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Comment by toofy | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure this is really an issue when we consider that there are gobs and gobs of completely unmoderated instances.

You might be correct, but considering there are so many totally unmoderated instances and that anyone can easily attach their own instance to the network and have the exact level of moderation they deem appropriate for their community, im guessing it’s really just a matter of getting people away from Twitter, and the concern I hear about by far the most often is the fact that you can’t bring your followers with you if you choose to change instances.

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Completely unmoderated is also not the right balance. I wouldn't want to be part of a completely unmoderated instance. Moderation is tricky. I am suggesting only that the most politically charged forms of moderation be toned down.

Changing usernames when you change instances is also a very significant problem. Are there proposals for addressing that?

Your username generally has to change if you don't like your email provider. Either that, or you host your own (ex: email@mydomain.blah).

That is a point though: moderators change over time and a moderation team you like one year may be grossly different 5-years from now. To "leave" to a new instance means to give up your old identity entirely.

Your username has nothing to do with your email address. Usernames take the form of @myusername@instance.domain.

You lose followers when you change instances but you can set a flag on your old account that points to the new one.

> Completely unmoderated is also not the right balance. I wouldn't want to be part of a completely unmoderated instance. Moderation is tricky.

I think you just summed up precisely what makes federated instances the best solution we currently have available. As your comment shows, there is no perfect balance for everyone--no matter what kind of moderation we put in place, there will always be that group who will be unhappy.

With federation, if you think you'll be unable or unwilling to follow an instance's code-of-conduct, you simply hop onto a different instance which better fits your personal expectations; or if you are very very particular, you just toss up your own instance et voilà, you're talking to those on the Mastodon network with your own ideal of a perfectly balanced system.

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