[kstrauser]

I'm a Mastodon admin and I've "silenced" (not "blocked") one other instance. I wrote about why here: https://blog.freeradical.zone/our-first-silenced-instance/

My goal is to allow as much free conversation as possible on my instance. In general, that means I'm taking a laissez-faire approach to enforcing the rules I've set out (see: https://freeradical.zone/about/more) and not caring unless I have to. But if a user is causing problems, I reserve the right to drop them. If another instance is causing problems for one of my users, I reserve the right to silence or block them that server if that's what's necessary to protect my user.

I have about a million things I'd rather be doing than powertripping on who can post what on my instance. Barring illegal, extremely distasteful, or abusive content, I really don't care what my users send or receive. But I will do what it takes to protect me, my users, and my instance.

[dkhenry]

and I hope you continue to be able to do that. Remember there was a time when Reddit claimed they wanted to be liasse-faire, then they got popular then that stopped. It takes a superlative amount of resolve to keep that attitude as you scale.

[kstrauser]

One key difference is that I'm not responsible for all of Mastodon: I'm responsible for my little corner of it. There aren't the same moral conundrums. Twitter and Reddit have to ask what stance they should take for every user in the world. Loli stuff is legal in Japan but iffy in USA. Holocaust denialism is legal in USA but verboten in Germany. What one policy can they write that would handle all of those situations?

On the other hand, I only have to deal with what's legal an acceptable where I live. If an instance in Japan wants to host loli, fine. I can (and have) chosen not to carry their content. If an instance in Idaho wants to host Nazi content, that's up to them; the rest of us can choose not to carry their content.

I won't have to (and can't) come up with global policies.