edgerunneralexis

We need to crowd source a common list of instances to block from users and mods across the network for instances to use, like people on Mastodon started doing. It was really effective. Defederation is really the only way to deal with / only check on users that sign up on instances that don't moderate them at all in order to harass others with impunity, since moderators can't effect users on s different instance and so it basically gives such users free reign. That's why IMHO defederation is a REALLY crucial tool to make this place livable, otherwise it'd be filled with trolls doing their thing with absolute impunity and there would be nothing mods, who are supposed to be the first line of defense for that kind of thing, could do,

So in terms of beehaw vs lemmy.world I would be on instance 3 - I can see and participate both, their defederation from each other doesn't affect you, it only affects the users of beehaw or Lemmy.world

This aspect is really crucial for people to understand, so I wanted to emphasize it. This is what gives the Fediverse it's hyper free nature, where if you don't like which instances your instance has chosen tp block, you can always switch to a third instance and have access to both your old instance (thus solving the network effect) and the new one (thus giving you freedom of association). This sort of connected-by-default design choice (I.e. using blacklists instead of whitelists) is also crucial for maintaining the general interconnectivity of the network thats crucial to its functioning.

Allowing instances to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist is actually a really bad idea. It makes the default not being federated with anything, which makes it far easier to create centralized isolated silos that it's hard to move off of while staying in contact with, and in general would just destroy the interconnected nature of the fediverse

Me neither lol. Posting kind of only makes sense when you're currently reading/rereading the series,and I'm not right now, so it's hard to come up with content.

The problem is that the entire point of instances is not just to spread the costs/load of hosting the network, but to allow people to find places where the culture and norms (and thus the moderation style and block lists) align with what they feel comfortable with, so they can rely on being able to find a place that will have a nice experience for them. For instance, I choose explicitly LGBTQ-friendly and anti authoritarian instances on the Fediverse. Automatically moving people around based on heuristics has the chance of really fucking that up for people. I don't want to wake up one morning and find myself on an instance that federates with whatever rightwing shithole instance will crop up in the next few months and have to avoid the platform or be harassed with dick pics and transphobia.

Additionally, having a centralized server for anything kind of defeats the point, no?

Allowing users to migrate as seamlessly as possible between instances is just an important part of making decentralization really effective too — it only really means something that it's possible to move to a different instance with a different culture and set of rules, norms, moderation style, etc, without losing access to the network as a whole if it's easy to do so, because only then does it become a real possibility for counterbalancing the power of any given instance.

I hope so! I'm definitely going to do my best to promote Lemmy on Reddit in those niche communities. I wish I had the time and personality to actually start the communities I want to see on Lemmy, but sadly I don't.

The thing is that there aren't significant direct production costs per user for technology services like there are for material items, just overall maintenance costs that only scale noticeably with a large increase of new users, so it would actually be possible to pay for infrastructure and salary costs and all of that with just a percentage of your overall userbase being subscribed and subsidizing the rest. This is actually a monetization strategy that's working out for some privacy focused services like ProtonMail. So it would be necessary to convince some users to sign up but not necessarily all of them.

Is there a way to view each instances block list? If not it should be implemented into the back end somewhere, once again to allow freedom of choice.

Also this is a really great idea, maybe you should make an issue requesting that feature on the Lemmy github!!

Yeah!! Mastodon has that and its very useful!

Users should not be left to "fend for themselves" against abuse/hate/racism having a platform.

This is precisely the point I've been trying to make elsewhere in the thread. Maybe some people want total individual freedom/responsibility to block or not, but most of us want to find an instance community that will protect us and serve our interests by dealing with that for us, so we don't have to go through that mental health damage constantly.

That's a really good idea! If there's anything I feel I'm good at, it's communication, and selling people on ideas!