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> Threads must moderate users, not servers Why does threads have to do that? Server blocks are incredibly common in the fediverse and last time this came up a

> Threads must moderate users, not servers Why does threads have to do that? Server blocks are incredibly common in the fediverse and last time this came up as a complaint people defended this religiously as being just how stuff works. The server I'm on has an incredibly large blocklist and it's not even entirely clear what it blocks given that half the blocks themselves are censored: https://hachyderm.io/about https://hachyderm.io/about This is exactly what one would expect to find if the fediverse can't agree on shared rules.

whatshisface 3y ago
I think the issues with server blocks are mainly related to the way administrators use them to settle personal beefs or play a nuclear negotiation game with other admins who they want to impose their moderation policies on. "Moderate my way or you'll all be defederated." Mastodon administrators aren't "faceless corporations," they are people with as many personality flaws and weaknesses as your coworkers or any other group of techies you didn't get to choose to work with. Some of them are Machiavellian narcissists, who want to decide how the entire network functions - and they're not afraid to use their ability to sever social connections with unaware users as a negotiating tool.
- phoe-krk 3y ago
  > Moderate my way or you'll all be defederated. And it's a feature, too. The users trust their administration team with their presence on a given instance and actually defer their moderation choices to them - something that's impossible on other, centralized platforms. If a moderator of an instance serves the moderation wishes of the users of that instance, and everyone on that instance is happy, then what's the problem?
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    You might be imagining a server full of spam and Nazis, totally unmoderated except for compliance with basic laws, when you think of a server block. I am talking about a case such as where an admin had an argument with one user on another server and then blocked the entire server as a negotiation tactic to force the user's admin to ban them. The users on the Machiavellian admin's server didn't know this was happening because server blocks show up in the form of mysterious disappeances of some of your friends. The free market argument for the belief that everything an admin does is necessarily good if they still have any users left after they do it is flawed, because users do not know all that much about what their admins are doing, and don't have a way of knowing whether a server they're thinking about switching to is better or worse.
    - camgunz 3y ago
      You can imagine all kinds of scenarios, but it comes down to "are users of server X forced to handle content from server Y". It can be both good and bad, but either way the Fediverse chose "no".
      - whatshisface 3y ago
        If the reason for "not forcing them to handle content from server Y" is that the admin of server X had a name calling spat with an individual user on server X, the fact that the fediverse makes instance admins into miniature dukes and dutchesses, complete with wars and Honor, is an unalloyed pain. ;-)
        camgunz 3y ago
        Again it doesn't really matter because it's just the way it works, but it's also a feature for server admins. Imagine being harassed by someone, or imagine that person harassing your users, blah blah blah. Is there some hypothetical where this feature is abused in a super petty way? Sure. Welcome to all features in all software.
        whatshisface 3y ago
        Let's take a gun as an example. You could use it to shoot a bad guy, but there are a lot of times where the person who got shot was a good guy, and a lot of other times it's by accident. The same goes for moderation - you can justify handing out the power to cut off connections between entire communities to random people by thinking of the ways it could be used for good but it doesn't get you out of dealing with the ways it can be used to harm.
        camgunz 3y ago
        You could say the exact same thing if federation could be forced. You can make whatever facile analogy you want; my point has always been there's bad scenarios no matter what.

whatshisface 3y ago

I think the issues with server blocks are mainly related to the way administrators use them to settle personal beefs or play a nuclear negotiation game with other admins who they want to impose their moderation policies on. "Moderate my way or you'll all be defederated." Mastodon administrators aren't "faceless corporations," they are people with as many personality flaws and weaknesses as your coworkers or any other group of techies you didn't get to choose to work with. Some of them are Machiavellian narcissists, who want to decide how the entire network functions - and they're not afraid to use their ability to sever social connections with unaware users as a negotiating tool.

phoe-krk 3y ago
> Moderate my way or you'll all be defederated. And it's a feature, too. The users trust their administration team with their presence on a given instance and actually defer their moderation choices to them - something that's impossible on other, centralized platforms. If a moderator of an instance serves the moderation wishes of the users of that instance, and everyone on that instance is happy, then what's the problem?
- whatshisface 3y ago
  You might be imagining a server full of spam and Nazis, totally unmoderated except for compliance with basic laws, when you think of a server block. I am talking about a case such as where an admin had an argument with one user on another server and then blocked the entire server as a negotiation tactic to force the user's admin to ban them. The users on the Machiavellian admin's server didn't know this was happening because server blocks show up in the form of mysterious disappeances of some of your friends. The free market argument for the belief that everything an admin does is necessarily good if they still have any users left after they do it is flawed, because users do not know all that much about what their admins are doing, and don't have a way of knowing whether a server they're thinking about switching to is better or worse.
  - camgunz 3y ago
    You can imagine all kinds of scenarios, but it comes down to "are users of server X forced to handle content from server Y". It can be both good and bad, but either way the Fediverse chose "no".
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      If the reason for "not forcing them to handle content from server Y" is that the admin of server X had a name calling spat with an individual user on server X, the fact that the fediverse makes instance admins into miniature dukes and dutchesses, complete with wars and Honor, is an unalloyed pain. ;-)
      - camgunz 3y ago
        Again it doesn't really matter because it's just the way it works, but it's also a feature for server admins. Imagine being harassed by someone, or imagine that person harassing your users, blah blah blah. Is there some hypothetical where this feature is abused in a super petty way? Sure. Welcome to all features in all software.
        whatshisface 3y ago
        Let's take a gun as an example. You could use it to shoot a bad guy, but there are a lot of times where the person who got shot was a good guy, and a lot of other times it's by accident. The same goes for moderation - you can justify handing out the power to cut off connections between entire communities to random people by thinking of the ways it could be used for good but it doesn't get you out of dealing with the ways it can be used to harm.
        camgunz 3y ago
        You could say the exact same thing if federation could be forced. You can make whatever facile analogy you want; my point has always been there's bad scenarios no matter what.