> My experience is that most digital free speech absolutionists just seem to be upset that they were banned from Twitter for promoting some kind of QAnon conspiracy or for hate speech.
Well, they are the loud and annoying ones but it's easy to miss others for the noise the unreasonable people are causing
> I personally think the ActivityPub/Mastodon approach of "let server moderators decide which servers can't interact with their servers anymore" approach is very reasonable. If Gab and Truth Social want to federate, they can, and if you want to set up your own server without blacklists you're completely free to.
The moderation of instance feed is just fine and required, that's how instance gets its own identity.
What I disagree with is mods having rights to block what people can subscribe to. That forces making own instances just not to be on whim on the admins's political views which is far too high barrier to entry for most.
There is also lack of any identity transfer, if server goes to shit you can move out sure, but none of your subscribers will automatically follow. I'd like something like "here is my DNS entry with public key, this redirects to whichever current server I'm on" so you don't need to host your own instance if you just want to have alias that's not tied to, again, admin's whims.
Moderators blocking other servers is an essential part of the federated ecosystem in my opinion. When another account (or, with many accounts, another server) is causing tons of moderation reports, blocking that server is essential. Allowing the content to appear anyway will cause boosts, reactions, and then more moderation reports. Moderators are the ones who have to deal with all of the crap being flung into the ether so it makes sense to give them the power to choose what servers they want to bother moderating for.
This is why server selection is part of Mastodon. It's also why Mastodon servers either fall in the category of "heavily moderated" or "free for all shouting match that ends up blacklisted everywhere": servers where moderators don't bother will attract the worst people and end up being too toxic for moderated servers to deal with. Most servers are run as volunteer projects.
As for moving accounts: when you move servers, your followers will actually follow your account. It takes a while for everyone's accounts to receive the redirects, but followers are transferred. You do lose old posts, though.
Nostr seems to use the model you're describing. Your digital identity on there is independent from any kind of instance. You (or your relay of choice) is also supposed to do all the moderation necessary. Nostr also allows verification based on your domain, for better or worse.
> Moderators blocking other servers is an essential part of the federated ecosystem in my opinion. When another account (or, with many accounts, another server) is causing tons of moderation reports, blocking that server is essential. Allowing the content to appear anyway will cause boosts, reactions, and then more moderation reports. Moderators are the ones who have to deal with all of the crap being flung into the ether so it makes sense to give them the power to choose what servers they want to bother moderating for.
I meant it in "moderators control what shows to people but if you subscribe to someone on the other server you still get their updates" way. Then for the rest it could be AND kind of deal, if the server-blocked user you're answering is blocked they don't see it unless they also subscribed to them.
Well, they are the loud and annoying ones but it's easy to miss others for the noise the unreasonable people are causing
> I personally think the ActivityPub/Mastodon approach of "let server moderators decide which servers can't interact with their servers anymore" approach is very reasonable. If Gab and Truth Social want to federate, they can, and if you want to set up your own server without blacklists you're completely free to.
The moderation of instance feed is just fine and required, that's how instance gets its own identity.
What I disagree with is mods having rights to block what people can subscribe to. That forces making own instances just not to be on whim on the admins's political views which is far too high barrier to entry for most.
There is also lack of any identity transfer, if server goes to shit you can move out sure, but none of your subscribers will automatically follow. I'd like something like "here is my DNS entry with public key, this redirects to whichever current server I'm on" so you don't need to host your own instance if you just want to have alias that's not tied to, again, admin's whims.