there is a rightwinger instance constantly showing up in my feed and blocking users/communities one by one is getting a bit annoying :/
there is a rightwinger instance constantly showing up in my feed and blocking users/communities one by one is getting a bit annoying :/
By “ban” they mean defederate from. They’re not banning an instance from the Fediverse, the instance that’s defederating from the other one is just choosing not to interact with or have to see them anymore. So your rhetoric here is misapplied, because one instance defederating from another isn’t silencing the latter for anyone else but the instance that made that choice. It’s not analogous to restricting freedom of information or personal freedom at all, on fact it’s precisely an exercise of personal freedom: freedom of association! It’s more equivalent to just leaving a club and never coming back or hanging out around them anymore. Yes, it’s done on the whole instance’s behalf, so it effects more than just one person, but thats why random instance members can’t defederate an instance they don’t run from another instance, there’s a decision procedure to make sure it represents the wishes of the instance as a whole.
Semantics. If you defederate an instance, in this case lemmy.world blocks the instance /c/(hate group), you make the decision for everyone on that instance (you being the owner), on who can see what. This will create pockets of many little hubs instead of one big decentralized mesh network. This comes right back to the “owner” of the instance controlling everything that the user can see. I understand someone is paying the bills and that moderation is going to be needed. This is of course going to come down to choice. Is there a way to view each instances block list? If not it should be implemented into the back end somewhere, once again to allow freedom of choice.
What decision procedures are in place to stop rogue instance owners from making unilateral decisions? I admit I’m very new to lemmy and activitypub as a whole. If the community as a whole can weight in on the decision, then by all means, go ahead. 100% fair and I agree with you. I’m just against any type of actions being made by small groups of individuals that are “for the good of everyone”. I really don’t have an agenda here. I just want the freedom of choice for everyone. I’m tired of living in a world where there are people who think they know whats best for everyone else.
Thank you for your time to respond. Regards.
I think that the way to deal with one’s instance defederating from an instance who’s content you value is to move to another instance. Admittedly some tool to move one’s subscriptions to a new account would be helpful with this, but ultimately, this sort of thing is part of the point of a federated network, instances should be ideally small enough that one can be at least somewhat familiar with the admins, and so can leave if they don’t fit you.
I don’t think defederating an instance that one’s instance as a whole finds distasteful is a bad thing though. Maybe if it was a decision that was very unpopular with one’s userbase or something it could be a problem, but in general, it seems preferable to having to just put up with people you’d rather not be around/talk to, while still letting them have their space to themselves. People have the right to talk to eachother. But they are not entitled to talk to you specifically, when you do not wish to listen to them