Comment on What principles you wish to see social networks (or the fediverse) adopt in their design?
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 months ago
User sovereignty first design, where users individually control what instances they wish to block.
Comment on What principles you wish to see social networks (or the fediverse) adopt in their design?
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 months ago
User sovereignty first design, where users individually control what instances they wish to block.
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 months ago
I agree with this. I think instance owners retaining ability to block other instances is still unfortunately necessary, if at least for administrative and legal reasons. But putting the onus on granular blocking controls on the user is a big achievement, as I prefer the user to retain that control.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
That’s not a universal want. Trans people and other vulnerable, targeted minorities face a real cost in having to play whack a mole with bigots. Sure, you can block them as they appear, but by that point, you’ve already seen their hate. And it means every trans person has to see and block that content. After which, the bigot just comes back with a new account, and does another round.
The blahaj instances offer aggressive, pre-emptive blocking of bigots and transphobes, at the instance level, with the goal of giving our users an experience of social media that isn’t shaped by hate.
Of course, not all trans folk want that, and some absolutely do want the power to choose for themselves who gets blocked and are willing to face the hate in order to retain that ability. But that’s the other power of the fediverse, because there are instances that cater to that approach as well.
tl;dr - Granular user control of blocking/federation is good, but it’s not “better” than instance level blocking and defederation.
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 months ago
An easy middle ground is the ability to sync your block list with someone else. This gives the same capability you desire, but allows users freedom to do it on their own. Everyone’s happy! What do you think?
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
It’s a good idea, but still not an alternative to instance level blocking.
The downside is that if you’re new to the fediverse, you have no way of knowing whose lists you should follow. So there needs to be some sort of instance/client level opt in recommendation to make it visible/useful to new users.
Beyond that though, on an instance like blahaj, it would be largely irrelevant, because there is no scenario where I let transphobes federate to the instance, whether or not individuals have the ability to block them from a subscription list.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 months ago
I’m not saying that instances shouldn’t have default blocklists, but that users should have the right to disable them granularly.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
No way. Transphobia is not welcome on any instance I run for example. And that isn’t something that a user should be able to change for themselves. That’s a scenario where you would pick a difference instance
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 months ago
I think instance owners should retain the ability to make some blocks non-negotiable. They are responsible for the instance and legal implications after all.
WamGams@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
you should look at the domain names of some of these blocked instances.
going live without a block list implemented upon start up is going to put you in a very serious legal quagmire where you are now responsible for your ISP having transmitted CASM.
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 months ago
That’s precisely why I call it necessary, you’re right!