Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:
- Don’t like their content
- Dont like their political leaning
- Dont like their free speech approach
- General feeling of being offended
- I want a safe space!
- This instance if hurting vulnerable people
I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.
Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?
Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148
Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!
It’s not a comeback because this isn’t a battle of clever insults. It’s a discussion about how to organize and interact.
You don’t have a problem with defederation, but if you DO have a problem with being connected to other instances… That’s the scenario where you can create your own siloed instance and block everybody.
I want to read everybody and talk to everybody.
You may have freedom of speech, but I also have the freedom to not listen to you.
Right, you can block me. But that’s different from denying other people from reading me, and denying me from reading other people.
Also, I’m not the one saying problematic stuff. I’m not afraid of being censored. I’m afraid of being denied access to censored material.
You’re not being denied access to censored material, you’re (mildly) suffering from a lack of access to some material from some locations. I could spin up an instance tomorrow that only federates with platforms that limit their discussion to expired gift cards, and that in no way reduces your access to platforms that (for some reason?) discuss other things, like ‘unexpired’ gift cards (why would anyone bother discussing those? who the hell knows?).
You seem to be confused by the popularity and open access of an instance to mean that it should or must be some democratic, freedom of speech led unmoderated landscape or it isn’t a legitimate platform and shouldn’t exist lest it ‘trick’ someone into thinking it is something it is not. You think because a forum ‘can’ federate with any other group, it ‘must’ federate with ‘all’ other groups, and that is simply not the case.
No I’m saying I’d like it to federate with others, while other people are saying they’d prefer not to. I’ll debate federation, I won’t debate whether I should debate federation.
To “spin up an instance” is not a reasonable solution. To argue generally (across platforms) for the merit of federation is what I’ll cheerfully continue to do because it’s a good and healthy way to engage with people about this exciting new technology.