[vidarh]

A centralised instance of any kind is a non-starter for a lot of those of us who have moved to Mastodon. And, yes, the admins of that 30k instance is able to do all kinds, and their users are able to leave if they do. I'd be all for improvements around signing and encryption, but not at the cost of centralisation (for my part, I run my own Mastodon server, but is also tinkering with my own ActivityPub implementation).

[denysvitali]

Care to elaborate what could be the reason why a centralized instance is a non-starter? It looks like Mastodon's approach is yes decentralized, but soffers from the same censorship issues like Twitter - instances are often blacklisted on Mastodon

[vidarh]

Because if I wanted that just stay with Twitter, and that's the attitude of a lot of us.

I run my own instance. I can't do that on Twitter. If I get tired of it, I can move to another instance and most of my followers will migrate automatically (not all, yet, because not all ActivityPub software supports the move mechanism, but when I moved to my personal instance 80%+ already moved automatically, and it'll go up).

Instances can be blacklisted on Mastodon, but have far less of an impact unless you're so particularly abuse that a large portion of the network blocks you.

If you don't provide means to do robust blocking and moderation that will be another reason for people to stay away. Mastodon has these "issues" because it is what users want. Anyone can say exactly what they want, but anyone can also choose to block you, or your instance, if they don't want to listen. Gab is an example that is on Mastodon and is widely blocked because most people don't want to interact with them, and that's our right, but they're still free to talk to those who want to deal with them.

[ilyt]

Users choosing to block someone vs server admins deciding to decide for their users to block whole other server.

It would be fine if it was just "don't pull this server to public feeds", but as it is now it just repeats the problem of giving moderators too much power over users.

[vidarh]

It can be just "don't pull this server to public feeds. In fact it can be a lot more granular. You can:

* "Silence" it - makes posts invisible on your instance for everyone not following them * "Suspend" - removes all content. * Reject media files. Avoids downloading media files locally from this instance. * Reject reports from instances that are abusing the reporting.

But limiting an instance is often insufficient because it doesn't stop your users from then subsequently replying etc. and indirectly dragging the conversation onto your server, and doesn't stop the remote instances users from harassing your users. And so it's often users pushing for harsher blocking.

In any case on Mastodon people have choice - if you don't like your local admins mod decisions, you can move elsewhere and take your followers with you, so if anything mods have far less power on Mastodon than most places.

[ilyt]

> In any case on Mastodon people have choice - if you don't like your local admins mod decisions, you can move elsewhere and take your followers with you, so if anything mods have far less power on Mastodon than most places.

The "I now have to run my own server, and tell my followers to move with me" is kinda the blocker here

>In any case on Mastodon people have choice - if you don't like your local admins mod decisions, you can move elsewhere and take your followers with you, so if anything mods have far less power on Mastodon than most places.

The amount of power they have is same or even bigger, just over smaller amount of users.

[vidarh]

> The "I now have to run my own server, and tell my followers to move with me" is kinda the blocker here

Not what I suggested. You have 3k+ instances to pick from before you need to opt to run your own. And Mastodon has built in functionality to move followers for you. Could be smoother, but it works - I've used it. Took me <1h from initiating the move until most of my followers were following my new account with no actions on their side.

> The amount of power they have is same or even bigger, just over smaller amount of users.

The very fact that people can move diminishes that power for any admin who cares about retaining users.

[denysvitali]

But that's not the reason you switched from Twitter to Mastodon right? Because as you're describing it, the problems are similar - although on a smaller scale.

The main difference is that with Mastodon it seems like you have a choice to move away from a rogue instance

[vidarh]

To me the problems being "on a smaller scale" makes them fundamentally different. On Twitter you're beholden to the moderation decisions of a single company. On Mastodon I'm not. That's a giant difference. The problems are not remotely comparable.

On top of that, once I moved, I found engagement was just way higher.

But the decentralised and open nature is the driver for me with Mastodon. Knowing that I can control my own experience, both in terms of moderation and in terms of being able to mix and match software which suits me (e.g. I plan to add ActivityPub support to my blog and use it for a comment section).

[ilyt]

Okay, but I don't want any wanker to moderate what I decide to watch. Public streams, sure, there are reasons for that, moderate away, but if the solution is "well, you really need to just run your own server infrastructure" that's a shitty solution

[denysvitali]

Thanks for your inputs!