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defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

So one of the things that has cropped up again and again is how "defederation is a punishment" or "a weapon".

And I keep thinking about this, because I keep thinking about where my logic chain is diverting from theirs when they say these things.

I think one of the fundamental pieces might be that they've been taught to think of a social network as a Platform, and are trying to apply that to fedi?

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

and getting outraged that fedi just ... doesn't act like that?

These arguments are always accompanied by assertions that users should have "individual choice" to decide to block individuals or users.

Again, I think this might be coming from that initial "but it's a single platform" mentality, making me, the admin who defederates to protect my users, a bad person because I am damaging The Platform

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@aurynn Users *do* have individual choice. If they don’t like your protective boundaries, they can move to another instance that isn’t defederated from whatever you’re blocking.

It’s a big cognitive shift from single-platform thinking.

I’m new here so I don’t know whether this already exists, but if there were an automated way for people to be notified when they lose followers/following to a defed that would be good.

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@whetstone You're right, users can vote with their feet and move to another instance with moderation practices more to their liking.

I don't think that feature exists yet - you could maybe open a GitHub issue for it?

Did you see this piece on why defederation works? escapingtech.com/tech/opinions

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@aurynn I am new enough here that I have no idea *how* to open a GitHub issue, or indeed what a “GitHub issue” is! I’ll take a look at the article and see whether I can figure it out.

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@aurynn That is a great article, and I love how it teases out the dual-burden of moderation that defederation creates.

Looking into creating a GitHub issue now... not sure what a repository name is. I think maybe I need a more basic intro to fediverse development to do this effectively, unless you have a suggestion for which repository I should look for...

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@aurynn Looks like a version of it already exists:

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i

But there are only a few comments and it’s been more than a year. Is the etiquette here to make an account and comment into that issue, or to create a new issue?

Aurynn Shaw

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@whetstone Comment onto the issue, I think

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@aurynn Done! It clearly didn’t have any legs in early 2021 but maybe the influx of people from Twitter and all the discourse about defederation will make it feel more critical now.

defederation thoughts re: defderation is bad, musing more than anything else

@aurynn I saw an argument that mutual notification could be dangerous for troll instances. Seems like a one-sided notification would be doable too though. I don’t see any reason for mod decisions to be hidden from their own instances.