Interesting points. I think you managed to articulate a POV I hadn’t considered.

I think you make a good point regarding polarization. However, from my prior experience with extremists in particular, I cannot bring myself to give them the time of day. It is true that this amplifies polarization, but there is only so much time and energy I can spend dealing with such folks. Believe me, I have an ex-friend who was (probably still is) a neo-nazi, and the years I’ve kept them around felt like a waste of my time, and a drain on my spirit, despite attempts to be understanding.

I don’t believe that it’ll be a slippery slope in users calling for increasing amounts of instances to be defederated, either. It’s not difficult to draw a line against extremists, and I think users can understand that.

At the end of the day I respect your viewpoint, but I may have to leave this instance if no action is taken because I simply do not have the mental energy to deal with extremist content, even if it’s not an immediate problem. Thanks for engaging with my questions anyway, though!

I can see why you’d think that, and I’m also not one for knee-jerk reactions. I’ve moderated communities in the past where the rules insisted that heavy discussions and politics were to be taken elsewhere.

However, I think it’s quite telling seeing how other instances have blocked them already, and, if you put exploding-heads into the search bar, there’s quite a number of anecdotes of the damage they’re causing. It’s only a matter of time before they get here, and the damage may be subtle and insidious at first. :/

I’ll put my opinions aside. Out of curiosity, what makes you think blocking is such an “absolute last resort” that it seems like too drastic an action? I don’t really understand what value exploding-heads brings to us, and if it’s truly, somehow, the wrong move (personally doubtful), we can always re-federate. I think prioritizing the comfort and safety of users who actually use mander.xyz is more important, since they’re the ones contributing content to the instance.

Refreshing doesn’t help for me, BTW. Still see the same issue on my end.

Chipping in to say I support defederation from exploding-heads. I don’t consider myself someone who likes to go knee deep into what’s considered “politics” either, but allowing known bad-faith actors to discuss anything is not a good idea, from my experience. Conversations go off the rails quickly. Especially when such actors discriminate against marginalized groups (as unfortunately politicized as they are in recent times).

On that note, I can’t seem to block the following communities? Not sure if the buttons are broken, but it only allows me to highlight text.