[phoe-krk]

No, I'm imagining arbitrary servers. The admin's right to block a server still stands even over petty arguments like that, and it's the whole instance that will get to bear the consequences, with the admin being the one responsible for the block and the users being responsible for trusting that instance's administration team. That's the trust that Fediverse is actually built upon - everything else flows from there.

I'm not saying that everything an admin does is necessarily good if they have users left. I'm saying that if a user disagrees with something their admin does, they're free to reach out and dispute it, or switch instances. Some users won't notice, others won't care - but if they don't notice and don't care, then there's no problem to solve.

[whatshisface]

"If you don't like it, you can leave," is an argument with limited effectiveness. First, unless users spend a lot of time talking about servers, they won't know where to leave to. Remember the great migration, where we were all saying it didn't matter which server you picked because they all federated? It turns out it does, and they don't - and all the new users who were anxious about joining the "right community" were right!

Furthermore, if users did spend a lot of time talking about their admin's moderation, I guarantee it would come in the form of a lot of complaining, maybe even entitled-sounding complaining, without much deference to the admin's right to do what they want on the server they are, admittedly, paying for. There is no way for the community to figure out who's servers are good to be on without continually hashing out who is doing a good job, which means, in some cases, disapproving.

As for contacting your admin to say you think they're being petty... That is not likely to work! You'd probably just get yourself banned before having a chance to migrate your followers!

[phoe-krk]

> First, unless users spend a lot of time talking about servers, they won't know where to leave to.

You can literally see everyone's instance right next to their name on most Fediverse clients - I'm Michał "phoe" Herda, but also @[e-mail], which already gives people one more possibility to choose from as long as they see my posts pop up. Then, there's some independent instance browsers, and, finally, you can just ask a #question in a public post and ask for boosts.

> As for contacting your admin to say you think they're being petty... Do you think that would work?

Yes. I'm a mod on functional.cafe, we've had a few instances of our users contacting us with moderation questions and we've asked our users for feedback several times as well, and we've managed to resolve them to almost everyone's enjoyment. I'll probably repeat - if you can't trust your instance admin, then it's on you. There's no higher authority to appeal to, so quite literally the only option is "if you don't like it, you can leave", except you have hundreds of choices with distinct moderation policies.

It's the same as with great migration - if you ended up on an instance that doesn't resonate with you, then hopping to another one is even cheaper than it used to be (with the new "account moved to" feature that, AFAIR, wasn't there during the great migration).

Finding a good instance that suits you well isn't exactly cheap; you're not a product, meaning there's no one who makes money on you always having a good initial experience. That's the cost associated with the meaning of you being a person, not a product - you need to find your place in society, and there are instances as generalist, specialized, bland, and wicked as you can imagine for you to choose from.

[whatshisface]

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said finding a server with rational administration is not cheap. The competition - for those who can tolerate one-liner Twitter culture - is free.

[camgunz]

> finding a server with rational administration is not cheap

Sure it is: choose the server everyone else chose. We know exactly how all this stuff works out because we already hashed it out with email. Everyone will just use the equivalent of Gmail and you'll have to do what they say or they won't deliver your emails/posts.

Nilay Patel was right when he said the essential product of social media is content moderation (or a spam filter, whatever you want to call it). Some service will come along and say "we filter out 100% of the stuff 80% of you don't want" and that'll be that. Services/protocols that don't facilitate that will be replaced by those that do. Maybe it's hard to see now, but we're in the "overthrow our tyrannical overlords" phase of the internet cycle. Next up is "please someone make this safe/usable for mere mortals". Centralization etc. is a red herring.

[phoe-krk]

Your claim that Twitter has rational administration is a very bold one. (Which accidentally strengthens your confirmation of me "hitting the nail on the head".)

[whatshisface]

I was thinking of Bluesky when I said that, but it was true for Twitter for the use of the word rational I am talking about (keeping personal beefs out of it and at least trying to be impartial). Elon Musk has since made himself, and X, the perfect example of an instance admin on a power trip! That's a good analogy, actually. You might be on a moderation team with sensible feedback policies but the odds are very high of a new user ending up on the property, and following the rules, of a miniature Elon.

[phoe-krk]

I'm curious what Bluesky is going to evolve into, truth be told, especially once it begins to federate. It's privately owned, and as X has demonstrated, there is no admin that will allow technology to get in the way of the power trips they end up having, but Fediverse at least minimizes this damage due to its "defederate-and-move-on" architecture.