Roman LutzNov 18, 2022
Electronic Frontier Foundation
A rich guy with a bruised ego shouldn’t have the power to disrupt your life online. Building an interoperable social media could cut them out of the equation. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/fediverse-could-be-awesome-if-we-dont-screw-it
The Fediverse Could Be Awesome (If We Don’t Screw It Up)

This post is part of a series on Mastodon and the fediverse. We also have a post on what the fediverse is, security and privacy on Mastodon, and how to make a Mastadon account. You can follow EFF on Mastodon here.Something remarkable is happening. For the past two weeks, people have been leaving...

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Nov 18, 2022 at 7:09pmWeb
Show threadJohn MoehrkeNov 19, 2022
@eff it would be good to have these EFF defined principles for social media encapsulated in a tag that Mastodon servers could declare.. much like Creative Commons is to license.
Show threadgray ☁️Nov 20, 2022
@eff You are absolutely right "A rich guy with a bruised ego" shouldn't have power to "disrupt your life" online. Try stepping away from the internet for a bit if you are so easily offended by what some rich guy does.

Also on the fediverse and in particular the Mastodon side of the network you are now at the mercy of egotistical self important admins who can decide what you see and who you can interact with. Its hardly all that different unless you have your own instance.
Show threadrysertio  Nov 20, 2022
@gray @eff Not really. you can shop for an instance that suits you.
Show threadgray ☁️Nov 20, 2022
@rysertio @eff Sure you can find an instance that suits what you want to see. You are still at the mercy of the whims of the admin of your instance though.

There is nothing stopping them from deciding you are talking to the wrong person banning you, or defeding them or their whole instance. It happens all the time on here.
Show threadgray ☁️Nov 20, 2022
@rysertio @eff Even worse is once you find your cool instance with the awesome admin now you have to worry about every other instance admin on the fediverse.
Show threadrysertio  Nov 20, 2022
@gray @eff Its actually far less worse because there'll be very few to no user you'll interact with residing on those instances (unless you're a troll) that bans your cool instance. fedi isnt perfect but its a little bit better than fb/twitter because almost all moderations have small impacts. (this will be true only if instances are small)
Show threadgray ☁️Nov 20, 2022
@rysertio @eff As long as instances stay small I agree. I just wish admins would just leave most of the decisions on blocking to their users.

The big issue I see even with small instances though is when they use something like a centralized blocklist like a lot of the Mastodon admins do.