I agree with you to an extent about users being able to make their own choices, and I even include the following in the registration form:

While strict rules to avoid harmful interactions are enforced on content posted locally to this instance, this instance has a very open federation policy. This means that through the “All” tab of the instance you will encounter content from most other Lemmy instances - including potentially offensive and harmful content. If you are looking for a more curated interaction with the rest of the fediverse, I strongly recommend you to try a different instance with a federation policy that aligns better with your views.

The problem is… Even with this description that acknowledges potentially offensive and harmful content, I think that most people have some reasonable expectations not to encounter drawings of child pornography because it is illegal in many countries and not commonly present online. I think that content such as gore and drawings of child pornography are not things that can be passively consented to with a disclaimer like this one. To be fair to users, I would need to very actively and transparently state that such content is allowed on the site.

Even regular porn makes me uncomfortable, but I tolerate it because I know the average person enjoys it. But drawings of children are too much for me.

Edit: I do find it strange that you do not name burggit as the instance in your post on mander. What’s the reason for that? Would it not be the most transparent thing to do? I know other instances (lemmynsfw, blahaj, etc) have avoided naming burggit in similar posts in the past to “avoid giving them any more traffic,” but your issue seems not to be a moral one but one of not exposing unwitting mander users to burggit’s content, which obviously would not apply in this situation.

Sure, I can be transparent. I have already had users before starting discussions with me when I said I did not want to defederate from exploding-heads, and I found it a difficult experience having to explain and justify different lines of reasoning to different users. That was emotionally tasking and it took a good amount of time and energy.

In this specific case I took some time to build an argument to myself, and I did begin writing a more detailed post. However, I realized that being open about my thought process would put me in a situation where not only might I need to defend my philosophy regarding federation again, but I am also opening myself to argumentation on the topic of people and communities that enjoy looking at explicit drawings depicting children. Thinking of my previous experience, this case felt like potentially a million times worse - because it is not a topic I am personally invested in, and I don’t feel like this is my place to publicly weight on. When I say that I don’t want to bring more attention to this issue in my post I mean more specifically to the defederation event itself. I am being greedy and selfish about my time, energy, and emotional well-being. I don’t want to carry the weight of this discussion.

Being more open and pro-active about the discussion could have been a positive step with regards to reducing the marginalization of your community, but I could also have done damage instead and offended people by trying to talk about a topic I know nothing about. I’m just a guy that likes science and defederated social media, and I don’t watch porn, so I don’t think this is a conversation I belong in.

I ended up deciding not to explain my thought process, but I also did not want to do this sneakily in the background. So, my final decision was to make a post with the minimum number of words I could that would get the point across, while also explicitly stating that I did not want to draw attention to it but that I would be willing to talk about it in the comments or in other places. I am usually willing to discuss things if asked, if I have the time. I also commented here to extend that courtesy to people who might be affected in this instance. I think it’s the right thing to do…

As for the absence of the name: From my point of view, that post can be perceived as me making a moral accusation towards your community. I did not want to include the instance name because I thought this would be me going out of my way to point the finger at you. So, when designing the “shortest possible” post, it was obvious to me that it was better to remove the name as it would avoid drawing any negative attention towards you, users know that they can find it in the block-list if they want to, and it would keep the post shorter. I saw it is as a win/win decision. I now see how you perceived the omission of the link to the site, and so that is a lesson for me. I know it won’t make much of a difference, but I have appended the following line at the end of the post:

If you do enjoy this content and would like to visit the instance, you can find it at: burggit.moe

I wish it had occurred to me to include it in this form when making the post, as this does not look accusatory.

Thank you for understanding. I know that for many it is a “no-brainer” to defederate with such content, but I genuinely feel bad about defederating with a community. I didn’t do this without putting some thought into it, assessing the content itself, and considering alternatives.

I want to re-emphasize that the concrete reason is that I don’t feel comfortable asking my instance’s users to be willing to see these type of images in their feed if they want to use my instance, because I think it is a big thing to ask of them (or me!). I don’t personally hold a negative sentiment towards you or your community as fellow humans.

Hey, just a heads up. I’m the admin from an instance (https://mander.xyz/), and your instance has been added to our block list: https://mander.xyz/post/2573660

I’m letting you know this here in case you want to also clean up the small amount of content from us that you may have fetched.

I am generally very much against defederating because I don’t think it’s nice to cut anyone off from the network. However, when browsing through your site with this account with NSFW enabled, I saw multiple images depicting drawings of minors that made me personally uncomfortable - but, more importantly, I would not want to surprise one of my unsuspecting users who created an account in a science-based instance with these images.

I made an effort to find a reasonable solution that did not involve defederating. For example, I considered blocking only the communities that explicitly allow drawings of children. But what I found is that this content is allowed site-wide, and anyone can create new communities to host this content. This means that I would need to actively monitor the creation of new communities. Also, blocking communities in another instance requires me to first bring the content into mine - again, potentially broadcasting these images to users from my site.

For what it’s worth… Please, do keep running your site in the way that makes you and your community comfortable. This is your space. However, if federating with a broader network is something valuable to you, my recommendation would be to restrict this type of content to a few specific communities and link them in your sidebar. This would allow admins to block those specific communities without having to cut you off completely.