This is unfortunate. I’m pretty split so I guess just consider this a non-vote. Now that I’ve typed all this out I’m leaning towards keeping the rules as-is, so that’s my vote.

On the one hand, I don’t interact with/consume any ‘loli’ or related content here; plus there doesn’t seem to be any on this instance directly anyway, so no existing communities or users would need to be removed. But I interact mostly with communities on instances that have now defederated or likely will because of it being allowed. So practically speaking, I don’t really get anything from the loli rule, and my usage is heavily disrupted by the effects it has on federation.

On the other hand, changing the rules here because of other instances’ rules really just doesn’t sit well. I joined this instance because well-administered online spaces with positive vibes that are reasonably accepting of varied minority interests and views are as pleasant as they are rare; it would be a shame for one of the few loli-friendly instances to be pushed into conforming to the average, snuffing out one more spark of individualism and bringing the fediverse one step closer to homogeneity.

I’m disappointed in the defederations, but I can’t really blame the admins considering how Lemmy functions; Lemmy is where the fault really lies, the way I see it. The lack of hard boundary between local communities and remote communities in hosting content, plus the lack of any way to make a community or instance invisible by default means remote content has little practical difference from local for typical usage (aside from the UX issues it brings). It makes sense that instances would only want to federate with other instances with similar rules considering that.

I love the idea of Lemmy - there’s a reason it’s the first social platform I’ve used in years - but as time goes on, the ripple effects of its quirks and missing features are pushing it into ‘not worth the frustration’ territory for me considering what I want from it: decoupled platform and user, where with one account I can interact with communities with all sorts of rules and values (which I’m happy to abide by of course) without having to fully agree with them myself. That’s not really how it’s shaping up. Whatever happens wrt the proposed rule change, going forward I think I’ll be limiting my interactions on the Lemmyverse to communities on this instance and a select few on friendly instances.