Did anyone talk about forcing instance owners or any other person to do or say something they don’t want?!

Sorry but I think you have not even read the post. I’m talking about all these negativity towards other instances from average users in here. If and instance owner decides to defederate of course I might disagree but there’s not much I can do about it, specially if they can present reasons.

If anyone can prove that some other Instance is harmful it’s just natural that it should be defederated (in most cases)

Again. My issue is talking nonsense about oh that company is trying to destroy us whilst in reality they have hundreds of millions of users and are gaining more each second and we’re sitting here circle jerking about our nice little community.

I say we should be open to new experiments. I am not saying defederation is bad, I am not saying instance owners should be forced to do anything

And as someone who lived most of my life under an authoritarian regime, I don’t respect your advocation for censorship. If you knew the effect of thinking you know better than anyone and can decide for them, you would never make such comments.

But no one is forcing you to comment! You’ve expressed your opposition and I respect your opinion!

At this point I’m getting bad vibes from you TBH! I’ve expressed my opinion and apparently some people find it compelling and some disagree, that’s fine!

Well, it was always my opinion! No one’s opinion is a fact, necessarily. Let’s agree to disagree! glhf

Thanks for this great comment! Yes, I totally agree with your arguments and personally hate meta. My problem is posts like this and misinformation about underlying tech (like privacy and ads). Meta will do anything to be the sole winner, but as I’ve pointed here it’s a dilemma and defederating can actually encourage more users to stop using Fediverse to begin with!

Social Consensus! This should be part of the culture that unless some instance is factually harming us or content there is illegal (for jurisdiction of the hosted instance) we should not defederate.

Did you really just equate trying to leave an authoritarian country with signing up for a different federated instance?

Yes I am, you are suggesting I don’t know the meaning of these words, so I’ve provided an example of the exact same situation (importance doesn’t change meaning of words here, does it?)

If you censor me, you have censored me! The fact that you’re a government or admin of instance doesn’t change word’s meaning.

this is probably some nuance you should have provided in your original post where you only say that calling for defederation makes you a “dictator” and in no way indicate that there are situation where you think defederation is appropriate.

In hindsight, I should’ve but in response to most comments I’ve acknowledged that it’s fine in a lot of situations

But second of all, how would you enforce what you are proposing? If larger instances were prevented somehow from defederating, wouldn’t that require some sort of “authority” making that decision for those instance? That doesn’t seem to align with your values based on what you’ve posted.

May I ask what made you think I’m looking for enforcement here? I believe in human coordination and freedom of choice. If I join a general instance, I don’t expect admins to decide who I can interact with, that’s all!

No one is stopping you to migrate from an authoritarian country either (most of the time) and yet they’re called authoritarian. Also, I’m not saying instances “shouldn’t be allowed to defederate”, I’m saying advocating for this on a general instance with 100K users is wrong. If this was a niche or small community with agreed upon and shared values (like beehaw for example) that would be understandable.

Saying things like “Oh, But You Can Run Your Instance” is dismissive of the issue, There’s literally no option to migrate accounts and expecting average users to deal with this mess is beyond me.

no instance ever defederate for any reason

did I say this?!

Also advocating for defederation (censorship) on an instance with 100K users is dictatorship. specially when you can’t prove that said instance is harmful.

Totally get your point. But I think this notion of I’m paying, so I will decide what you can do is not a good mindset. If you’ve started a general instance with tens of thousand of users, you have a responsibility, no one forced you to do this. And with no easy option to migrate accounts, yes this is authoritarian.

But I literally said the opposite!

If you cared enough to read my post (or comments under maybe) you would’ve seen that I have no problem with defederation in general. My issue is defederation of general instances with 10s of thousands of users for literally no reason but FUD. If you can prove that some other instance is harmful, you should definitely consider defederating

Can you elaborate?

I have no problem with people making educated decisions or ask for change based on facts. Fully agree about quality over quantity as well. My issue is FUD, having no idea what you’re talking about and still trying to convince everyone of that is harmful. When people working day and night on these protocols say there are no privacy concerns and no one can show you ads etc. and yet someone with literally zero understanding of the matter claims otherwise.

Exactly, I have a lot of normie friends that use threads, I don’t want to use it but would love to interact with them. Best of both worlds

I’m not new to this, though usually not very active poster. so yes I have not experienced much harassment tbh.

About defederation

True! Defederation is great sometimes, if you have a niche community and there is some other instance directly opposing your values or if content there is illegal in your jurisdiction etc.

Nagging about every single instance with a few bad actors on the other hand is problematic in my opinion