I’m not saying that instances shouldn’t have default blocklists, but that users should have the right to disable them granularly.
Comment on What principles you wish to see social networks (or the fediverse) adopt in their design?
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 days agoThat’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.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 days ago
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days 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 days 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.
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 days 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 days 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.
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 days ago
Isn’t the whole idea that you choose a trans-friendly instance and you naturally adopt the instance wide blocklist? Same thing here, except you choose the block list similar to choosing an instance in the old flow.
And if you disagree, this could still easily be mediated. For example, the instance could have a default block list. As long as one can opt out, that would respect user choice.
Or choosing the blocklists can be part of the account creation flow.
There’s others ways to go about it.
What I suggest isn’t meant to take away the instance owner ability to defederate or moderate. But this makes it such that you don’t have to modify your moderation strategy when your users can adopt different moderation in addition to what you have. (example: maybe a large group of your users want to block US-centric content, or political content, etc.) and people not on your instance could possibly adopt your moderation as well!
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Yep, that would pretty much be the ideal scenario :)