[echelon]

Mastodon instance operators are electing not to federate with other instances that federate with third party instances they dislike. They're holding other parties and parts of the ecosystem hostage over their own ideologies.

A good analogy is that some instance operators are acting like the Reddit moderators that ban users with post histories in communities they dislike.

This is why p2p is superior to federation. Unless there's a law being broken, nobody should have control over what you see or who you talk to. Your attention and interests belong to you.

[vidarh]

Nobody forces you to use those instances with policies on defederation you don't like. You can run a single person instance if you so choose (I do) and ignore most of the drama.

Meanwhile people are also free to choose to give some degree of control to instance admins because a lot of people want a nice walled garden but don't want to be forced to tend to the walls.

[echelon]

> Nobody forces you to use those instances with policies on defederation you don't like.

If you don't want to be all alone, you shouldn't have to opt in to becoming a part of the hivemind. You can be contrarian or a minority or whatever without presenting a threat to the larger group. You don't have to agree in order to coexist meaningfully and peacefully.

Companies censor because it benefits the bottom line. Reddit moderators and the Fediverse have no excuse except perhaps that being lazy and aggressive with bans is the easiest policy to implement. Surely I hope that's the rationale and that it's not simply one of enjoying power over others.

Where are the censorship police in public parks and libraries, asking people to leave? These spaces are perfectly fine and nobody is being harmed in them. There's no reason our internet deserves special padded walls, memory holes, and horse blinders.

Remember that just twenty years ago, democrats and liberals were the protectors of free speech. The pendulum swung to the right (and it'll probably swing back left again).

Keep communication lanes open and be civil. If you want to block someone, do it yourself and don't make a big public deal over it. It's not good to win points by building platform- and infrastructure-level censorship tools. That's why this is so upsetting. Tools that "protect everyone" today might be turned against everyone tomorrow.

The more chances for people that disagree and don't see eye to interact non-confrontationally, the better. Banning and score keeping are not the way.

[vidarh]

> If you don't want to be all alone, you shouldn't have to opt in to becoming a part of the hivemind.

You don't need to be all alone, you just need to be mindful that maximising freedom for all includes the freedom for others to choose not to want to associate with you if you insist on being disruptive, and what different groups find disruptive varies, and you can not expect everyone to voluntarily subject themselves to disruption, and in many cases harassment and threats.

You don't need to opt in to a "hivemind". You just need to find a community that does not consider your speech offensive, or create your own. The Fediverse has communities that span the political and social spectrums, from the furthest left to actual Nazis, many of which certainly very much refuse to engage with each other but all of which still are able to exist and exercise their speech to those willing to listen.

> and the Fediverse

"The Fediverse" does not censor. Individual instances and sometimes groups of instances censor. Nobody stops you from hosting your own discussions and federating with those who are willing to consent to engage with you and saying whatever you want.

What you have no right to expect of others is for them to yield and put you in charge of what they're forced to listen to.

> Where are the censorship police in public parks and libraries, asking people to leave? These spaces are perfectly fine and nobody is being harmed in them. There's no reason our internet deserves special padded walls, memory holes, and horse blinders.

Try to strip off completely in most parks, or shout in the library, or going up to random people and harassing them with speech they find threatening or offensive, and you'll see that every space have community norms that are enforced, and will censor you if you act in ways incompatible with what we've decided is appropriate for that space even if you're entirely free to act the exact same way elsewhere.

Protecting the freedom of all also means enabling the creation of spaces with restrictions.

> Remember that just twenty years ago, democrats and liberals were the protectors of free speech. The pendulum swung to the right (and it'll probably swing back left again). That's why this platform- and infrastructure-level censorship is so upsetting. Tools that "protect" today might be turned against you tomorrow.

This maximalist view of wanting us all to carry speech we don't want to has nothing to do with free speech, but about a desire to force us to listen, and it has a deeply authoritarian undertone to it.

I'm all for broad and strong protections for people to say what they want, but not to be forced to let them do so in my own space.

[worrycue]

> Mastodon instance operators are electing not to federate with other instances that federate with third party instances they dislike

If they want to end up alone disconnected from the rest of the network that’s their prerogative? Users of their instance should just bail.

[JohnFen]

> They're holding other parties and parts of the ecosystem hostage over their own ideologies.

Is anyone really holding anyone hostage when the "hostages" can easily leave that instance and join one or more friendlier ones instead?