tom (available elsewhere)techbros: the beauty of FOSS is that people have complete control over everything! it's real freedom!
also techbros: hey if you block my followbot you don't know anything about federation and you're ruining everything for everyone actually
if you're engaging with people, federation comes naturally. that's more than enough.
Spacedragon @wogan "organic" social networking, maybe.
I love the federated TL, it's a great tool to discover new people but populating it using followbots seems kinda counterintuitive to me. What if it's an instance that completely opposes your instance's code of conduct? what if it's an instance where everyone speaks some language you've never heard of before?
Federation should and will zone naturally if you just use it for a bit. It worked for me and lots of other instances before.
@wogan (and that's ignoring the fact that there's no consent involved, some admins might not want to federate with everyone and everything)
@tom I'm just thinking of all of this as IRC 2.0. Get a server list, poke your head in wherever it looks interesting, and if you meet new folks you like, cool :thumbsup:
It's why I'm running a single-user instance for myself, so I'm not subject to other people's decisions on what makes it into my federated timeline!
@wogan that's great! every configuration is great as long as it works for you! :)
I'm just a little tired of people getting mad at me and my friends for actively refusing followbots on our instances.
@tom That's the other side of decentralization :joy: You will have admin-level disagreements with no higher authority to report to.
But at least here, they can be blocked. On centralized networks, eventually some rules you disagree with make it into site policy. I figure getting tired and mad is a better than getting sidelined and censured by a majority.