#moderating — Public Fediverse posts

Let me get this straight:

FIRST: A mastodon instance (mastodon.art) defederated from another mastodon instance (universeodon.com) because of the following reasons:

- Implementing full text search, which they felt made their users unsafe, and didn't provide enough warnings
- Caring more about growth than carefully curated moderation
- Meeting Meta behind the scenes (you can see in the linked response that people in the Fediverse was not happy with the server owner)
- Being concerned about removing the ability to report users

They also made a blog post publicly stating this: https://dotart.blog/dotart-blog/defederating-from-universeodon so it's not like I'm pulling this out of my arse.

SECOND: msdn.social, a big instance, decide to defederate because they didn't like the idea of someone defederating from an instance just because they spoke to Meta.

THIRD: The instance admin from msdn.social has said that they would not block first, but check out this new instance and then act if they misbehave.

FOURTH: lots of poop being flung.

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This was such a badly mishandled set of events. Here are my thoughts:

* Universeodon can do what they want. It's their instance. If they want growth at the sake of everything else, go for it. I'm just less likely to want to go there.
* Mastoodn.art can do what they want. It's their instance. It's clear that they prioritise careful curation, and it seems they are very sensitive to that. They also host a lot of LGBT content too, so that's maybe where the sensitivities lie. Also, they are anti-capitalists. If people don't like that, they can move (although they seem to be doign v. well)
* Msdn.social can do whatever they like. HOWEVER - their response feels incredibly knee-jerky and seems at complete odds to what they say. Defederating from an instance for the crime of... defederating against another instance and then saying defederation is not the way unless the instance is misbehaving (Defedding isn't something I would consider misbehaving - it may not be in the spirit, but it's within their power).

It would've been better if the admin of mstn.social just publicly critiicised mastodon.art instead for their administative techniques instead of doing the thing they seemed to be so against, and in favour of a corporation (especially with the Fediverse - community full of and mostly ran by average people who are sick of corporations)

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