I have to preface with my comment with the fact that I’m not someone who would be targeted for harassment because of my identity, so I can’t fully appreciate the distress a lot of people who are part of minority groups have to go through on platforms like X, Reddit’s, or Meta’s.
But I hate the argument that we can’t/shouldn’t federate with them because they are nazis, transphobes, etc. 99.9% of people on those platforms are not that.
Like the author said there are people like that already on the fediverse. We have tools to block it at the user or moderator level. We have the ability to migrate to instances that have higher or more lax levels of moderation.
Indeed, there are lots of people like that already on the fediverse, and blocking entire instances is a blunt but powerful tool that well-moderated fediverse instances currently rely on for protection. Today, people on instances where admins and moderators don’t block instances that have multiple badly-behaving people have to deal with a lot more harassment and hate speech than people on instances who do. So we’ll certainly see a situation where some instances block Threads and others don’t. The open question, though, is how many instances will decide to also block instances that federate with Threads – just as many instances decided to block instances that federated with Gab.
I have to preface with my comment with the fact that I’m not someone who would be targeted for harassment because of my identity, so I can’t fully appreciate the distress a lot of people who are part of minority groups have to go through on platforms like X, Reddit’s, or Meta’s.
But I hate the argument that we can’t/shouldn’t federate with them because they are nazis, transphobes, etc. 99.9% of people on those platforms are not that.
Like the author said there are people like that already on the fediverse. We have tools to block it at the user or moderator level. We have the ability to migrate to instances that have higher or more lax levels of moderation.
Indeed, there are lots of people like that already on the fediverse, and blocking entire instances is a blunt but powerful tool that well-moderated fediverse instances currently rely on for protection. Today, people on instances where admins and moderators don’t block instances that have multiple badly-behaving people have to deal with a lot more harassment and hate speech than people on instances who do. So we’ll certainly see a situation where some instances block Threads and others don’t. The open question, though, is how many instances will decide to also block instances that federate with Threads – just as many instances decided to block instances that federated with Gab.