number ONE mastodon leaver complaint: getting hectored about petty shit

@Moon
A lot of people on the "dark fedi" side stay because even though it isn't as fun, fedi stills offers them something to say. Unlike mastodon which offers you nothing at all to spend your time, not even talk and top of that it attacks you over the most petty and silly things.

Mastodon hates you having fun

@McMongoose @Moon >Mastodon hates you having fun

there was an entire section of the article devoted to that point.

@tomey @McMongoose @Moon A lot of these people are really going to have to make a decision at this point: Accept free speech and block/mute people yourself like an adult, or be forced to eat your vegetable in the SJW Internet or be stuck on big tech forever

@coolboymew

Seems most of the fediverse have dug their feet in on that already. Sadly the freespeech instances have done everything in their power to convince people not to adopt that side of the fence.

@McMongoose @Moon @tomey

@freemo @coolboymew @McMongoose @tomey I am not responsible for idiots being against free speech, a historically illiterate position.

@Moon

Ideas like fault is pointless. Its not about who is to blame and who is to not.

The fact of the matter is the freespeech section of the fediverse has went out of their way to attack and abuse people who federate with them to the point that it is very hard to take a freespeech stance and still be appealing to most people.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey the people that came here in the last few years came here already against it. They defederated niue.cat and blob.cat. unless you completely capitulate to them they will defederate you.

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey stop acting like these people are normal people. why do you exert so much effort to be nice to people that will never, ever be nice to you.

@Moon

I run QOTO, an instance that strongly leans towards open federation, but locally doesnt allow free speech (our users will be banned for certain forms of speech, though we are rather forgiving in this regard).

While we do sometimes have valuable interactions from free speech instances the issue is the overwhelming majority of interaction is from them dog piling and trolling with overtly racist and aggressive attacks. It is often so bad you cant even use the service without blocking most free speech instances...

Blame who you want but even an instance like QOTO that wants to remain open is struggling to do so because it just makes the service unusable.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey I feel like you are blaming us for them hating you when they came here already hating people like you before they ever even met us.

@Moon

Like i said before I am not "blamming" anyone.. Fault is a rather pointless concept... I am mearly stating that free speech is an idea I support but supporting is starting to become technically difficult causing people to adopt a non-free speech approach as its the only option that allows the fediverse to be usable for most people.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey do you mean blocking servers or do you mean restrictive rules on their own servers? I am sorry I came into this conversation late.

@Moon

I am talking about blocking other servers, not the rules internal to your own instance.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey I don't consider it a free speech thing to block other servers, you have a culture and you want to keep your culture intact on your server. people blocking wide swaths of the fediverse based on bad reasons is a different problem. I have mixed feelings about the term free speech server. we don't allow some things here. can any server really be free speech? I am trying to make us not be a vector for harassment but the line is very fuzzy.

@Moon

SureI do agree there are levels to this and blocking can be quite excessive.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey i appreciate that you have treated us fairly and if you have problems you can DM me. But I am expressing that I think you are making a mistake by accepting the frame of, basically, highly-online politically aggressive people.

@Moon

I mean, there is a reason you guys are still federated with... but as I said it is getting closer and closer to being impossible to maintain a nearly-open federation policy from a purely usability standpoint... we arent there yet though.

That said i am working on technological solutions.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey ok to make my position clear, if you defederate another server because it's incompatible with yours, that is sensible. if you defederate another server because you think it will satisfy a third server that wants to defederate from you, you are probably throwing the first server under the bus because it is almost always a strongarm tactic.

@Moon

On that point I wholly agree. We have never caved to third party pressure in that regard.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey

@freemo @Moon @McMongoose @tomey yet, you recommend the fediblock blocklist in your pinned statuses

Curious

@coolboymew

Yes I do, because while I dont think servers should force a block list on a user I do think the user should have the option to block and an easy path to do so if thats what they want. If there is a user that wants low-moderated instances blocked they should have that choice and easy access to a block list to accomplish it.

I myself dont use the block list, but I do understand its need for some users.

It is also an attempt to address the usability issue I mentioned earlier while not needing to block at the instance level... a possible middle ground solution.

@McMongoose @Moon @tomey

@freemo @coolboymew @McMongoose @tomey individuals subscribing to blocklists is more or less okay, you don't see it from the fediblock people because it's as much about punishment as about safety.

@freemo @McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey ultimately blocking doesn't make you any safer from harassment so neither type of blocklist actually works but they probably think that the social sanction of server defederation will cause bad actors to leave. I think this has been proven untrue.

@Moon

I have found blocking unmoderated instances do a pretty good job at significantly reducing the amount of harassment one experiences.

@McMongoose @coolboymew @tomey