[ekidd]

> It should be always up to user to decide who they want to communicate with. I want to decide to ban user, or ban topic/tag, or even ban server, not have decision deferred to whoever is running the server, that's no better than twatter."

You can pay someone to host a server for you, starting at $4/month. (Well, MastoHost is a little behind on signups this week, but they'll catch up.) If you do this, then you'll have total control over your moderation policy.

My instance is run by someone who mostly only blocks the absolute worst, including instances that are illegal under European law. I'm fine with those blocks! Other instances are focused on serving people who are regularly harassed, and those instances ban aggressively. There's even a "co-op" instance where users vote on policy.

I think it's worth remembering that for many users, a pleasant experience without harassment is a valuable service. I've moderated niche communities for years, and it has become obvious that if you let a handful of jerks abuse everyone else, then dozens of amazing community members will quit.

[aghostincarrot]

>If you do this, then you'll have total control over your moderation policy.

My impression was that many apply transitive banning? So that if I peer with a “bad” server A then good server B will block me even though my personal posts may be fine.

[ilyt]

Oh, that's even worse

[yunohn]

> If you do this, then you'll have total control over your moderation policy.

The solution to fragmented servers is not another self hosted disconnected server?

[dsr_]

Suppose that everyone who participated ran their own server, population 1.

Then choosing to block other servers would be equivalent to blocking other people, which we agree is a good thing.

Now someone comes up with an adblock list: subscribe to it, and these servers will not bother you. It's probably not perfect, but it improves your experience a lot. If you don't like it, switch to another, or don't subscribe to any.

And now we are back where we started: you can choose to either subscribe to a policy (join an existing server) or be independent.

[luckylion]

Is it public which servers an instance is blocking / what servers they are federating with?

[ekidd]

Normally, yes. Different kinds of blocks are listed at the bottom of an instance's "About" page. Often there's a note for each blocked instance, too, though some admins leave that blank.

I've seen a couple of servers which only show the block list to users with accounts. These tend to be restricted-membership servers, ones which don't publish their member directory or local feed, either.

[berkes]

Most servers even have an API endpoint for this.

[ekidd]

Why would your server be disconnected? Plenty of people are on self-hosted servers, and we can follow each other with no problem.