I'm thinking loudly here (while typing and observing what thoughts come out first), because I just learned, that #gab will toss their software away, fork #Mastodon, port some data and bring it up as a "new gab". This move is propably intended to help them federate their servers and to re-enter the #app stores. For example: #Toot! (the app I use for Mastodon) has a setting "Filter awful servers" (explaining that term as "white supremacist server", precisely "Currently, only gab.") which is turned on by default. But by turning it off, the app can be used for gab.

So obviously there will be other counteractivities from the Mastodon #community (besides #filtering within the apps), one of which is most propably massive (transitive) #blocking within the #federation. In https://qoto.org/@goto/102222761174420470 I recently (just two weeks ago) wrote: "I‘m new to Mastodon and haven‘t seen any discussions about free speech yet. But I understand that Mastodon is all about the ability for instance administrators to block entire other instances. It’s all about block chains which are aggregated lists of instances to block passed around between administrators. It’s all about rules about active moderation policies that instances have to implement if they want to be listed on joinmastodon. Effectively those rules include which block chains to use. Essentially Mastodon is all about strategies of forcing free speech instances into isolation. It’s all about collective censorship, because instances give identity and users become invisible in the Fediverse if their instance are put in those block chains due to the activities of other users. Mastodon is about all this being it’s core feature. It has no centralized moderation but it inherently creates social tribes by massive overblocking. It is a tool and a culture designed to quiet people in order to give some the protected space that Twitter can’t and isolate the others into “free speech” instance clusters."

Those were my first thoughts two weeks ago. Today, in the light of gab moving to instances of a forked Mastodon, all these things suddenly seem more like a feature to me than like a defect of the Mastodon culture. Because as a progressive person with an open mind I am well aware that free speech is not possible in infrastructures that allow #fascist #propaganda of that kind. I know, it's hard to draw the line, but it's clear that gab is beyond. (In my eyes, so is almost everything #Trump says, which obviously seems less bad to a lot of people and illustrates the argument that it's hard to draw the line).

Bottom line is: I don't know what to think anymore. Writing this didn't help me at all. At least not yet. I can't get a clear grasp on what I'm feeling about propaganda #censorship. It seems vitally important. And totally wrong at the same time.