This is a FAF defederation vote for !multiverse.soulism.net. Note that I have tried to summarize views both for and against this proposal, rather than pushing a particular view. Please feel free to comment if you want to contribute your own thoughts and experiences.

The reason for this vote is that admins have been getting a lot of reports about Grail and Their instance from our users lately, but tbh I am not sure whether the reports warrant a ban or not. While most cases are more clear-cut, I wanted some more admin & community feedback on this one.

For context, the soulism instance is (for all practical purposes) a personal instance run by infamous fediverse "personality", Grail. Grail is suspected to be a recent alt of DroneRights aka HardlightCereal aka Exocrinous aka Dragon Rider aka Drag.

• Grail
• DroneRights
• HardlightCereal
• Exocrinous
• Dragon Rider

Grail, the current incarnation, is (imo) a liberal progressive masquerading as a leftist (a self-described "Anarcho-Antireal theorist" whatever the fuck that is). And I really don't think this qualifies as a "No true Scotsman" situation where it's arguable either way - it's immediately obvious from reading Their comment history.

I don't really want to rehash the extensive history of this user and Their alts in detail here, however I'm pretty sure long-term Lemmy users will be aware of at least some of these previous alt accounts, which have been almost universally banned. I'll try my best to summarize the issues below.

The case for defederation

Here's some recent examples/summaries of why the user is so problematic:

• Concise summary of past trolling behavior: .
• Recent YPTB post: Banned for Nuttin'
• Recent example of Grail's electoralism and criticism of c/flipanarchy rules, including a claim that pugjesus isn't a turbolib 😂 https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63720883
• More blue MAGA electoralism demonstrating that the user is about as "leftist" as Joe Biden

Recent examples of hating on / agitating against our instance:

The case against defederation

• Grail is neurodivergent (trans and NPD afaik), so we should be willing to make some accommodations for Their behaviour
• While some folks (including myself at the time, unfortunately) took the "DroneRights" account as an attempt to troll transgender folk with the "my gender is an attack helicopter" line, it could also have been a genuine attempt to advocate for xenogenders. There's no way to know 100% for sure what Their intentions truly were, but on reflection and with the benefit of time, I think it could be reasonably argued They should have been given the benefit of the doubt on that topic.
• Just because this user seems to have a grudge against our instance and bad-jackets anyone to their left as politically "right wing" doesn't mean we should ban them. They are still entitled to express their opinion.
• Given Grail's unique personality, is there anywhere else They would potentially fit in other than the Fediverse? Maybe we should cut Them some slack and just let users block Them individually.

Warning

Please do not attempt to re-litigate the topic of xenogenders in this post. Such comments will be removed as off-topic. As an instance, our policy is to respect personal pronouns, whatever they are. This is not a referendum on the validity of xenogenders. The topic of the post is clear - whether or not we should defederate from the multiverse.soulism.net instance. If you want to bring your own experiences into the comments that is fine, but please keep them pertinent to whether or not we should defederate from this instance / user on the basis of Their problematic behaviours, not on the basis of Their identity or pronouns.

Instructions

The proposal is:

We should defederate from the multiverse.soulism.net instance due to an extensive history of trolling by the main admin's alts, and due to the admin being openly hostile to our instance.

Please upvote this post to vote for defederation. Downvote to remain federated. This proposal will require a 2/3 majority to pass.

P.S., Please be sure to use Grail's preferred pronouns of "capitalised They/Them", so we don't have to remove comments for misgendering.

Edit: This will include banning Grail's alts as well, for clarity.

Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591

This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:

• For: (3), (7), (1), (1)
• Against:
• Local Community: +0.1
• Outsider sentiment: Positive
• Total: +10.1
• Percentage: 86.00%

This vote will complete in 16.58 minutes

Edit: due to this discussion here I am changing my vote to a yes

I have to veto this one. I honestly feel users can handle it. Especially since this seems to pertain to a single user. Defederation to me is absolutely last ditch absolutely no hope left measure and I don't feel this calls for it yet. I still see that user engaging in good faith and normal activities outside of politics comms so they seem to just be a lib.

none of my business but watching people tie themselves in knots pandering to obvious bait has been the funniest thing on lemmy

The specific examples show a pattern that's not stopping, across multiple instances. Now they have their own server this is our only method to deal with them.

They are also the only contributor from their instance

I think I'm against defederation. Like they are definitely a pain, but i think it's up to users to just block them.

I'm looking at the local feed on Their instance and the number of unique users is in the single digits. I think people who find Them too annoying can just block Them, we don't need to make it a policy.

Relying on the "just block them" doesn't work with an instance owned by the single users though, because it effectively means they have infinite accounts at their disposal.
And Lemmy individual instance-blocking still only works for posts/communities, not comments.

I mostly remember the controversy from the Exocrinus days and I am in support of defed. Cant believe this is getting hashed again.

Neurodivergence set aside, They are a terrible troll that never, ever argued in good faith on any topic I saw Them engage with, and was just a huge pain in the ass of normal users and mods alike. Use of a single-user instance without registration limits for the owner opens the door for infinite alt accounts that cannot be realistically banned or controlled using normal mod tools, without filtering the entire instance. And that seems to be the entire purpose of this new instance- ban evasion.

Also, as a neurodivergent myself, trying to lean on being different does NOT absolve a user of the consequences resulting from being a unrequited asshole trying to stir shit up. I'll respect Their pronouns for sure, but I'm still going to call Them a dick when They are being a dick. I understand needing to be diplomatic, Unruffled, but try not to carry too much water for the trolls.

That's a yes from me. I would prefer some concrete evidence linking these accounts to confirm ban evasion, but that would require some collaboration between instance admins to basically dox the person.

The general antagonistic nature, purity testing, lack of demonstrating any principles of anarchism tell me that this person is out to do just what they are doing, and whatever sort of reports that have been sent will keep being sent.

We owe new users some sort of safety in the community. If we expect everyone to be fully informed and capable of discerning bad actors from ignorant ones, that's not fair to them.

One person's neurodivergence is also not an excuse to distress others. Allowing that robs other people who may also be vulnerable from feeling safe, and gives the first person power over these other people.

I see what you mean, but so far there's no evidence of Them using Their instance to evade blocks. They have gone through several accounts in the past on different instances, but that seems to me to be a symptom of Them having difficulty finding an instance where They fit in. I'm willing to revisit my stance if Their instance becomes a real problem due to block evasion/harrassment/etc., but right now it seems like They just have some annoying-but-ultimately-ignorable takes.

I honestly think dragonfucker (the @ I've seen Them/drag use) is just another troll that was easy to block on individual level. Never seen any actual contribution to any topic

But I don't think blocking the whole instance is worth it

I'm just going to pop in and say that based on the interactions I've had with Drag, and the previous experiences I've had with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) individuals (or, systems of identities, within a single body)...

I'm not a psychologist, I'm not formally diagnosing them, I'm just putting it here that I think Drag has DID.

I say this because ... to me at least, it explains a good deal of their otherwise seemingly inexplicable behavior.

I don't mean this as an attack, I mean it as a way of being able to understand, perhaps even sympathize with them.

As to defederating or not, I am undecided.

That kind of reinforces my point. They made themselves terribly easy to block. And I have to question even though we dont do this often, is this really the solution? Wall ourselves off and leave them to their devices? I'm not so sure. I could agree with either solution but as it stands currently it is super easy to block their instance and move on without defederation, and defederation is extremely serious. We don't want to create a bunch of little islands in the fediverse (I know this specific instance would not cause this, but over time defederation has the potential to do so).

So wait, people are saying yes without even knowing if the accounts are linked at all? What is the point of federation if we are going to defederate instances without evidence.

Especially since it was voted if one instance of the floatilla bans an instance the rest would have to as well I thought.

Seems dangerous

Not really. There's grail's existing post history, you go judge yourself on the comments that are there.

But they aren't easy to block. We rely on that instance owner to respect the protocol's semantics. They aren't respecting separate instances rules enough to not be banned, and there's no reason to believe they will maintain their same account to allow themselves to be blocked.

If they weren't over 99% of that instances activity I might be convinced.

Maybe Lemmy doesn't have this and I have been on anarchist.nexus for far longer than I thought.

Oh neat.

Hmmm

Yeah I guess thats a piefed only thing. My bad. I am unsure about my vote now

My experience with Grail was that They publicly expressed intent to brigade mine and similar communities as well as encouraged others to do the same and then decided to troll me in my DMs after I banned Them for it. I've also noticed they consistently promote electoralism and also engage in some really bad faith arguments and accusations, like conflating usage of AI with enslaving animals, which is pretty gross.

Since they're the only admin on Their instance I say defederate, we would defederate if some other random troll was hosting their instance and violating our rules. It shouldn't be different if a person is a troll who is also trans or neurodivergent, I say that as someone who is trans-NonBinary and neurodivergent myself.

So Grail had an argument in other instances and was apparently an ass, maybe a crybully, has a pragmatical approach to elections, and thinks dbzer0 is either turning tankie or rightwing (who cares? "agitating against our instance" lol I think you are taking lemmy too serious)... and... what else? I mean, the post doesn't suggest spamming, stalking and hateful attacks... what were the reports even about? Being annoying? Why these users are calling the cops instead of just blocking the person they find annoying? This post-social media behavior always amazes me...
I'm not voting because I'm indifferent to the matter, but I find it funny because I just came from a post that user is asking a community to ban content and here they are the one that might get banned lol

If a person is violating instance rules they get banned, if that person hosts their own server they get banned and their server gets blocked. No one would be having these reservations if it was any other old troll.
Electoralism isn't annoying, it is against our community rules, bad-jacketing isn't annoying, it is against our community rules.
These are things other people get banned from dbzer0 for, and server owners aren't any different except that they have the ability to spawn infinite accounts or clear their bans (when someone gets instance banned on their home instance, and then unbanned from their home instance it deletes all remote bans).

That's why defederation is on the table.

Yup

Something else to consider, if someone gets banned on their home instance and then unbanned, the unban deletes all bans on remote servers. An instance admin can unban themselves from other lemmy instances due to being able to access their own server with the ability to ban and unban.

@Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com I think that's an important consideration here. Grail could do something ban worthy here, then unban Themselves because They feel like it and we wouldn't know until Their posts started showing up here again, and they can repeat the process as much as we ban them. Defederation is the only way to actually stop that, and it's part of why it's customary to defederate a self-hosted instance when banning the person in charge of it.

No opinion on this question given it’s none of my business, but I love seeing these governance posts in action. I really admire the system you all have here and appreciate how level-headed they always seem to be rather than the lynch mob discussions like these have the potential to be

That sounds like a horrible design oversight in AP? Why is that possible?

I have a soft spot for both dragonfucker and Grail, so I'm biased. Idk about the other alts or what drama I've missed from them, but I haven't seen any evidence presented for these being the same user anyway.

I'm lowkey a bit of an antirealist myself, and I have to say Grail seems extremely consistent with Their belief system. Others see bad faith baiting, but I often see two people talking past one another. Have y'all checked out Their Medium articles and soulism website? I've read both thoroughly, and this all tracks and has remained consistent for a long time.

Yes, I agree that They're hardly an anarchist in the sense that most of us appreciate politically, I just don't think that's trolling but rather disagreeing (for the most part- obviously there's been drama).

I support starting with relevant community bans where rules are violated, and escalating as needed. The anti-AI sentiment might be a dealbreaker, but if They care that much They should just defed on Their end

Electoralism isn’t annoying, it is against our community rules

It is? I didn't see it on the rules list, but more importantly, is Grail doing that on THIS instance? The picture there was from lemmy.world - if the view of elections is something to be banned from here, I guess you are going to have to defederate from every single non-anarchist instance as well, because they are full of users that either like some political party or believe in lesser-evil.

bad-jacketing isn’t annoying, it is against our community rules

Is this about calling someone here a tankie? Wait... you all really caring about that?

The link in the original post just says can't find this user when I click on it. Maybe they just defederated from dbzer0, not sure. If so I guess that solves your worries

Looking at Mystic Mushroom's comment it seems defed is the only viable defence agaunst trolls and other users trying to evade a ban. Its actually insane you can unban yourself.

The evidence presented in this post (written for the uninitiated, thus presumably the best evidence) does not include Them doing electoralism in communities that ban electoralism. I also dislike the use here of the term "bad-jacketing" when our instance ban defines it as saying someone's a cop while here it's just saying someone's a fascist, which our instance rules does not ban, and so the same thing I mentioned about electoralism applies.

Sorry, not entirely familiar with this exploit, but wouldn't their next move be to start a new instance of their own simply to regain access to said unban loophole? 🤷🏼‍♂️😅

Sounds like a slo-mo Whack-A-Troll, if so. 🤔

If so I guess that solves your worries

For now, until this blows over and they quietly re-fed w/ db0, no? Then, we're right back here again.

Of course, I've yet to hear if they can simply start a new instance when their current one gets banned, and unban themselves again. 🤢

Side question: How the fuck is this method even still an option for instance founders at this point?

Have They actually done that though, spawned new accounts in order to ban evade? To me this stuff seems like it would make it appropriate to prevent Them posting on communities where it is a violation of the instance rules, but going too far to prevent everyone on the instance from seeing or interacting with Their posts elsewhere, especially since it removes the opportunity for argument. If the latter is the only way to enforce the former, fine, but that would depend on whether They are unwilling to respect Their ban.

Maybe our definition of bad-jacketing needs to be reworked to include how broadly bad-jacketing actually is since it is well beyond accusing someone of being a cop. @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com maybe someone on the team could fix that.

I think of "Soulism" as some form of nihilism. Seriously!

I have not seen evidence of the infinite accounts thing happening from that instance. There's little harm in defedding only when we have the infinite accounts thing happening from that instance. (I've also replied additionally below: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25559368)

Still accessible for me, might be something else