Defederating was the right call. The_Donald is being hosted on sh.itjust.works.
i.imgur.com
The admin of sh.itjust.works has been approached but as of yet has failed to reply to concerned Lemmy users. I’m glad Beehaw admins look out for us by cutting off instances that host communities like this.
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It may seem like "jumping to an extreme response" but once you've had enough experience in online forums you can see the storm clouds forming from a mile away, and you know you're just better off with an immediate ban to nip it in the bud before it inevitably turns into a huge problem. People without experience see mods doing this and think they're too heavy-handed, but it's just basic internet etiquette to keep things friendly and clean.
I personally saw a few red flags, gave the admin the benefit of the doubt, but when the issue was raised enough to him, and he failed to ban the offenders, I knew exactly where it was heading and just packed up and left. The nicer places will move too eventually once they see enough of it.
This was posted before TheDude's response, so it wasn't clear whether this was something that had just slipped through the cracks or not.
However, I agree his response is concerning... Perhaps it's more due to inexperience than "malice", but it's still problematic...
It's concerning that he's not just acting on his own like a dictator and instead let the members of the instance decide?
ultimately it's his website ultimately and his users are free to decide. but if they decide to keep the community they can't really blame anyone but themselves for any subsequent defederations. particularly in a federated system, there are consequences to a laissez-faire approach--that approach has been tried time and time again with the same end result (a community of extremely unpleasant people who everyone else quarantines) and at this point many people are just not interested in federating with a community that might go down that route. that's basically what people are getting at here, imo.