Christ almighty is there a ton of porn and lunacy on this instance's federated timeline. This may have been a mistake.

@evaristus Federated timelines are usually improved by you muting the whole instance. There are only a gew instances that show porn so its easy to block it all in one go.

But generally we dont silence instances at the server level unless they engage in harassment.

@freemo @evaristus Well this is interesting. I thought admins usually block instances that break their rules...and IIRC porn isn't welcome here...

@realcaseyrollins

Sort of. Most instances will have different rules for what they allow federation with vs what they allow locally.

We do not have a no-nudity rule, strictly speaking, but we do require it to be CW'ed

Our rules are elaborated on in our about page. But we federate with every instance that protects a users right to disengage (a rather strict definition of harassment). Locally we are more strict though.

I see no reason we should be dictating who our users want to follow or interact with though from other servers.

@evaristus

@freemo @realcaseyrollins

> I see no reason we should be dictating who our users want to follow or interact with though from other servers

But we just discovered a reason here, right? Plenty of people didn't even know how to mute domains until this thread. So there's a technical onus to having people decide on their own which domains to mute.

By activate moderation of fediverse connections, you're relieving the onus on users to deal with objectional content on their own, each time they see it.

@evaristus

Thats pretty much the age old argument of security vs liberty... But worse yet, it isnt really security as just laziness. Less work for the user at the sacrifice of liberty (preventing them from hearing objectionable material if they wish to).

It comes down to, are you willing to have someone dictate to you what is or is not objectionable just to save a few minutes of work?

@realcaseyrollins

@freemo @realcaseyrollins

But that's what moderation is. Are you suggesting this instance is unmoderated?

@evaristus

I am suggestion the instance is minimally moderated in only the most essential ways.

That means for federation purposes we garuntee ones right to disengage.

For the local instance we guarantee people will interact with each other reasonably respectfully.

Obviously the level of moderation we hold for our local users is somewhat stricter than what we impose on entire instances.

Of course everything is open for discussion. If you think this is a bad policy I suggest you open a topic in the moderation section of ur discourse instance and myself, other moderators, and users would be happy to discuss it and consider changing our current policy.

@realcaseyrollins

@freemo @realcaseyrollins Wouldn't presume to tell you how to moderate things. If you think you've struck a good balance, then that's great!

I just wanted to give you an impression on the ground, as a new user joining the instance. When I see a federated timeline filled with disinformation and lolicon, my first thought isn't, "wow, this instance must have a minimal moderation policy", it's "wow, no one is looking at what the timeline is showing our users, and new users are getting shown lolicon and disinformation."

I'm just happy to have reasonable discussions Online!

@evaristus @realcaseyrollins

Tagging other mods (And nominated mods): @design_RG @arteteco @mngrif @Surasanji

@freemo @realcaseyrollins @design_RG @mngrif @Surasanji

I'm a free speech lover and I like this place to be a platform for our users to get in touch with as much as they want of the fediverse, as long as there is no **active** harassment of any of us.

The rest is up to the users and the clients, they have a lot of power in carving their own informational niche, and that one of the big reasons why AP exists in the first place.
I understand that people may not be familiar with the technology, which has never had this scale of usage, but if you want freedom and independence is it too much to ask that you just search "mastodon how to silence instance", or whatever you may need?

We as mod are also always here to answer doubts and help our users to get the best out of this place, but no, I personally would never take the arrogant decision of what is good or bad for others to be exposed to.

Please, @evaristus , if we want to talk about it in a serious way could you please open a topic on discourse? We encourage this kind of discussion and it would be easier for anyone to follow.

@arteteco
What is your definition of harassment? Years ago I've seen people on Twitter and Tumblr stating that disagreeing with someone is harassment, even if it's only one tweet or reblog.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @design_RG @mngrif @Surasanji @evaristus