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Mastodon server operators sometimes complain that they don’t like to have to ban accounts and limit speech, but they have to do it, otherwise they’ll be cut off

Mastodon server operators sometimes complain that they don’t like to have to ban accounts and limit speech, but they have to do it, otherwise they’ll be cut off from federation. Control of federation is in the hands of a relatively small group of initial adopters, whose values and identities are unrepresentative of the global population in many respects.

DoctorOW 3y ago
This sounds like reference to Fediblock, which seems unfair since they explicitly shutdown to prevent this kind of thing: https://joinfediverse.wiki/FediBlock https://joinfediverse.wiki/FediBlock
WorldMaker 3y ago
There's no single "cabal" in "control" of federation. Federation is mostly "controlled" by drama and gossip engines, as the case in any truly distributed system. (It's still far more anarchic than "control" is the right word for.) Just about no one wants to be the target of great drama or huge gossip so there are definitely cultural mores and norms that collectively form to skip some of the more common cycles and some people just "obey them" without question. It's hard to call that "unrepresentative" of the general population when by definition organically-grown cultural norms reflect a cultures values. Sure, many of those norms are standardized and stabilized in "Code of Conduct" documents that individual instances post and mandate in their instance's internal moderation and that obviously then gets reflected in their external moderation as well, but that's still a distributed "vote with your feet" culture. The population on an instance with a strict Code of Conduct believes at least implicitly in that Code of Conduct or leaves. They've agreed to the Code of Conduct. It doesn't matter if there are only a "minority" of Codes of Conduct and those documents are mostly chosen by "fiat" by instance admins, if users don't believe in their instances' chosen Codes of Conduct they are free to leave to other instances.

DoctorOW 3y ago

This sounds like reference to Fediblock, which seems unfair since they explicitly shutdown to prevent this kind of thing: https://joinfediverse.wiki/FediBlock https://joinfediverse.wiki/FediBlock

WorldMaker 3y ago

There's no single "cabal" in "control" of federation. Federation is mostly "controlled" by drama and gossip engines, as the case in any truly distributed system. (It's still far more anarchic than "control" is the right word for.) Just about no one wants to be the target of great drama or huge gossip so there are definitely cultural mores and norms that collectively form to skip some of the more common cycles and some people just "obey them" without question. It's hard to call that "unrepresentative" of the general population when by definition organically-grown cultural norms reflect a cultures values. Sure, many of those norms are standardized and stabilized in "Code of Conduct" documents that individual instances post and mandate in their instance's internal moderation and that obviously then gets reflected in their external moderation as well, but that's still a distributed "vote with your feet" culture. The population on an instance with a strict Code of Conduct believes at least implicitly in that Code of Conduct or leaves. They've agreed to the Code of Conduct. It doesn't matter if there are only a "minority" of Codes of Conduct and those documents are mostly chosen by "fiat" by instance admins, if users don't believe in their instances' chosen Codes of Conduct they are free to leave to other instances.