i think it's funny when people say "mastodon has moderation issues too!"'nof course it does.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

i think it's funny when people say "mastodon has moderation issues too!"

of course it does. it's millions of real, messy humans interacting over multiple communities with intersecting and often contradictory rules, moderated by real, messy humans with feelings and biases. of course it has moderation issues, it's inescapable when you put millions of people together

the thing that makes fedi (imo) better is that here you get to at least *choose* the messy humans making the decisions for you

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@eniko I think one thing that's desirable in siloed networks which is almost impossible in the Fediverse is getting someone kicked off the network. The best we can do right now is isolate someone's server with defederation, so they can't do as much damage. It's probably enough, but it lacks the finality of seeing someone's account shut down by a central authority. I think the trade-off is probably worth it, though.

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@evan @eniko That’d be the same central authority that inevitably ends up making decisions that annoy significant parts of the user base

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@slothrop @eniko I agree. I don't want that kind of structure. But the trade-off is certain kinds of definitive results aren't possible, or at least are much harder, such as someone being prevented from getting an account on the Fediverse.

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@evan @eniko yes, I agree!

It’s worth asking whether a) it’s desirable for such “definitive” results to be available; and b) whether “definitive” is even possible within the scope of technical design decisions.

Seeing Trump getting unbanned from various places seems to point to “no” as an answer.

[aeisenberg@cosocial.ca]

@eniko @evan I see this as a feature of federation. It allows each server to choose what kind of community it’s going to be.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@slothrop @eniko yeah, I think the term I'm looking for is "deplatforming". With coordination, you can cut down pretty hard on someone's practical reach, but actually deplatforming someone on the Fediverse requires chasing them from server to server until they either give up or get sufficient control of their platform that they can't be dislodged.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@slothrop @eniko

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@slothrop @eniko I think one big issue on Bluesky has been that company's refusal to deplatform Jesse Singal under pressure from its users. I don't think anyone should promise a more compliant management team on the Fediverse, since that team doesn't exist. If new arrivals understand how deplatforming works here, to the extent that it does, and they are ok with it, that's great.