Happy News Years Everyone!

A few days ago I reached out to the the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla, about the possibility of joining them as a member instance. I feel this would be a great fit for our community, especially as we are starting to grow in terms of users and are in need of some more structure. I'm especially excited about having some formalised rules to help avoid any issues with 'vibes' based moderation.

One aspect of this change would be opening up the instance to federation with a wider range of instances. I understand this may not be ideal for all members, which is why you're asked to vote and share your opinion.

Luckily we're on PieFed now and that includes working blocks and bans for instances, communities, and users. I feel this change would allow more personal freedom in tailoring your experience to your needs. _I plan to write up a guide on how to do so, to help inform everyone of their options. _

What’s the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla and isn’t it a bit of a mouthful?

Yes it is, let’s call it FAF for short. Lol.

For the full deets of what that means exactly, check out db0’s original post on the topic Announcing anarchist.nexus and the launch of the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla.

But in short, it means:

• Same rules - Quokk.au will adopt AN / dbzer0 ’s existing rules and policies.
• Same staff - We’ll have common Matrix rooms for admin discussions and user appeals, and provide mutual aid to other instances as required (e.g. if someone needs a break).
• Common governance - Likewise, we will share a common federation/defederation list and ban-list. Notably for us that also means enabling federation with places like Hexbear.net and Feddit.org, unless as a flotilla we decide that this should change.

Fire away if anyone has any questions, but make sure you read the FAF announcement post first, because it explains a lot!

Voting instructions
We are using PieFed's Polling feature, this is open to all members of the instance. If you are from outside the instance, please feel free to leave a comment as your voices are welcome.

You can read dbzer0's announcement/voting post over here.

I have mixed feelings about this and as such can only vote for the status quo which is "no".

On the positive side is "rules and policies". More comprehensive policies is good for any platform. Things inevitably go wrong and having policies and procedures to refer to at that time is invaluable. Writing good policies is incredibly difficult, takes a lot of time, effort, debate, iteration et cetera.

Also positive is my pet theory that the fediverse will fracture once it achieves enough users to be a significant target for misinformation. You can't federate with bad actors. Establishing relationships with other instances is a healthy endeavor.

There are several items on the "not sure" side.

Firstly by "same staff" I think you mean, "better supported staff" or something? As in present admins will still be admins, no new admins, just that you'll have the support of your peers from other instances. This might be in the form of advice, or more direct assistance if or when required (I'd prefer not to call it mutual aid). That's my understanding of the proposal anyway. Only you can decide how useful the direct assistance would be, and it seems weird to me that you'd have to "join the FAF" to simply engage with the other admins in a collegiate kind of way.

Secondly "governance" is a nebulous term that I'm not sure is the right choice here. If we're really only talking about ban lists, I have complex feelings about that. I don't see any benefit in an instance forgoing the ability to determine which instances it federates with. If an instance receives information from other admins about users or instances which have been banned that's great, but I don't see the benefit in having to implement the same restricted list as a bloc. I'll acknowledge that there's an ideology underlying this which I don't understand and don't subscribe to.

There's more I could add but I'll leave it there in order to be brief.

In summary, we could receive all the benefits by simply copying their policies, then we don't forego the ability to determine our own federation list.

I know I'm pretty new here, but please, No. As a user, I don't see any upside in tying this instance to dbzer0's drama. Especially with their hard pro-AI stance.

I also see no upside to federating with known trolls like hexbear. But that's easily blocked, especially on piefed.

After some consideration, I'm going to have to vote no.

There's a few powertankies, shitstains, and losers that I’m not a huge fan of.

Edit: There’s some good eggs like Eugene and Cassandra off the top of my head, that I am a big fan of.

And fuck letting HexNazis into a leftist space; We don't need weekly slop brigading of anything to the left of Pol Pot. Simply blocking them won't stop them voting on our threads and drowning us out.

to be fair, most ppl on /0 dislike HB too tbh, their constant brigading and ableist bs is annoying, it’s just that nobody has made the governance vote post yet

May I ask what specifically you dislike about 'their hard pro-AI stance'? I dislike most of what's currently happening regarding AI, but dbzer0's take on the matter seems fairly rational if one chooses to look past the face-value of things.

How will the poll's results be evaluated? Does a simple majority of 51% win all-out?

As the sole comment in favor of the move—I just wanted to voice my reasoning for how I voted. I must still admit, that I don't feel confident in being a savvy arbiter on the matter. After reading everyone else's take/comments, I don't see the same precise dangers lurking in the shadows. This in conjunction with the current climate of our (stagnating)times is why I must vote the affirmative yes. This seems like a worthwhile opportunity for growth/learning even if the results aren't exactly what we want/intended. Most hate anything that demands they get out of their comfort zone, but it is often needed for authentic progress

The strange lack of posts & comments critical of AI on that instance. Compared to the ratio you would find on unfiltered lemmy.

dbzer0’s take on the matter seems fairly rational if one chooses to look past the face-value of things.

What is that?

I mostly use my db0 account but I am happy to see us join together. I already feel like there's a lot of similarities.

How will the poll’s results be evaluated? Does a simple majority of 51% win all-out?

This is a good question, and honestly one I forgot to think of in advance. After some consultation, I'm leaning towards a say 66%+? I think that sounds reasonable enough.

No, db0 has defended tankies. I specifically left db0 to get away from that. If I wanted to be in the flotilla, I would have joined anarchist nexus. Joining it makes no sense. If people wanted to be in it, they could just join anarchist nexus or db0 with no difference. Joining it removes choice, not adds to it. Like I said, I joined quokkau to get away from db0.

So, not being federated with Hexbear is a big part of the reason that this is the instance I looked at when creating my first Piefed account.

But I'm not even aware of the reason that people would be defederated from feddit.org. I don't think I've ever had issues with their users.

This was a huge thing for me as well. I am an anarchist and want to be on an anarchist server, but I am fiercely anti-AI (at least while people require jobs to survive, after that I still don't like it but won't find it so morally wrong). Before I decided to swap over to piefed it was fine cause Slrpnk filled that niche. But I wanted to come over Piefed due to its better features and wanting to boycott the Lemmy devs. That left me with two choices, Quokkau and Anarchist.nexus.

Quokkau may have AI generated stuff, but it is not such a huge pillar of their principles like over in the instances run by db0. On top of this, the last straw was seeing the db0 admins, including db0 himself, defend tankies including tankies' genocide denial.

I am not opposed to having our instances federated, but joining their "flotilla" strips us of freedom. It means we can't decide our own rules and we can't choose who we are federated with. I do not see any benefit to joining FAF, only losing a core anarchist principle. That of free association.

By joining we shrink the pool of choice even further. We limit anarchists to just Slrpnk (assuming they havent already joined FAF, or adopted similar stances I view as problematic, idk I havent checked on them in awhile) if they want to distance themselves from genocide denial and AI while still being in an anarchist instance. And we would be eliminating that choice entirely for Piefed users.

We should be working together and cooperating, but we should not be centralizing. Something that bothers me a lot about fediverse culture is that because it is more decentralized from mainstream social media and theoretically anyone can start their own instance, users tend to dismiss these kinds of disagreements with, "just go to a different instance" or worse "just start your own instance." I do not have the time, money, skills, or resources to start my own instance and I know most others dont either. And I have gone to different instances. I have accounts on lemmy.world, slrpnk, dbzer0, piefed.blahaj.zone, and quokk.au, and my original account was on lemmy.unchained (which shutdown). This is where I want to be, and I dont want to lose it cause we forfeited the reasons why I came here in the first place. Namely to get away from lemmy devs, to get away from AI, and to get away from tankies. Let us be that niche.

Ooof, ngl if they are pro AI then that's a hard no from me. It goes against the spirit of the fedi to not condemn AI slop

Thanks everyone who took the time to vote and comment. The results are in and by public demand, we will not be joining the FAF . It's not my ideal outcome, but this is your instance as much as mine.

I still wish to create some concrete rules. I'll be spending the next few weekends working on that, expect to see some more polls next month to either accept,decline, or modify these rule proposals.