[xg15]

Also very new to this still, but from what I got so far, #fediblock is first and foremost just a hashtag. It's "well known" and there is a convention behind it, but it doesn't have any specific technical effects - i.e., you can't just remote control another server's blocklist by tooting #fediblock.

If your server's admin(?) makes a fediblock toot, that's more an statement that your own server has blocked someone and asks other servers to do the same. Admins of the other servers can always decide how to deal with that signal - ignore, issue the same block, boost the signal, etc. (Though there is probably some "peer-pressure"/reputation management at work, which makes their decisions not completely free)

So the "network-wide ban" really isn't. It's more a ban from the vast majority of the network - but there is no technical way to issue a genuine ban from all Mastodon instances, the way you can e.g. get banned from the entirety of Reddit.

That at least seems more democratic to me. Of course the usual pitfalls of democratic systems still apply: How to deal with bad-faith #fediblock signals? How to avoid hidden centralisation where certain instances gain more authority to issue blocks than others? etc...

If someone more experienced has some articles with more details about how the system works, that would be really cool.

[luckylion]

I'd imagine the peer-pressure to be very large. In the world of private torrent trackers, you have a similar setup. Each tracker is independent in general, but there is the cabal, a group of elite trackers that dominate their vertical in pretty much all metrics, and are connected via staff knowing each other. You misbehave on one cabal-tracker bad enough, you're gone from all of them.

Lower tier trackers will often adapt the cabal's decisions for various reasons. You end up with a situation where one staff member making a decision can end your membership on a dozen sites.

In the torrent world, it's pretty open. I expect the same to be the case on the fediverse, even if it's not publicly communicated. I'm sure server admins do communicate with each other in non-public forms.