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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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Meta community. Discuss about this lemmy instance or lemmy in general.
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Instance policy update: Votes are in and Xitter links are now banned on this instance
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Ahoy mateys!
We are closing the voting on this topic a couple of days early as the result is already conclusive., Our threshold for passing the motion was for 2/3 of voting members in favor. We have far exceeded that threshold (see below) and have a good number of overall responses, so the proposed policy change has now been approved and takes effect immediately.
Our new policy on Xitter links
- No Xitter links are to be posted on this instance from the date of this announcement.
- Workarounds such as link shorteners and alternative front-ends that resolve to Xitter posts are also banned.
- Screenshots will still be permitted as per the overwhelming number of comments in support of this option.
- Exception: In rare cases there may be a need to verify the veracity of a Xitter post. If this need arises, then you may post a https://xcancel.com/ version of the link. Please note this option should only be used sparingly and exclusively for fact-checking purposes.
We will begin communicating this instance policy change to all our users today.
Please try to be helpful to anyone who accidentally posts a Xitter link who may not yet be aware of the policy change, and/or feel free to report in the usual way.
N.B.: For the loopholers - by "Xitter links" we mean any links to content hosted on X (formerly Twitter). Alternative Xitter front-ends are also banned under this policy, unless exception #4 applies. Edit: The ban also applies to other Xitter-owned domains such as their photo blobstore (pbs) domain at pbd.twimg.com
Thanks to everyone involved for participating in the vote!
**The final tally is as follows: **
- For:
(2), 
(7), 
(5), 
(3), 
(2), 
(1) - Against:
- Local Community: +2.6
- Outsider sentiment: Very Positive
- Total: +22.6
- Percentage: 100.00%
To break this down a little differently:
- Home instance users voted 93% in favor of the proposal (284/307)
- External instance users voted 97% in favor of the proposal (70/72 note: these are not counted, but good to know)
- Donating and vouched for users voted 100% in favor of the proposal (20/20 votes).
So alternative front ends include something like nitter?
What about posting archive links of tweets like archive.is link for a tweet?
now this is how you do a rule change!
- community poll
- exception for the huge perceived benefit of allowing screenshots
- workarounds and tools for when needed
- overall very well written and communicated
others (ahem) should follow the example you provided here!
Home instance users voted 93% in favor of the proposal (284/307)
Donating and vouched for users voted 100% in favor of the proposal (20/20 votes).
At least we know in this poll it is 3.07 instance users votes (1/100 non-supporting, non-vouched and non-mvp users, cannot exceed +/- 10) vs 20 donated/vouched users votes. This is definitely a fair way to poll.
I don’t think pay to win democracy is a fair way to poll personally. Doesn’t fit right with me to give those with the luxury of spare cash a louder voice.
That’s what the ~~blocking~~ vouching^edit^ system is for though, right?
And while I understand where you’re coming from, what would you do to prevent the following hypothetical?
A vote to defederate from a community causing active harm in the real world is started, say some group like 7*4 spins up a Lemmy instance after dealing with discord bans. I’m a member of that group. I throw up tasks on fiverr to have people create local db0 accounts at scale, then vote against the action against my server. These are real human created accounts, not bot accounts, not being created through the same vpn, by the same user, in the same country, etc.
How do you stop the vote manipulation that will occur? You have no way of differentiating those accounts from your regular users.
There's a point to be made that if someone wanted to harm this instance this way and had some spare cash, they could easily make a bunch of donations to start skewing votes with sockpuppets. It's not an easy solution and at that point it would require a more in-depth user vouching system starting from known people. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it.
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Let's fucking go
I've asked this question before because I feel it's best to clarify: does this also include URLs to content hosted on related but separate services, like the image hosting CDN at pbs.twimg.com?
Thanks for the question. The ban also applies to other Xitter-owned domains such as their photo blobstore (pbs) domain.
Awesome, thanks.
I've never seen such a one-sided poll. I'm very impressed.
anarchy brother. we self select pretty hard.
It reaffirms my decision both to migrate here for my home instance and to start donating when I did.
Beautiful.
About time. Good riddance. I hope other instances follow suit. Xitter is a damn plague.
Get 'em King.
As an external instance user, I would have supported this. Notable tweets can be reported on without giving any clicks to Xitter.
It would be nice if Lemmy had a plugin or something like that to change xitter links to xcancel.
It would be nicer if everything had that plugin.
On the server instance level, or the user application level?
On the server instance level, I can see if being an issue if it extends to other redirects, and lead to malicious abuse by the instance.
On the user application level, would be valuable. I use Lemmy Sync and it'll be a nice feature to suggest.
You can probably find an browser extension or violentmonkey script that will do it for you.
Out of curiosity, what was the sentiment for those who voted against? Or did they not comment?
I'm against because I think it's just censorship. Funny how when it was twitter, no one had problems. But Musk bought it and now it's a problem.
My experience is that there is no fucking difference between how it was and how it is now. Lemmy just hates Musk.
Having said that, I'm not really passionate about it either way. And as long as screen shots can still be shown, I'm cool.
But guys, you're not even making a dent in Musk's money hoard by avoiding linking to it. lmao
And hey, it's this instance. And it was voted on, so I can totally accept it. I'd much rather it be a vote than some power-hungry guy just making the decision. :)
I think they could be summarized as:
- Opposition to any form of censorship and/or concerns about "slippery slope" of banning Xitter links - i.e., what about Meta links?
- It's important to be able to post newsworthy tweets in order to hold them to account and have a record.
- Concerns about fact-checking - i.e., how can we check veracity of Twitter links if all we have is screenshots?
- Some folks wanted to ban all Xitter links, including screen shots and xcancel links, for a complete blackout.
We've tried our best to address those concerns in the policy above, which is a bit of a compromise position that tries to take as many of these concerns into account as we reasonably could. But of course some are mutually exclusive positions, so it's not going to satisfy 100% of users.
Thanks for the summary. I think the rules you listed above capture all but the first.
I mean, the first is a whataboutism so I wouldn't even consider it. I would have said, "Fine... we'll discuss meta next but we're discussing Twitter NOW. If you are objecting because we aren't including Meta, then you're not debating in good faith."
The only people I saw saying no seemed to be saying it because "you should always link to the source so people can find it", which was rightfully called out for being incredibly silly given we're talking about tweets here
So I'm going to put on my "devil's advocate" hat on for a sec, because there is a nuance here that's worth addressing.
I absolutely hate how politicians and governments use a third party, commercial social media platform to discuss and even announce policies. But it's where we are. So if shit for brains Madam President Trump makes some sort of shitty announcement on Twitter, I would agree a source is needed and, I would go so far as to say an actual twitter URL source, only because a third, third party (even xcancel.com as currently allowed) could manipulate or even change a tweet. I'm not saying they would, but having the direct unimpeachable source would be necessary.
Given the fact that tweets can't be viewed without an account, xcancel is a good compromise that can then be drilled down to its original source if needed.
Now, putting my devil's advocate hat off, it's a silly argument to vote against. I presume that the rules would allow you to post the URL in a comment or a post body, and only prohibits using a twitter URL as the source.
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extreme W
Good riddance! (and any other relatable Green Day songs)
American Idiot comes to mind.
twitter needs to F.O.D. already
Seems like a great call!
Hey, there are only 20 paying users anyway, right? So were no vouchers used this time? And does a person vouching apply per vote or to the person (like is it a proxy vote or a renewable vote coupon?)
We had a total of 7 "vouched" for users (you can see this by hovering over the icons). Once a user has been vouched for, then they can participate in all votes unless that privilege is subsequently withdrawn.
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Those graphics are sick! :D
Congratulations
So archive links count as “alternative frontends”?
I think our preference would be to stick to xcancel.com links if you need to link for factchecking. I hadn't given much consideration to archive links though, to be honest. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on those, and I'll review the comments again on that topic. We can always tweak the policy if need be.
For clarification, is there a reason you would prefer xcancel links in particular over other frontends? I'm entirely uninformed on the matter, outside of seeing this service used relatively often and recently, compared to other Nitter instances.
I'm not the person you asked, but in my opinion, archiving services are more reliable than simple frontends, since they will continue to work even if the tweet in question is from an account that deletes or protects the tweets later, or if the account is suspended by Twitter. Considering the tumultuous relationship Twitter has with both reality and its users, this might be worth consideration too.
Can you help recommend a reliable archiving service? We may be able to include an archive site as well for the same purpose. Xcancel was recommended by a lot of folks, so that's the main reason we picked that front end.
The best service I'm aware of is archive.is, which has been around for at least a decade, and does a good job taking snapshots of pages the way they've rendered. Beggars can't be choosers, though, and the alternatives are sparse. (Their site does recommend a couple others, though.)
Typically I would prefer The Web Archive, but currently their site is experiencing issues with Twitter URLs.
I think picking one domain for fact checking purposes is the best option just for clarity purposes. I could see using archival links as a general 'banned domains' approach worth considering in the future.
+1 to this
I think that if we allow xcancel links for fact checking, archive links (and other nitter instances) should be allowed in that context as well, both for posterity (if tweet gets deleted) and since - from my experience - alternative front ends often come and go like the tide
Oh noooo...oh right, already had them blacklisted.
Heck yeah!
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