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).