@wraptile - In principle I would agree with "A bit of gatekeeping keeps the network healthy".

The question is, what _kind_ of gatekeeping exactly?

Personally I'd prefer if we didn't have unmoderated signup. That favours growth over sustainability, because each open instance adds to the moderator load for every other instance. (it's not coincidence that a disproportionate number of spammers come from mastodon.social.)

Or, if we're _going_ to have unmoderated signup, I favour development of moderation software options like the old-school "first few posts are reviewed before letting through".

This thread you've joined in on is criticising one specific niche of a niche of gatekeeping: rebuking people in horrific circumstances for not complying with a convention they probably didn't even know existed. That kind of rebuke is in my opinion uncompassionate and excessive.

It's also unnecessary: the people in that situation are a tiny proportion of Fedi users, and a small proportion even of the people skipping alt text (some others also with good reason). Even for the people who _need_ alt text, it's generally gonna be pretty obvious "oh right, they're in a war zone, and this probably isn't their first language either".

To my mind, part of the "health of the network" is the ability to take into account that people are in different circumstances with different resources.

#Fediverse #gatekeeping

@punishmenthurts @dahie "I was trying to talk about Autism and they’re supposed to be Autistic."

Oh,now you are claiming I'm not #Autistic

#GateKeeping .