Hello dear people who read me! My home instance will defederate from mastodon.social and mastodon.online in a little less than a week. The instances are known to be too big, not well enough moderated and thus unsafe.
If you want to follow accounts on safer instances like weirder.earth, you might want to consider moving.
(Weirder.earth is neither the first nor will it be the last instance to take this step.)
@TQ I can move. But: are weirder.earth planning more defederation? How do I decide where to move *to*?
It's understandable on their part. But a little confusing for us.
@alderwick @TQ Hmm. I was afraid of that. Thank you, though.
I actually prefer a bigger instance. I get a bit unnerved at everyone knowing who I am, and sometimes things get a bit clique-y.
@creepy_owlet @alderwick @TQ Well, any <500 instance, probably. But your point stands.
This all rather reinforces the idea of being on multiple instances, doesn't it?
@creepy_owlet @TQ Oh yes! I absolutely agree that keeping your friendly admin fed, watered, and financially sound is critical. Even then, instances can shut down, e.g. https://cybre.space/~chr/cybre-space-eol
Small instances require putting your trust and faith in other people, and I've read that @fishidwardrobe prefers to be anonymous. The downside of that and remaining on a large instance is that defederating instances do not have trust in *you*.
@alderwick @creepy_owlet @TQ Well, it would certainly be unfortunate if a instance decided they needed my real name in order to trust me. For both of us, since I would walk at that point.
What would my real name tell them? Nothing. Please judge me by my behaviour. (Which is not perfect. Of course it isn't; no ones' is.)
@fishidwardrobe @creepy_owlet @TQ My apologies, when you said “I get a bit unnerved at everyone knowing who I am”, I thought you meant that you prefer to disappear into a crowd of people → be anonymous.
You can of course stay pseudonymous on a small instance, there's no need to be identified by your real name. My point is that staying on m.s means your reputation is tarnished by theirs before we get any chance to see what you post.
@alderwick @creepy_owlet @TQ Ah, I understand. That's not really a use of the word "anonymous" that I've seen – although, what else would you call hiding in a crowd?
Still, the point behind my point stands: it's not fair to judge me by which instance I am on. That's guilt by association.
It's not fair, but it may be necessary — which suggests we might need better moderation tools?
@fishidwardrobe I'm getting rather bogged down with technicalities here, but as we all have usernames on Mastodon no-one is truly anonymous. (You can get quite close to it by creating a throwaway account for every toot you send or every account you follow, of course.)
You are pseudonymous, and people can see e.g. the nice conversation we are having and that will change their appraisal of you.
As for being judged by your instance…
@fishidwardrobe we've covered the problems with large instances, the other main category is instances that do not control abuse and harassment.
We don't have better moderation tools, so it's absolutely unfair and throwing the baby out with the bathwater by defederating m.s. But in terms of the harm caused by keeping federation going, it's become necessary for w.e to treat such a large instance in the same way as the abusive ones.
TQ 🎹
Fish Id Wardrobe
Andy Alderwick
Dmitry Tantsur