[dahwolf]

If only you were so lucky, Mastodon admins are way worse.

Not only might they mod at will in the way reddit mods do, Mastodon admins take it several steps further by bothering other instance mods about their moderation. And then yet another step: whom they federate with. They'll form little secret discord channels where they gather and form cancellation pacts on entire instances, based on a whim.

[smoldesu]

Having seen Spez, Elon and Dorsey's recent behavior, I'm not convinced the power tripping is any better on the commercialized side of things.

[undeadaura]

Is this not one of the primary advantages of federation and decentralized networks though? I think that there's a strong argument to be made that Everything networks have a deleterious effect on the collective human psyche because we're simply not designed to contemplate or accommodate so many radically different worldviews at once. Instead of creating societies with a strong emphasis on individual rights we exist in a pressure cooker of mental illness and anger amplified by algorithms that is pushing is closer and closer toward regulating one another out of existence.

Freedom of association is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have and democratic, free market societies can only flourish as long as we all agree to leave one another alone. You or I may not fully agree on the utility of say gay marriage or vaccines or religion or any number of cultural differences, but neither of us should be compelled to seriously entertain or fundamentally alter our way of being and thinking to please the other. This is how the old internet worked, the only reason we feel that it's impossible now is because we've been made to believe in totalizing systems of power that flatten and threaten to erase (by legal mandate or otherwise) different subcultures.