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Comment by throwaway0x7E6 | Hacker News Reader

the people fleeing twitter over Musk's dedication to the freedom of speech will find themselves at home at mastadon, where problematic instances are defederated from - sometimes for as little as refusing to ban a particular problematic individual, and where developers are bullied into blacklisting those in their apps.

even late pre-Musk twitter was far more tolerant than mastadon. for example, any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network, I guarantee you that.

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> even late pre-Musk twitter was far more tolerant than mastadon. for example, any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network, I guarantee you that.

As a user of the network in general though, this doesn't have to matter to you. You can sign up on an instance that defederates according to whichever rules you like (or on an instance that defederates nobody at all). You can still talk to the rest of the network just fine, in addition to talking to anybody other instances want to defederate. There's no silo, you don't have to pick a side.

You can even self-host your own single-user instance (or rent one, from e.g. https://masto.host/, although they've closed signups due to demand right now) and control federation directly. With that, the only people you won't be able to talk to are people & instances that decide to block you _personally_.

> any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network

If you are getting defederated by 90% of the network, isn't that maybe a strong indication that 90% don't want to hear what you have to say?

Freedom of speech is a protection against the government censoring you. It doesn't mean you get to spread hate and toxicity freely without consequence.

yea, that's what I'm saying - mastodon is the perfect fit for those people, so this is not an Eternal September kind of event.

No, it indicates only that the administrators of 90% of the network don't want others to hear what you have to say. If the admins don't want to hear you they'd use the block function.

In which case, somebody will set up an alternative server which doesn't block them, and people will move there. People who love the free market should _love_ Mastodon.

That doesn't follow from the fact that admin decisions don't reflect the will of the userbase. I'm not a fan of my state' laws about fishing licenses, but that doesn't mean I'll move to another state. Same for Mastodon users.

I expect clients that combine timelines from alt accounts using different servers to become the norm. Users get all the benefits, with more ability to opt out. If I've got Jim@alt.net on banning-instance, and Mike@tim.com on the banned instance, and their timelines are combined client-side, it's the best of both worlds.

If you don't trust and share ideals with your admin you are doing it wrong.

Let's say that you're right, and that 90% of Mastodon instances would want to block the Harry Potter lady. This isn't really true, they're pressured into doing this by ruthless activists, but let's pretend that the blockage is genuine and voluntary.

If that is true, it means Mastodon misaligns with probably some 90% of the political spectrum that would absolutely not want to take away her speech, regardless of whether people agree with her.

Which means...Mastodon is a far-left echo chamber. Which doesn't have to be bad, everybody deserves to have their place. I'm just saying it's not suitable for mainstream usage.

Wait.. why wouldn't the blocks be genuine and voluntary?? Instance admins are volunteers, often times literally the instance is on their hardware. If they didn't like it they can ban activists and defederate from activist instances.

Because an instance mod/admin can be socially pressured to join a ban party, or else be labeled as "fascist".

> any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network, I guarantee you that.

That sounds crazy. If my instance did that, I would immediately consider moving to another, more politically tolerant instance or just run my own to traverse the censorship issue entirely.

And the good thing about the fediverse is that a user has those options and isn’t at mercy of other peoples limited tolerance for freedom of speech.

> Musk's dedication to the freedom of speech

In his first letter to staff he said they need to focus on "banning trolls". Oof ow.

If it gained traction amongst the "general public" such niche ban reasons would probbaly become less common. And neutral federations would automatically emerge because at some point not every instance will bother to ban other random instances.

Refusing to ban queerphobic/antisemitic/racist users is by no means a niche reason for defederation.

My point is that most people don't care that Joanne K. Rowling is supposedly transphobic, and instead just like the Harry Potter books. So those instances would certainly not even think about banning Joanne K. Rowling or other instances that give her an account...

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