Your instance can block them. Looks like it doesn't block very many, though:
https://mastodon.cloud/about/more
But Mastodon as a whole is just a software project that's freely redistributable. It's effectively impossible to stop an instance from being created which allows anything. Other instances and individuals can refuse to federate with them, and that's basically how that's handled.
Other instances can shut them out. The bigger, better known ones tend to cooperate on this, particularly the ones operated by Mastodon project.
But unfortunately as Erin points out, there are no controls on who downloads open source software -- there almost by definition can't be.
@pieist @kissane There needs to be a sort of kill switch in the software. If some instance is running Nazi propaganda and endorsements of violence against black, brown, and Jewish people, then that kill switch could be activated. if they have to redesign at great trouble, then let them begin. Fuck. People do not understand how powerful lies have become in the age of the internet. They're hugely magnified. And they lead to murders.
This person wrote "Cyberpunk" fiction in the 80s and 90s btw
this is what you sound like
Honestly, you can't make this shit up.
These are the people in the EU and US legislature trying to "protect" everyone from the Internets. They have no clue, ignore everyone telling them so and still they insist to believe they "understand the technology".
There's generational gaps and there's plain hubris
Doc (WBF :idunno: Edition) :cat_stare_activated:
You can put a kill switch in my software after prying my cold dead fingers from it.
I would literally fight you or anyone else to the death to prevent you from doing this to any software I run.
> And they lead to murders.
What leads to murders is people trying to control things that aren't theirs. Come to my house, and lay a single hand on my computer and you will be a dead man cut up into little small meat cubes in my freezer.
@Tadano @JohnShirley2023 @kissane @pieist No, i want to see this faggot design his own software that runs on mastodon that has the things he’s calling for.
Oh, he’s not capable of that? well then I guess he’s gonna have to deal with me having the ability to call him a niggerfaggot or whatever else I want to call him. 
Pushing things into the darkness is how darkness grows.
And I thought the body modification fetishism of Twitter users who call themselves cyberpunk was cringe.
Find something more productive to do, like joining the Kriegsmarine
@pieist @kissane
🇬🇷
if there's a kill switch, then there's someone holding the kill switch. your hope is that the person holding the kill switch has values identical to your own. but what if they don't?
Founder Eugene Rochko has made a number of policy statements on what he will and won't blanket ban on the instances he controls. For example, he decided not to blanket-ban Gab, which is a right-wing site forked from Mastodon. I'm in no position to summarize his reasoning. Don't know much about who administers your instance. There's some info on his/her profile: https://mastodon.cloud/@TheAdmin
@pieist https://mstdn.social/@I_Choose_Exile@kissane@mstdn.social https://mstdn.social/@kissane So you CAN blanket ban. Listen--suppose you happened to own a print shop, and sometimes when you're not using it you allow it to be used by the community for printing advocacy. Kind of, sort of, like open sourcing. If you found that one of those people was using your press to print antisemitic screeds recommending the murder of Jews and etc, flat out extremist white supremacism...would you continue to allow them to use your press?
@pieist @kissane "Oh yes, Mr Jones down the street hands out antisemitic posters and demands that synagogues be removed from the neighborhood and yes he bought a book on building bombs, I saw him reading it on the porch, and yes he has a roomful of guns, but...I choose to, you know, just block him. I dont speak to him. I ignore him. He's not there!"
@JohnShirley2023 @kissane In that situation, the company that manufactures the paper Mr Jones uses wouldn't be in a position to cut off his supply, and it really wouldn't fall to them to police him.
In the same way, Eugene Rochko literally cannot stop others from using his software. He can only say "I won't carry anything that comes from your instance and I might even go so far as to block other instances that do." But he can't stop them using it.
Yeah that's pretty much how the internet actually works, outside the centralized sites that are presently letting nazis and their friends back on. Which is why we also support stronger laws and put pressure on hosting providers who host nazi servers, etc.
But I have to say, shouting at people who are trying to explain the infrastructure as though we don't know how nazis work is definitely a way to filter the people who will respond to you.
(I am myself tapping out.)
"Unfortunately"? You don't like that people can use open source software freely?
@Corfiot @kissane @pieist I do like that they can use it freely. But look, if someone crashes a car into a group of people on purpose--should we limit that guy's freedom? People are being hurt by this stuff, physically, in person--it's not just talk. It leads to violence. There can be some kind of kill switch only used on special occasions. Most people would be able to keep their download as is. Or there could be some form of vetting.
@Corfiot @kissane @pieist I am aware of all these considerations. I don't think it's authoritarian to want to keep Holocaust-denying Nazis --literal Neonazis endorsing violence against Jews and blacks --from using this system. I agree there's not a real clear way to do it yet. But we do have report "buttons" here, there is the option of a "blanket ban" apparently--how does that work?--and more people can become interested in cooperating on banning these people.
You either die a nobody or live long enough to to have a boomer induced aneurysm on your keyboard.
.gif){kind=link}
Seems like it. I found this blast from the past not too long ago and everything in it is practically the polar opposite of what this guy is whinging over not having.
https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/the-cyberpunk-movement-by-pazuzu-for-dna-may-12-1993.4771/
@pieist @kissane If it's impossible to exclude them completely--then it needs to be made possible. How about if they move in on your block, where you live, and start passing out leaflets about murdering Jews on your street. Would you be cool with it? But--! Freedom of speech!