this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6853479

mastodon.art has decided to suspend firefish.social from their instance due to issues with its administrator. The administrator of firefish.social was found to be boosting posts from a known harasser on another instance. mastodon.art takes a firm stance against racism and suspending full instances in these situations is part of their policy as a safe space. The known harasser has a history of using slurs, harassment, and editing screenshots to spread misinformation. However, the administrator of firefish.social has now forged a screenshot to paint mastodon.art in a negative light.

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[–] FelipeFelop@feddit.uk 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The point is that as a user I have no control who else is on the instance but could get defederated anyway.

From the posts I’ve seen several admins have clear mental health issues. Silly rivalries and imagined upsets cause whole instances to be defederated. It’s sad in a way as most federations have councils or independent regulators to step in so that members don’t lose out by the actions of others. But not the fediverse.

[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would advise against armchair hypothesizing about the mental health state of individuals based on how they post online.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hehe, the irony of this... is that's a good rule for this instance... but the whole kerfuffle seems to be based on armchair hypothesizing about individuals not just by how they post online, but by how someone who they might be two or three times removed from by online association, may have posted online at some point.

Guess it goes to show what happens without that rule.

[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Yes and it's already been discussed whether this post should be removed. There's no quick and easy answer to a question like this, so much as there is a lot of shades of gray. There can be valuable discussion here so long as we take into consideration how to do so in good faith in a public forum.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

most federations have councils or independent regulators to step in so that members don’t lose out by the actions of others. But not the fediverse.

There are at least two technological solutions to that at an end-user level:

  • Apps (including webapps) that let people both easily interact with defederated instances, and block instances themselves.
  • User migration between instances, which right now are kind of working on Mastodon, and kind of pending on Lemmy/Kbin/etc.

And one at a pro-user level:

  • Run your own instance and federate with whoever you wish.

There are proposals for creating "councils" that could keep blacklists, whitelists, chains of trust, and whatever else, but once analyzed more in depth, they all seem to lead to more knee jerk reactions, not less.