I'm seeing posts about other instances starting to just block mastodon.social because apparently they feel mastodon.social's admins aren't dealing with spam and/or bots quickly enough. Meanwhile, there's a lot of legitimate users on mastodon.social. With these broad server blocks, rampant screeching of not using CWs or alt descriptions on media, and the like, it's a small wonder half the folks I follow are feeling the need to initiate Bluesky filters. 1/2
Look, I get it, we want Mastodon, and the Fediverse in general, to be a great place for everyone of any persuasion, and yes, bots are a pain in the ass that must be controlled. But content policing to the point of blocking out large swaths of users or making users new to the platform feel bad for not following standard practices from their very first toot is not going to make them feel warm and fuzzy about the Fediverse. 2/2
People, and Americans in particular, are on edge right now. Many are looking for refuges from corporate and governmental bullshit. Is it really a good look to slam your windows shut because the new users is basically not wearing the proper color shirt?
This is why Linux on the desktop never gains traction, because most new users are apparently doing Linux wrong. Since Mastodon is the Linux of social media, I shouldn't be surprised at some of the attitude, I guess. 3/2 fin.
@thatjpwing I'd agree with the second toot that you wrote, but not the first one.
Beyond some of the not-very-great phrasing (rampant screeching), it does feel like some personal peeves are being lumped together and compared to an issue that many instances are having to grapple with: managing a large influx of spam, as well as reports and moderation around that.
There's a reason that many admins make the claim that features are only added when mastodon.social needs them. And mastodon.social is both the largest instance, and one of the few that has paid moderators.
Handling their spam problem shouldn't come out of our limited time, energy, and financial resources.
@thatjpwing Federation and Mastodon don't solve fundamental problems with social media: namely that of identity and identification of content. In fact, these make these problems much worse as a centralized scheme makes assigning identity much more straightforward. That's the sacrifice made for a system without a single point of control or failure. I suppose if messages were digitally signed they could originate from any server and be identifiable but most users want anonymity.