One of the things it took a while for me to get acclimated to with the #fediverse is the fact that sometimes people will be engaging on conversation with others, either individuals or instances, my instance has blocked.
In the case of my current instance, I'm quite sure there's always a good reason for that, but in ANY case, if you don't run your own instance, you're a guest in someone else's house. It's their rules. If you're not happy with that, find another house whose rules you're cool with our start your own.
With great flexibility comes great power and responsibility :)
@feoh And it's worth emphasizing that this is one very good reason instance owners should not be so quick to block instances.
We need to push back on normalizing it.
Instance blocking should be a last resort on the #Fediverse but occasionally people have pushed to promote it as something to be routinely applied.
@volkris I'm REALLY not so sure about that. Let's say I'm an instance owner, and I'm Jewish. I shouldn't have the right to block instances where anti-semitic speech is allowed? Or I'm queer and feel super threatened by some of what some other instance is posting that they might find acceptable?
To me, the beauty of this community is that every instance is a snowflake - a tiny society with its own rules, norms and acceptable behavior. For this system to work, and for people to be able to participate, I think they should be allowed to wall off types of speech they feel threatened by.
If you want to be on a REALLY permissive instance where goose stepping scumbags are allowed to strut their stuff? Great. You made that choice. And it's the community's choice to curb stomp them too. All things are permissible when you make your own rules :)
PS: and heck, instance blocking is effectively a very basic algorithm, in that it chooses for users what content they will and won't be shown based on source.
That's one way to capture this that might resonate with so many on Fediverse that came here expressing the want to leave algorithms behind.
