an instance, because it's merely a thread with moderators attached to it. Implementing additional abilities would complicate the concept and the bureaucrazy of an instance.

Furthermore, as @servoparmi mentioned, joining a fediverse media is very difficult already. One of the main usability freedoms is that the user doesn't need to worry about choosing a correct instance, they can just join one and get started. The instance blocking feature is already in violation of this, but it was deemed necessary. Implementing such a feature for communities would be yet another stretch.

Echo chambers are formed when everyone segregates themselves from these actors, and the difference between conventional echo chambers and the fediverse is that there is not a total exclusion, even with the most vile nazi instances, because there'll always be a spectrum of ideological differences between instances and their users

We should probably strive to keep this discussion technical and relevant, (I am aware that I was the one who started the echo chamber discussion)

[dessalines]

Instance blocking is at the admin (and now the person) level. I don't think it needs yet another level and layer of complication. I'll re-open if someone wants to work on this tho.