Since the New Year is here, what better way to ring it in than with a new Flotilla member and a drink o’ rum?

Over the past couple of days, Qk from Quokk.au reached out to us about the possibility of joining up with the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla. This was really cool news for all of us, and imo they will be a great addition!

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 Quokk.au 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

  • Upvote this post to welcome Quokk.au to the Flotilla
  • Downvote this post to fire the cannons

N.B. Quokk.au will be holding its own vote on joining the flotilla at the same time as ours. I’ll add the linked post once they are both posted.

Edit: here’s the Quokk.au post

Happy New Year mateys!

  • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    9·
    10 days ago

    Abstain vote — neither for nor against.

    I’m new to the Fediverse, but it seems like unifying instances goes against the ideal of decentralization. Thoughts on that point? I mean, so like if I have a disagreement with staff on one instance and they ban me, all instances in the flotilla ban me? I can see the benefit and also the other side.

    Otherwise it sounds like strength in bunkers which is a good thing.

    • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      9 days ago

      I see it as a second layer of federation, so we’re sort of extra-federating with certain instances, for some specific goals, and while I have some mixed feelings I broadly agree with the goals and I do think this is strictly better than somehow merging with them (actual centralization).

      Primary benefits as I understand them (probably infinitely debatable, regarding how desirable or even accurate any of this is):

      • makes it obvious which instances are likely to be good fits for me, should I not like the direction this one takes over time
      • makes the admins of each instance less isolated, with all the support that entails (I think admins of internet communities have natural and very real pulls toward what I guess I’d call estrangement or developing unhealthy views toward their user bases or others)
      • makes it harder for motivated bad actors to balkanize leftist lemmy instances and thereby keep leftist ideals like “mutual aid” and “sharing wealth” sounding like fringe ideas
      • this last one is hard to phrase, but essentially moderation policies across the fediverse have different weights or impacts depending on the size of their user base (e.g. the atrocious moderation on .world impacts a lot more users than it would on a smaller instance) and this formalization of policy feels like a small way to improve the overall weight of my preferred style of moderation