[hnarn]

I don’t really understand what point you’re trying to make. The way moderation is handled in your example sure sounds a lot more democratic, or at the very least with some fundamentals allowing it to be democratic, than twitter ever will be.

[csande17]

I was responding to the "human inefficiencies" section of the article, which claims that Mastodon is inherently much more inefficient than Twitter because many different moderators (from different instances) must act on the same post. I don't think that's true in practice.

[seydor]

> it gets added to a blacklist

unless there is an election about who gets added to the list it s not even democratic. And the freedom of speech is generally protected, not subject to the whims of democracy

[davisoneee]

If it's an instance level ban, then you can vote with your feet by migrating to a new instance. You are not electing who goes on the list, but you are electing to follow certain lists implicitly by which instance you join.

With mastodon/fediverse, you have a choice of numerous different 'twitters', rather than being stuck with the global twitter decision.

[nobody9999]

>If it's an instance level ban, then you can vote with your feet by migrating to a new instance.

That's the part that interests me the most.

Which is why I (when I get around to it) will self-host my own ActivityPub instance (Mastodon? Pleroma? WriteFreely?).

That way, I decide what gets blocked and what doesn't. And since it's federated (assuming other sites will federate with me), I can still access the benefits of using fediverse resources, without being beholden to someone else to make such decisions for me.

From a longer-term perspective, ISTM that an ActiviyPub (AP) "user agent server" (UAS) which allowed individual users to federate with the resources of their choosing without having to "join" an extant instance, makes a lot of sense.

Rather the UAS would utilize your local (i.e., generated and managed/federated from your AP UAS instance) fediverse credentials and act as a proxy for you, communicating with the instances containing the resources you're interacting with and acting as storage/cache/server for the user's client apps.

This would make the fediverse even more decentralized and under user control. However, it would also make discoverability even harder.

Perhaps that's ActivityPub's killer app? A discovery app. Perhaps a protocol change to require a cryptographically signed summary/intro for each instance, along with with a searchable index?

[supermatt]

If you migrate to another server, don’t you lose all your followers, who will still be following @you@oldserver ?

[ekidd]

Nope! That part is pretty neat.

It works a bit like "cell-phone number portability" in the US. You set your original account to point at your new account, and you tell your new account about your old account. All of your followers migrate to your new account automatically.

Of course, you could still get burnt if your host just disappears one day, because it can't point to your new account. So there's an incentive to use a well-run server with a good track record and a reasonable funding model, I guess.

[csande17]

In order for that migration to happen, the original server needs to cooperate and publish a "this person moved their account" message of some kind, right? I wonder if instance admins ever prevent that from happening if they don't like the server you're moving to.

[OctopusLupid]

You're talking about the ActivityPub "MOVE" message. Yes, that would be possible I believe.

[supermatt]

Thats interesting thought - if an instance is blocked, does that also prevent migration?

[supermatt]

Oh thats cool. Is this part of the activitypub spec? does it utilise the alias in some way? Do exisiting messages, etc get updated to the new alias?

Sorry for so many questions - do you know where can I read about the mechanics behind it?

[oneeyedpigeon]

I guess the problem is your username, right? Someone with a distinctive username that is, essentially, their identity has an incentive to squat on that username on multiple instances.

[rvense]

I don't think so. There's a way to move accounts.

[lupire]

"Democratic" means "people rule" not "majority vote".

By giving you the choice of which server to use, you choose your moderation. If other people choose (or choose to delegate the choice) to block you, that's still democracy.

[throwaway0x7E6]

there's no globally enforced blacklist. servers decide their own peering policy. cringe servers wall themselves off with much zeal, while based servers don't even care about cringe servers' existence. it's great

[homarp]

except a Mastodon instance is a private property... so no freedom of speech protection there https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/do-individua...

[seydor]

There is also no legal requirement for democracy. We re talking about the principle

[mftrhu]

Does this principle trump the freedom of association of the person who is actually hosting, and paying for, for each instance?

[goodpoint]

> freedom of speech is generally protected, not subject to the whims of democracy

This is absurd. Mastodon is a network of severs run by volunteers. Admins have every right choose what servers to federate with.

Besides, if you don't like "the whims of democracy", try freedom of speech under a dictatorship.