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Why do admins get a say in who their users follow in the first place? As long as the content isn't illegal or challenges the stability of the instance this shou

Why do admins get a say in who their users follow in the first place? As long as the content isn't illegal or challenges the stability of the instance this should be up to the users alone. This issue alone made me set up my own instance, but many users don't have that option.

mikae1 3y ago
To make matters worse for people that shares your stance, many Fediverse users in this movement are of the opinion that your instance should be blocked as well if you dont't block Meta.
- tedunangst 3y ago
  There's always about 100x more people talking about the puritan servers that block the friends of the friends of the wicked servers than there are actual puritans.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    So you're saying most Mastadon servers won't block servers that allow "TERF"s (a term which includes the very mainstream view that transwomen shouldnt be allowed in woman's sports)?
    - tedunangst 3y ago
      Many probably will, but they won't recursively block every other server that declines to block those servers, as repeatedly alleged.
    - watwut 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - concordDance 3y ago
        I have never seen people called "TERF"s being against transmen in men's sports, only transwomen. Haven't seen one demand genital checks either.
      - xigoi 3y ago
        What's even the point of having sports separated into women's and “men's” if anyone can just choose where to participate?
        watwut 3y ago
        Which is not situation at all, nor was there any threat of that happening.
      - tarsinge 3y ago
        I'm not familiar with that term and the subject, what's the issue with checking someone fit in the corresponding physical category? Sport is all about the physical body and performance, not about personality. Physical categories could be abandoned, but if they are maintained there then it's seems logical to check, maybe with a more scientific test like testosterone level being into a range. Regardless of gender people would then compete in their (testosterone?) class, like weight classes exists in some sports.
        watwut 3y ago
        Yeah, I take issue with forcing anyone including 13 years old to undergo genital checks. It is literally in the sexual harassments category and massively humiliating. Also, if there is manufactured controversy, it is this one. It is not like there would be hundreds of trans women destroying female sport. This issue exists purely to outrage people and to be cruel to few that exist.
        shapenamer 3y ago
        weird take imo, I played multiple sports in highschool and every year I had to go have a doctor (always female, but I'm supposed to be ok with this I guess, but I wasn't) handle my genitals or I wouldn't be allowed to compete.
        watwut 3y ago
        That is definitely not normal.
        shapenamer 3y ago
        It's extremely normal https://www.virtua.org/articles/turn-your-head-and-cough-the-first-step-in-a-hernia-diagnosis https://www.virtua.org/articles/turn-your-head-and-cough-the... You clearly didn't play any sports, or you're female, I suppose.
      - Crux2632 3y ago
        [dead]
    - mcv 3y ago
      I think TERF includes a bit more than just that opinion on sports.
      - concordDance 3y ago
        That opinion is the minimum required for the label. Any prohibition of transwomen from a woman's space is enough, though most "TERF"s will prohibit all pre-op transwomen from all woman's spaces.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Many Mastodon instances do block instances which allow transphobes, yes. However, it's very rarely _transitive_, is the point; few Mastodon instances will block instances which do not block instances which allow transphobes.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Counterexample: EFnet
echelon 3y ago
> Why do admins get a say in who their users follow in the first place? Why does anyone? Reddit mods, Fediverse maintainers, corporate social media. This whole "curate and censor" bamboozle is antithetical to the internet I grew up on. The most upsetting part is that so many folks today are happy about this status quo and delight in the fact that their opposition gets canceled or de-platformed. All it takes is one political pendulum swing for the cheerleaders to become the oppressed. Social media needs to be P2P. Not centralized, not federated, and not controlled. End users should have complete autonomy over who they follow, who they (de-)boost, and how their filter/attention algorithm works. Users should have the capability to share their { follow, block, boost, mute } lists with others, but it should be optional and not something mandated from the top by a third party.
- izacus 3y ago
  What are you talking about? Where was this internet where the admins of the service (whether it's BBS board, usenet group or phpBB forum, or whatever) didn't set what conversations are you supposed to talk about?
  - echelon 3y ago
    Usenet and IRC (with its hundreds of servers) were a wild west. Some forums let you pay to regain entry, others would downvote but not outright ban (like Slashdot). Banning was practically impossible given dynamic IP addresses and dial-up. The internet was much smaller, its users more technical, and its software much more bug-filled. It was entirely possible that banning someone would lead to them exploiting your server and taking it offline. I witnessed that happen several times. People focused on mostly getting along. Nobody was sensitive about the bullshit we whine about today. It's also interesting that the zeitgeist at the time favored conservatives, so liberals were the then-staunch supporters of free speech. (Remember the Church of Satan?) That's completely reversed now. The internet of today is so incredibly different to the internet of the 90's and early 2000's. Despite all we've gained, we've actually lost a lot too.
    - vidarh 3y ago
tedunangst 3y ago
Because it's their server? Why do I get a say in who I invite to dinner at my house?
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Because the whole shitstorm is rooted in Musk managing Twitter as he sees fit, and those who left claimed to akshuarry exercise and defend free speech and tolerance?
  - vidarh 3y ago
    You're assuming those who have left share a uniform ideology. Many who left wanted far stricter moderation than Musk. Some wanted less. Some wanted more tolerance, some wanted less. There's also a vast difference in moderation of a single centralised system and a network of thousands of instances - you can be opposed to the moderation policies of a centralised network and still think it's fine for those policies to exist somewhere as long as you don't need to deal with them.
  - sureglymop 3y ago
    I just want to remind you that Mastodon has existed for about a decade, way longer than any of the Twitter stuff has been going on. Culturally it is the same as it always has been. Why would I as a server administrator have to change because new people are interested in our platform? If you join my server and don't like the experience, feel free to move to a different server or to start your own.
- MForster 3y ago
  I think that's the wrong analogy. It's more: Why does a landlord not get a say in who their tenants invite to dinner?
  - blowski 3y ago
    Housing is a scarce commodity, so we have rules about how it’s allocated. Mastodon servers have no such scarcity - if you don’t like the rules on a server, set up your own.
ndlan 3y ago
Precisely part of the problem is that most instances are in Europe, which means that much of the speech you can find online is illegal, and if you aren't Facebook you don't have the muscle to fight a politician or a judge who wants to make an example out of you.
- aftoprokrustes 3y ago
  I am genuinely curious: can you give examples of illegal content a EU based server would not be allowed to display/link to but a US based would?
  - ndlan 3y ago
    October, 2018: "In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right: [the European Court of Human Rights] upheld an Austrian woman’s conviction for disparaging the Prophet Muhammad." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-free-speech-criticize-muhammad-echr-ruled/574174/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...
    - aftoprokrustes 3y ago
      Without the need to agree or disagree with the ruling itself (which I cannot read about, as the article is behind a paywall, and I expect that the ruling is more nuanced than what the clickbait title suggests), the fact that a person was condemned for saying something for some reason (provocation to hate I would assume) does not mean that a mastodon server would be liable for relaying the information. Actually, politicians get condemned on a regular basis for diffamation or hate speech, but I never heard of any TV channel or newspaper being sued for having reported on the discourse of said politicians. I have to say that I expected a bit more, as you mentioned "most content on the internet".
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - faiD9Eet 3y ago
    In Germany you are not allowed to downplay, deny or condone the Holocaust. It is part of the criminal code. § 130 iii StGB https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html > Mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe wird bestraft, wer eine unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus begangene Handlung [...] öffentlich oder in einer Versammlung billigt, leugnet oder verharmlost.
sharperguy 3y ago
I think the architecture of mastadon unintentionally encourages this. When you follow someone on a peered instance, the instance you use must store and forward their posts to you. So if an instance contains mostly content you find disagreeable you may not want to have those on your server. Also if you go to the "global" timeline, you will see posts from all instances which are peered with your instance. So the operators of your instance might not want to "pollute" that timeline with content from instances they find disagreeable. I prefer the alternative architecture used by the nostr protocol. There, your account is not tied to a relay, but to a public key which is used to verify everything you post. You can send your posts to multiple relays which can then be read by anyone who chooses to pull from there. This allows relays to freely block/curate content in the way they like without restricting the freedom of their users to pull content from other sources. Currently, the network is in its infancy, and is mostly populated by bitcoiners, since this is the community where the protocol grew out of. But there is no reason why it can't eventually grow far beyond that, for those with no interest in that topic.
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  Beyond what the architecture encourages, the devs themselves have very much encouraged a narcissistic, block happy culture across the protocol. It's very disappointing to see something that should have encouraged people from disparate backgrounds and views to come together and discuss topics without "engagement" driven controversy baiting, just being used as "Twitter, but you get to make your personal Pyongyang".
mcv 3y ago
> Why do admins get a say in who their users follow in the first place? Because it's their server and they have opinions of what their server is about and what's acceptable there. But more importantly: because their users don't want to have to individually block every troll and nazi out there. There are entire instances dedicated to just shitting all over everybody else, and most people on other instances don't want to have to wade through that shit. Users can choose their server based on its policies. Maybe admins should be more up-front about their server's policies. But some degree of moderation is simply unavoidable on the internet today, because we've seen time and time again that everything turns to crap if you don't moderate. HN moderates too.
- MForster 3y ago
  I get moderation of replies. But I choose myself who I follow. Nobody needs to moderate that.
  - catboybotnet 3y ago
    Spin up your own instance if you don't like that. You are using someone else's platform to follow, so you go by their rules whether you like it or not.
    - MForster 3y ago
      Yes, that's what I did (and said so in the top post)
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Then what's the problem? For people who don't want to spin up their own, they can likely find instances whose policies are in line with their own and join those.
        xigoi 3y ago
        Except it's pretty much impossible to find instances that don't have vague rules like “no hate speech”.
worldsavior 3y ago
> As long as the content isn't illegal Who decides what is "illegal"?
- asadotzler 3y ago
  The government making the laws. (Was that a serious question?)
  - worldsavior 3y ago
    The website can decide what are the laws, hence it can supress other users opinions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chrisnight 3y ago
Mastodon works by copying all data their users see from other servers to the server's own local PostgreSQL database. Admins have access (through the owner or directly) to that database, which means they can already censor content if they so choose, through manipulating the database. As such, making it an explicit option is needed because it destroys any illusion that censorship cannot occur, because it can occur by the system's design, even if the option isn't present in the software.

mikae1 3y ago

To make matters worse for people that shares your stance, many Fediverse users in this movement are of the opinion that your instance should be blocked as well if you dont't block Meta.

tedunangst 3y ago
There's always about 100x more people talking about the puritan servers that block the friends of the friends of the wicked servers than there are actual puritans.
- concordDance 3y ago
  So you're saying most Mastadon servers won't block servers that allow "TERF"s (a term which includes the very mainstream view that transwomen shouldnt be allowed in woman's sports)?
  - tedunangst 3y ago
    Many probably will, but they won't recursively block every other server that declines to block those servers, as repeatedly alleged.
  - watwut 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - concordDance 3y ago
      I have never seen people called "TERF"s being against transmen in men's sports, only transwomen. Haven't seen one demand genital checks either.
    - xigoi 3y ago
      What's even the point of having sports separated into women's and “men's” if anyone can just choose where to participate?
      - watwut 3y ago
        Which is not situation at all, nor was there any threat of that happening.
    - tarsinge 3y ago
      I'm not familiar with that term and the subject, what's the issue with checking someone fit in the corresponding physical category? Sport is all about the physical body and performance, not about personality. Physical categories could be abandoned, but if they are maintained there then it's seems logical to check, maybe with a more scientific test like testosterone level being into a range. Regardless of gender people would then compete in their (testosterone?) class, like weight classes exists in some sports.
      - watwut 3y ago
        Yeah, I take issue with forcing anyone including 13 years old to undergo genital checks. It is literally in the sexual harassments category and massively humiliating. Also, if there is manufactured controversy, it is this one. It is not like there would be hundreds of trans women destroying female sport. This issue exists purely to outrage people and to be cruel to few that exist.
        shapenamer 3y ago
        weird take imo, I played multiple sports in highschool and every year I had to go have a doctor (always female, but I'm supposed to be ok with this I guess, but I wasn't) handle my genitals or I wouldn't be allowed to compete.
        watwut 3y ago
        That is definitely not normal.
        shapenamer 3y ago
        It's extremely normal https://www.virtua.org/articles/turn-your-head-and-cough-the-first-step-in-a-hernia-diagnosis https://www.virtua.org/articles/turn-your-head-and-cough-the... You clearly didn't play any sports, or you're female, I suppose.
    - Crux2632 3y ago
      [dead]
  - mcv 3y ago
    I think TERF includes a bit more than just that opinion on sports.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      That opinion is the minimum required for the label. Any prohibition of transwomen from a woman's space is enough, though most "TERF"s will prohibit all pre-op transwomen from all woman's spaces.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Many Mastodon instances do block instances which allow transphobes, yes. However, it's very rarely _transitive_, is the point; few Mastodon instances will block instances which do not block instances which allow transphobes.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  Counterexample: EFnet

echelon 3y ago

> Why do admins get a say in who their users follow in the first place? Why does anyone? Reddit mods, Fediverse maintainers, corporate social media. This whole "curate and censor" bamboozle is antithetical to the internet I grew up on. The most upsetting part is that so many folks today are happy about this status quo and delight in the fact that their opposition gets canceled or de-platformed. All it takes is one political pendulum swing for the cheerleaders to become the oppressed. Social media needs to be P2P. Not centralized, not federated, and not controlled. End users should have complete autonomy over who they follow, who they (de-)boost, and how their filter/attention algorithm works. Users should have the capability to share their { follow, block, boost, mute } lists with others, but it should be optional and not something mandated from the top by a third party.

izacus 3y ago
What are you talking about? Where was this internet where the admins of the service (whether it's BBS board, usenet group or phpBB forum, or whatever) didn't set what conversations are you supposed to talk about?
- echelon 3y ago
  Usenet and IRC (with its hundreds of servers) were a wild west. Some forums let you pay to regain entry, others would downvote but not outright ban (like Slashdot). Banning was practically impossible given dynamic IP addresses and dial-up. The internet was much smaller, its users more technical, and its software much more bug-filled. It was entirely possible that banning someone would lead to them exploiting your server and taking it offline. I witnessed that happen several times. People focused on mostly getting along. Nobody was sensitive about the bullshit we whine about today. It's also interesting that the zeitgeist at the time favored conservatives, so liberals were the then-staunch supporters of free speech. (Remember the Church of Satan?) That's completely reversed now. The internet of today is so incredibly different to the internet of the 90's and early 2000's. Despite all we've gained, we've actually lost a lot too.
  - vidarh 3y ago

tedunangst 3y ago

Because it's their server? Why do I get a say in who I invite to dinner at my house?

Dalewyn 3y ago
Because the whole shitstorm is rooted in Musk managing Twitter as he sees fit, and those who left claimed to akshuarry exercise and defend free speech and tolerance?
- vidarh 3y ago
  You're assuming those who have left share a uniform ideology. Many who left wanted far stricter moderation than Musk. Some wanted less. Some wanted more tolerance, some wanted less. There's also a vast difference in moderation of a single centralised system and a network of thousands of instances - you can be opposed to the moderation policies of a centralised network and still think it's fine for those policies to exist somewhere as long as you don't need to deal with them.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  I just want to remind you that Mastodon has existed for about a decade, way longer than any of the Twitter stuff has been going on. Culturally it is the same as it always has been. Why would I as a server administrator have to change because new people are interested in our platform? If you join my server and don't like the experience, feel free to move to a different server or to start your own.
MForster 3y ago
I think that's the wrong analogy. It's more: Why does a landlord not get a say in who their tenants invite to dinner?
- blowski 3y ago
  Housing is a scarce commodity, so we have rules about how it’s allocated. Mastodon servers have no such scarcity - if you don’t like the rules on a server, set up your own.

ndlan 3y ago

Precisely part of the problem is that most instances are in Europe, which means that much of the speech you can find online is illegal, and if you aren't Facebook you don't have the muscle to fight a politician or a judge who wants to make an example out of you.

aftoprokrustes 3y ago
I am genuinely curious: can you give examples of illegal content a EU based server would not be allowed to display/link to but a US based would?
- ndlan 3y ago
  October, 2018: "In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right: [the European Court of Human Rights] upheld an Austrian woman’s conviction for disparaging the Prophet Muhammad." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-free-speech-criticize-muhammad-echr-ruled/574174/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...
  - aftoprokrustes 3y ago
    Without the need to agree or disagree with the ruling itself (which I cannot read about, as the article is behind a paywall, and I expect that the ruling is more nuanced than what the clickbait title suggests), the fact that a person was condemned for saying something for some reason (provocation to hate I would assume) does not mean that a mastodon server would be liable for relaying the information. Actually, politicians get condemned on a regular basis for diffamation or hate speech, but I never heard of any TV channel or newspaper being sued for having reported on the discourse of said politicians. I have to say that I expected a bit more, as you mentioned "most content on the internet".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- faiD9Eet 3y ago
  In Germany you are not allowed to downplay, deny or condone the Holocaust. It is part of the criminal code. § 130 iii StGB https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html > Mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe wird bestraft, wer eine unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus begangene Handlung [...] öffentlich oder in einer Versammlung billigt, leugnet oder verharmlost.

sharperguy 3y ago

I think the architecture of mastadon unintentionally encourages this. When you follow someone on a peered instance, the instance you use must store and forward their posts to you. So if an instance contains mostly content you find disagreeable you may not want to have those on your server. Also if you go to the "global" timeline, you will see posts from all instances which are peered with your instance. So the operators of your instance might not want to "pollute" that timeline with content from instances they find disagreeable. I prefer the alternative architecture used by the nostr protocol. There, your account is not tied to a relay, but to a public key which is used to verify everything you post. You can send your posts to multiple relays which can then be read by anyone who chooses to pull from there. This allows relays to freely block/curate content in the way they like without restricting the freedom of their users to pull content from other sources. Currently, the network is in its infancy, and is mostly populated by bitcoiners, since this is the community where the protocol grew out of. But there is no reason why it can't eventually grow far beyond that, for those with no interest in that topic.

DoItToMe81 3y ago
Beyond what the architecture encourages, the devs themselves have very much encouraged a narcissistic, block happy culture across the protocol. It's very disappointing to see something that should have encouraged people from disparate backgrounds and views to come together and discuss topics without "engagement" driven controversy baiting, just being used as "Twitter, but you get to make your personal Pyongyang".

mcv 3y ago

> Why do admins get a say in who their users follow in the first place? Because it's their server and they have opinions of what their server is about and what's acceptable there. But more importantly: because their users don't want to have to individually block every troll and nazi out there. There are entire instances dedicated to just shitting all over everybody else, and most people on other instances don't want to have to wade through that shit. Users can choose their server based on its policies. Maybe admins should be more up-front about their server's policies. But some degree of moderation is simply unavoidable on the internet today, because we've seen time and time again that everything turns to crap if you don't moderate. HN moderates too.

MForster 3y ago
I get moderation of replies. But I choose myself who I follow. Nobody needs to moderate that.
- catboybotnet 3y ago
  Spin up your own instance if you don't like that. You are using someone else's platform to follow, so you go by their rules whether you like it or not.
  - MForster 3y ago
    Yes, that's what I did (and said so in the top post)
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Then what's the problem? For people who don't want to spin up their own, they can likely find instances whose policies are in line with their own and join those.
      - xigoi 3y ago
        Except it's pretty much impossible to find instances that don't have vague rules like “no hate speech”.

worldsavior 3y ago

> As long as the content isn't illegal Who decides what is "illegal"?

asadotzler 3y ago
The government making the laws. (Was that a serious question?)
- worldsavior 3y ago
  The website can decide what are the laws, hence it can supress other users opinions.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chrisnight 3y ago

Mastodon works by copying all data their users see from other servers to the server's own local PostgreSQL database. Admins have access (through the owner or directly) to that database, which means they can already censor content if they so choose, through manipulating the database. As such, making it an explicit option is needed because it destroys any illusion that censorship cannot occur, because it can occur by the system's design, even if the option isn't present in the software.