I don't even want to hear about free speech. You aren't entitled to someone else's attention. Trolling is not a Constitutional right. You want to do that, spin up your own instance.
And certainly, someone could start a free-speech-anarchist instance with all pest controls off. For mastodon.social, though, I think they have a real responsibility to crack down on this shit.
The right to abuse is not about freedom. It silences people. It restricts freedom and expression—it never enhances it.
@csilverman The problem is the lack of transparency. Gargron doesn't make it apparent to new users that he's blocking big chunks of the Fediverse.
@sonya @csilverman oh, m.s is blocking some instances? #til
@abackstrom @sonya Curious, how do you know this? On what grounds is he blocking them?
I couldn't find a Mastodon CoC anywhere. I found this (https://mastodon.social/terms) which, unfortunately, doesn't have anything close to a CoC at all.
I realize that they're still trying to get all their ducks in order and legal docs take time, but having a clear "no abuse" policy seems pretty important, especially given that rampant abuse is the reason why a lot of us are here.
@csilverman @abackstrom here's some background on this:
1) https://community.highlandarrow.com/notice/816385
2) https://community.highlandarrow.com/notice/807252
(partisan sources but still good for getting up to speed)
I didn't realize how much of the Fediverse was blocked from .social until I switched to Maly because .social was struggling with bear the traffic. Then I was pissed that this wasn't made clear up-front.
@abackstrom @csilverman IIRC the blocked and/or sandboxed instances are shitposter.club, freezepeach.xyz, gs.smuglo.li, and community.highlandarrow.com
but there may be more that are lower-volume so I'm not aware of them in general, or that I'm forgetting at the moment
@csilverman @abackstrom to be absolutely explicit, I think any instance admin should be able to block whatever other instances they want – but they should also be totally transparent about it with new users, so that people know what they're signing up for
@sonya @csilverman @abackstrom
Agree. A simple 'does not federate with' or 'only federates with' (like awoo.space states) on the about would be fine.
What about existing users though? I don't want to have to abandon my account & all its history if, in the future, the admin of my server has a falling out with the admin of another server? (Not that I think that's likely with tchncs.de but if I'd picked another server I might not have been so lucky).
@frankiesaxx @sonya @abackstrom If I'm understanding how this works, as long as you personally aren't banned, you'd still keep your followers and posts—they'd just remain on whatever server you had an account on, and wouldn't be visible to the server that blocked you. That would suck, but I'm not sure how to avoid that.
