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Funny how @Gargron was so concerned about popular opinion and "optics" when he delisted us... Now the thread on reddit discussing this is already more popular than any other thread this month and will likely hit an all time high.
Shame about the bad optics...
#reddit #mastoadmin #fediblock #gargron #joinmastodon #twitter #lgbtq #a11y
@freemo In the thread you mention a number, around 160, of instances blocking qoto. I'm curious how such a list is obtained; are you doing it the hard way, finding out by various means and adding to it by hand?
@pieist There are a few sources one can use, unfortunately they are highly incomplete and show some biased information, and in some cases unethical. So we generally dont share the lists that are floating around.
In one case the list is made by kiwifarms so is considering unethical by association.
In the other case it is compiled by some radicals on the opposite end of the spectrum, so highly biases reporting on only certain instances. Moreover it doesnt weight for user count and is highly polluted with single-user instances.
the issue with the latter list isnt just htat its mostly one-user instances, but also that it doesnt report instances that block them that are outside of their ideological bubble. In fact they are often marked as being blocked rather than doing the blocking (particularly when the block is mutual).
So the list basically is skewed to ignore all the bhlocks that are incoming for the "bubble" of people from instances that maintain those lists.. They will outright reject updates to the numbers when the block goes the other way.
You have two ways to look at it.. you have instances that heavily block, and they tend to block instances that dont block what they block. A lot of these instances dont publish their block lists because it winds up being massive.
You join them youll pretty much be stuck in a bubble of radicalized people, and you will have a very limited view of the fediverse.
On the other hand you can join instances that dont block and while they may have more instances blocking them, in the end they have a much larger footprint in the fediverse.
In fact in the past when we measured the conceitedness of QOTO (how many servers we federate with) we had one of the biggest footprints in the fediverse, despite a decent number of small instances blocking us. You can also measure this by insularity, and as I recall we had a pretty high ranking in that case too (low insularity).
@freemo Yeah, it's hobson's choice, really: join an instance that doesn't block, and be blocked, or join one that does and have your decisions made for you invisibly. The former is the only tolerable choice and this seems the only significant instance that does the right thing: moderate the utterly indefensible but otherwise treat your users like rational adults.
@pieist Yea sadly we are one of very few with federation we leave up to our users.
The bullying of instances that block seems to be a growing problem.
I hope ?I can get UFoI soon and bring some sanity to all this.
@freemo Yeah, as to that last I did suppose that any list would have a heavy preponderance of tiny instances. (I'm always reminded of what someone once said about jabber: "the ratio of server operators to users is nearly 1:1") Still a list of non-trivial, non-crazy instances would be useful; it's be nice to know if there are large, nonswampy continents of users whom I won't see or vice-versa.