In short i just jumped into the whole Mastodon blocking drama and am somewhat disappointed to see it as childish as reddit’s power mod drama. Accelerated by the fact that a Limit/Mute option exist just fine, i wonder why Block/Defederation is an option at all. It only moves power from the user to admins without anything in return. With just Mute, as far as i can tell, one still wouldn’t have to look on certain instances, but could interact/whitelist certain individuals and we’d get rid of the multi account requirement overnight. So why isn’t it that way?
Edit: For those annoyed by the same siloing issues, look into ATProto. Bluesky may be a big unknown, but the protocol itself looks a lot more promising in terms of user freedom.
No I think you’ve been misled as to how this place works or have misinterpreted information you’ve recieved. This statement seems to imply that the Fediverse is some sort of free speech haven where people can do whatever they want and say whatever they want, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Fediverse is not some decentralized free-speech network where servers work together to thwart censorship and user freedom is paramount (seen plenty of articles and videos claiming this or at the very least implying it).
The Fediverse is a collection of individually run websites which run a software using a decentralized ptotocol to talk to each other. These websites are individually run either by individual people, organizations, or companies, each instance on it’s own is not that fundamentally different to classic social media, but the fact that they can communicate with each other in a decentralized manner is what makes it unique and also more powerful. However it’s important not to forget the fact that each one of these sites are owned and operated independently and it is the choice of those site owners whether to federate or not with certain instances or ban users from participating or appearing in their instance. The decentralized or user choice aspect is that a user on an instance that has defederated or banned them, can simply go to another instance that they think fits them better, or they can host their own and call the shots themselves (within reason).
Some people may not like this top down moderation system, but in all honesty it’s the only method that really works. True free speech sites are horrible to be on because the loudest and most angry people rule those places and attack anyone who even slightly disagrees with them (look at 4chan and kiwifarms), that mentality hurts the appeal of a space, and so people gravitate away from spaces like that and towards spaces which exclude such content and have rules and some amount of censorship.
I like to emphasize " if both wish to".
If that’s included in your view, then what’s the point of using a unified protocol? At that point we’re more backwards than just using a SSO for everything.
You’re probably right on me completely misidentifying the fediverse for what it is, as i expected something like resources shared forums for everyone, but got greeted by admin drama as soon as leaving lemmy for a second. In that sense the fediverse really got a PR issue and users here acting high and mighty to someone not getting their perfect system truly isn’t helping it.
Gonna wait for bluesky to play out. ATproto seems a lot more than what i initially expected from activitypub.
Your problem is that you’re still seeing the platform as ‘controlled by users’, which isn’t how top down moderation works, the sites/instances are controlled by the ones who own them, they are the ones who call the shots and it is their job to enforce the rules and their choice to choose to kick someone or a site out of their circle.
A user does not have a say in this anymore than they have a say in other moderative decisions on the site. If a user’s desire to interact with the other instance goes against their home instance’s desire they have the option of migrating elsewhere or start their own. The fediverse is about having options of different platforms that can communicate with other platforms, not catering to free speech and user choice demands. The whole thing is still up to the individual sites and the people that run them, and they are not obligated to do anything for users (many will gladly put you in your place if you try) who they are graciously allowing to use their service.