Not sure why this is light grey ("downvoted") -- it's a legit question.
Edit: fuck it maybe I'll setup an instance for people similar to me and see what happens. I don't buy fully in to either side and it's hard to find social groups that feel similarly.
People really seem to completely miss the whole concept of a federated ecosystem, Mastodon is just a tool, like vBulletin, the whole point of it is that there isn't a "Mastodon" that announces things.
>it's generally seen as an imposition on people's time to ask a question that could be readily answered by clicking through to the site in question and having a look
Anyone remember when Gab had the biggest Mastodon instance by far, by user numbers, but all the Mastodon indexes were pretending it didn't even exist? The myth of the Fediverse as some libertarian promised land free from censorship and heavy handed control is just farcical.
In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would not be free speech. (Gab disabled federation, so it is not actually part of the fediverse anymore: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012558.) Gab still exists as a service running on free and open source code derived from Mastodon because Mastodon is AGPLv3. Anyone who wants to sign up for Gab can just do that.
>In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would not be free speech...
I think if ypu're claiming to provide an index, it kind of behoves you to index everything you're supposed to be indexing. Not leave huge sections out because you don't like them. Imagine publishing a business directory where you didn't list the Jewish or black owned businesses... or printing a dictionary but leaving out all the words that began with a letter you didn't like.
Yes. No-one who believes in free speech should be "forcing" you to make good those omissions. But they're prefectly entitled to question the value of your 'publication' if you don't.
If you want to create a list of social networks that includes Mastodon instances and Gab together, go for it. But there is no reason a list of Mastodon instances needs to include a service that is not a Mastodon instance.
>Gab isn't an instance of Mastodon.
>Anyone remember when Gab had the biggest Mastodon instance by far...
BTW --My politics are polar opposite to Gab's. But if you really believe in free speech, you shouldn't just defend it for people you agree with.
Gab, after its backend switch, has always been a fork of Mastodon instead of a stock implementation. Some Mastodon instances exercised their free speech (free association) rights by blocking Gab afterward, and some websites exercised their right to free speech by choosing not to mention Gab. Other Mastodon instances did not block Gab, and there were also websites that listed Gab alongside other fediverse services.
The owner of Gab later exercised his free speech rights when he decided to remove Mastodon's federation feature from Gab, turning Gab back to a single-instance monolithic social network like Twitter. By doing this, Gab exited the fediverse and no longer met the criteria for inclusion on websites that list fediverse services. Of course, there are websites that list social networks in general, which do include Gab.
> But if you really believe in free speech, you shouldn't just defend it for people you agree with.
Promoting or hosting content from Gab on a website is not a necessary condition for exercising free speech. This is because free speech includes free association, and website owners can opt to exercise their free speech rights by choosing not to promote or host content from Gab. The owner of Gab also exercised his free speech right by changing Gab to not interoperate with other Mastodon instances and fediverse services. As far as every party in this situation is concerned, the exercise of free speech has been upheld.
While it is no longer possible to host a Mastodon instance, it's still possible to create a website that lists Gab alongside anything you want. If none of the existing websites have the content you want to see, go ahead and exercise your free speech right to make one yourself.
I have problems controlling my snark at times, but this is how any libertarian idea should be viewed.
But also to counter that, why do people think that libertarianism encodes the right to an audience, and serving up convenience and an easy to use system (that's much more capitalism oriented). You're free to host your own mastodon server and connect with any server you like and that will accept you, and that the government has not right to block this communication.
Of course this is where I go back to disparaging libertarians as try to hold the opposing viewpoints of absolute property rights and that you should let them your server in defiance of your property rights.