I've been watching the conversations around whether or not instances set-up should include a (easily-overridden) default of importing a blocklist for known awful instances.
Those against it pattern match for me with a certain libertarian streak that doesn't want humans making decisions.
In economics, it's the gold standard and free markets. In politics, government is inefficient and should be minimised.
It's the idea that a system with human decision-makers could be undermined...
1/n
and thus humans should be out of the system. (Not unlike crypto, I guess.)
Thing is... systems with humans work better. They're more resilient and flexible if they actually adjust in a meaningful way. Government, done competently, is pretty amazing and achieves things we wouldn't do otherwise.
Yes, human-based systems can go wrong, but that's a reason to build them well, not give up and make something worse. And if they go wrong, try to fix them rather than destroy them.
2/n
When it comes to default blocklists, the concerns are often pretty hypothetical, while the blocklists and hideous blockable instances are very concrete. Maybe the concerns are forward-looking - what if it goes wrong? - but again rarely in a way that either allows for mitigations or acknowledges that the core devs pretty much have this power anyway, Better to discuss how power is managed than to pretend we're safe from abuse of power...
3/n
And at the end of it all, the same regular lesson:
Deciding to do nothing is not a neutral decision, whatever it feels like. It's often both a surprisingly opinionated decision and/or a bad decision.
4/4
(Oh, and deciding to not do something as a project management technique is a whole different kettle of fish.)
@skyeye I'm not quite sure exactly what you're saying, but I'm very much in favour of giving power to users - Fedi should allow a huge selection of server types and customisation to exactly how people want.
What I also want is a system that by default is friendly and easy to use and could support a migration of hundreds of millions of users (if only).
I don't see why, in theory, we can't aim for both. I'm not trying to be depressing! :)
@skyeye I'm actually pretty positive, because I've been reading how someone who's been working on blocking for ages sees things moving in the right direction (https://ubiqueros.com/notes/9ftp613p5n).
Just because I'm talking about the people who resist... I don't want to make them seem more numerous than they are.
My personal Fedi echo chamber is pretty positive about the idea. :)
Ha, look, I love the convo and the seeming support for blocklists and more nuanced blocklist management tools that I see. It’s pretty cool. But personally, it's so strange because I was demonized and harassed for these same ideas when I ran my old instance a few years ago. I remember people from Masto’s dev team telling me my thoughts around safety would ‘stifle growth’ and ‘take away free speech.’ It's just weird seeing people talk about it in a way that pushes it forward rather than demeaning the idea of a safer fedi. I'm gonna reflect on this.
Do you know if it's easy to enact a default-but-overrideable blocklist or mutelist in vanilla Mastodon?
Simon Frankau
skyeye
robryk