The very nature of the fediverse makes fragmentation part of it. Since it's not centralized, control is distributed to the different instance admins. It's only natural that people with different opinions will want to split from each other, and that's without taking into account the levels of toxicity allowed by different moderators.
Is an instance allowing racists to thrive in there? Of course it will be blocked by leftists, since banning is a concept that no longer applies.
Let me repeat for clarity: You CANNOT ban someone from the fediverse, you can ONLY defederate from them.
And don't tell me it's that much different from reddit, I've seen political subs denying access to people simply based on what other subreddits they're subscribed to.
Would you rather have a single hierarchical "network" where an asshole dictator decides who is and who isn't allowed to post? Of course not, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
Federation implies defederating instances you're not comfortable with.
And that's perfectly fine, because safety comes first.
My freedom of association necessarily implies that I'm free NOT to associate with people I don't like, and my insurance admin should be able to make sure I'm free from harassment by those same people.
Want to solve this issue? Solve human nature first.
Ahh yes, the ability to have different communities with different rules is WORSE than a monolith that bans anyone who disagrees with Dear Leader...
Your views are completely ignorant to what the entire point of the fediverse even is. If you want to go live under a king that can have you killed for frowning at him ... leave. No one is keeping you here against your will.
Your views are completely ignorant to what the entire point of the fediverse even is.
I think you are missing his point, that the fediverse in large parts is failing to live up to its own aspirations. Yes, of course the people who gravitated to the fediverse expect more independence and self organization, but I think people also expected some semblance of cooperation and community.
It feels like instead of having one large empire ruled by an emperor, we're instead in a divided land ruled by hundreds of kings. The abuses are the same, but more localized.
Yes you can move on to the next realm once you make an enemy of some minor tyrant, but this also forces people to be more transient. Which isn't amicable to creating a long lasting community with lots of engagement.
Reddit has it's problems, everyone here already knows that. But, that shouldn't prevent us from engaging in self criticism about the fediverse. A system that can't be criticized is a system doomed to stagnation.
I'm not saying don't criticize it. I'm saying even understand what it's trying to do before you start whining about how it doesn't work.
This was always, ALWAYS going to happen. That was the plan. The idea isn't to magically solve all of Reddit's problems, but to decentralize the product. It's the same product, OF COURSE it has nearly the same identical flaws on a per-instance basis.
The entire point is the federation and choice, NOT some mystical idea of a Reddit without Reddit problems. That's just stupid expectations.
Except you get banned from different communities on a whim of a powertripping moderator. And all of those communities have 0.1% of the userbase. And all of those communities are duplicated, to further fracture it.
It all sounds fun on paper, but the reality is, it's not working. Just the meta scare recently is a good example - guilty until proven innocent, banning a huge potential userbase "cuz its meta".
Instances are not shadow banning, they all listed in instance list page.
I didn’t get the mod drama thing. I guess this guy mixing instance admins with community mods.
Also, I don't think there is that much blocking between instances except Beehaw, since they want to create a refined user base.
Edit: what I was telling here is only applies to Lemmy. Looks like things are different for Mastodon side. So this comment may have a realistic view. I just don’t have enough experience on there.
On Lemmy, it's shown. On Mastodon, instances are given the ability to hide their blocked instances which IMO hinders people's ability to join. A lot of the drama on the fediverse with regards to blocking is from Mastodon and similar instances.
People claim the instance you join doesn't matter because "everything is federated!" but it kind of does. It strongly affects the people who will see your posts and even who you can follow, and if you don't know what an instance is blocking it creates an air of uncertainty. I've seen instances get blocked for stupid at best and downright malicious at worst reasons, so the 4chan post isn't inherently wrong.
