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If we ever aspire to become a serious alternative to corporate platforms we can’t continue with this behavior

So true. Reminds me of the issue where there was a debate on calling a ‘Post’ a ‘Toot’. Someone mentioned that people are talking about the Fediverse in the European Parliament. If we continue this way, I see the Fediverse as where only ‘hardcore’ folks will stick to it in the name of ‘freedom from corporate control’. Note that the majority of average users don’t not care about ‘corporate control’ as much as you or I do.

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are already wary of the shit show this can become.

I’m not surprised.

Other instances lying on their reason of defederating. Wow color me shocked.


You won't change their minds, especially on Mastodon instances. They are TWITter "refugees" who were mad that their moderation standards were not met.

To make matters worse is that they don't know how fedi works.

Multiple times my own instance was listed as "Federates with bigots"
Hey jackass sorry I don't (and will never) use the same block list as you.

Whatever I mostly post on my instance is viewable for anyone to see.

@Wander This is my biggest problem with the Fediverse. It's a nice concept, but it's all too easy to run people off for no reason and for abusive admins to nuke anything they feel like.

Unfortunately email does have similar problems, but it's largely behind the scenes. For example, Google is the largest email provider by a large margin. If Google decides it doesn't like your domain, your mail doesn't get delivered. Plenty of email providers and ISPs also block certain IP ranges merely for being residential IPs. Good luck hosting your own mail server.

@Wander Knee jerk reactions are an issue yeah.

Usually when reports come in I'll do a initial judgement (i.e. hide post/mark it sensitive) and reach out to come to a solution.

Thankfully, more often than not I've had the pleasure of reaching out to users willing to learn/listen to differences in etiquette from what they were used to.

That dialogue is important to foster a good community, instant vilification only leads to unnecessary harm. (There are some exceptions of course, i.e. people posting CP/Zoo, that's an instant ban/suspension, but that's still only banning the user and not the instance, I can't monitor 24/7 and I don't expect others to, the closest thing I might do is set up a bot to basically hold/hide posts until human review)

@Wander @mastodonmigration “If we ever aspire to become a serious alternative to corporate platforms”

Well, that’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Do we aspire to become a “serious alternative” to corporate platforms? I suspect many of us do not. And even among those of us who do, many likely have very different ideas about what a “serious alternative” might look like.

I have no problem with the Fediverse consisting of several entirely isolated and mutually unfederated parts, as it already does today, and I see instances defederating as part of the dynamic nature of changing relationships among the disparate islands in the Fediverse archipelago, even if those shifting alliances mean breaking connections among individuals. The Fediverse encompasses everyone using ActivityPub, not just those of us on instances that subscribe to the Mastodon Server Covenant.

The only way to have a “serious alternative” to corporate platforms is to recognize that the Fediverse is not, will not, and cannot be a uniform, united entity. Just like individuals and states, islands in the Fediverse are constantly renegotiating their diplomatic relations with other islands. Sure, this means that individuals may see their connections to people on other islands severed, but individuals in the Fediverse have agency, and I consider it a strength of the seriousness of the Fediverse that with that agency comes the responsibility to manage one’s own information and connections.

The patronizing approach of corporate media to individual “users” is what needs to be replaced. People are so used to the us-vs-them approach of users and corporate owners, that they mistakenly bring that mindset to the Fediverse. There is no THEM in the Fediverse. There is just US.
Some of us volunteer our time to write code. Some of us volunteer our time to run instances. Some of us volunteer to moderate instances. Some of us donate money to help support instances. Some of us engage with people. Some of us write fascinating articles. Some of us find and boost interesting posts. Some of us are readers. But nowhere in all of those individuals is a “them”.

If individuals feel that people losing connections due to defederation is a problem, the solution is not to rail against defederation, but rather for those individuals to identify how they would like maintain their connections in the inevitable and, I would argue, desirable dynamic of shifting alliances, and to then implement those solutions in code.

The serious alternative that the Fediverse offers to commercial platforms is the concept of individual agency, respect, and responsibility as a replacement for Owners and Users.

@Wander I know of a situation where followbots made by trolls appeared on Ukrainian Mastodon instance claiming to be "Ukraine Nazi".

This was an attack on open registrations server because trolls knew moderators were offline due to outage, but admin had a lot of trouble asking other instances to lift defederations afterwards, and I have personally seen fediblock posts saying to not hesitate and block by domain (though person who posted it was nice to edit post when I pointed out misunderstanding)