[indigochill]

I am a big believer in federated platforms, but I feel this article misunderstands them in fundamental ways. Particularly here:

> federated platforms—networking environments enabled by communally—agreed upon standards of computing and norms. These technologies can give users more control over their platform experience.

My server is not governed by any communally-agreed-upon norms, nor does it give users control. It's governed by _my_ norms, period (and users can either agree with me or find a different server). Incidentally these norms coincide well with communal norms because I'm a reasonably "well-adjusted" individual, but there's a reason I whitelist instead of using Fediblock: Fediblock is somebody else's list of servers that they personally find offensive. Looking at the list it seems to coincide well with what I find offensive, but I want to be the sole arbiter of who I give time to, and I think therein lies the real power of federated platforms: communities of consensus grow/split/merge/etc completely organically and in sync with the memetic evolution of the node administrators.

If you believe the earth is flat, go nuts. Or if you don't but you want to share the proof of why they're wrong, you can do that too. Or perhaps you don't want to have them in your life at all. You can have all of these experiences equally well on a federated platform. People can form the communities they want to be in and be responsible for the growth of those communities in ways that are impossible with a corporation calling the shots.

...or a centralized platform in general, regardless of commercialization. A friend and I were discussing the possibility of running a federated platform for our country. It sounded like a cool idea at first, but as I thought about it I realized: there are neo-Nazis in my country. I don't want to engage with them at all. But I do believe that if we ran a national platform that as citizens they would be entitled to participate, however stupid their views. Therefore I abandoned the project. I may believe they're entitled to public services as human beings and citizens, but I don't want to give them a platform to spread their message. As long as my server is governed purely by my personal norms, I can in good conscience refuse service to them with no other justification than I don't want to and it's my server.