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I think it is a bad idea for instance admins (fediverse) to ban entire instances. Unless there is a very very very serious motive behind it. And make it public when you do. Because this will cut ties with those instances and the users from your own instance will be unable to reach anyone from those banned instances. This is a dangerous game that many on the fediverse are playing. They seem to not grasp the consequences.

If we ever ban any instance then we will first announce it to all of our users, and then make it public. But unless there is severe spam flooding our servers, I do not see a reason to do that.

Users can block other users and for some federated networks they can block entire instances. Let the users decide! Not a handful of "admins". #tromlive
#tromlive
Jeena
I would tend to agree for public instances. The Mastodon software doesn't have the same problem as PeerTube which tries to do suggestions and has the trending page, etc. which then will be flooded with nudity, conspiracy theories etc. which many users don't want to see in combination with their own content when you federate with everything.
Tio
The beauty of Peertube is that instance admins can say WHAT to be displayed on the trending page and so forth. Not what NOT. That's a much better approach. And then you also let users follow anyone they wish to from any peertube instance, rather than blocking entire instances so you can't even follow your friends from the banned instances. That's bad practice.
Rokosun
Oh, so on peertube admins don't have the power to block users from connecting with each other, right ?

That's much better than how its on mastodon πŸ™‚
@jeena
@Jeena
Jeena
I'm admin on both so i might have a bit of a wrong perspective on things. But yeah from what you say it's a bit better in this regard for the user.

What I tried to say was that it's easier for an admin because they don't have a discovery page which shows stuff from other instances, therefor no real need to block instances nor to follow instances as an admin.

But if you're not admin and the admin blocks stuff it's not nice. At least you can move to a different instance.
Rokosun
Yes I understand what you mean, I was just surprised to know that peertube works this way, I thought that peertube admins could cut out connections to other instances entirely, but it seems like I was wrong.

BTW, mastodon has global timeline instead of the discovery page on peertube, so don't they both have this issue ?
@tio
@Tio
Jeena
because I'm the only person on the server the global timeline looks exactly like my Home timeline, only the users I subscribed to.
Jeena
On Peertube the Admin can follow whole instances which I tried to do, to get recommendations, but then pictures of naked people would show up as recommended under videos about children in my extended family so I removed all big instances and only follow very small ones. Since last update there is a great feature that the Admin can follow specific channels instead to need to follow a whole instance. It's much easier to keep your list of channels clean.
Rokosun
Yeah, the ability to follow specific channels are very useful, I'm glad they added that feature πŸ˜€
@tio
@Tio
Tio
I think you can also block servers but am not sure how it works. It is ok to have this power, but not ok to use it unless it is a MUST. And you should be fully transparent about it, else is a shit show with users unable to find certain videos/channels and subscribe to them if they use your instance.
Tio
That's the issue tho, you can get blocked (instance wise) and you won't be able to follow anyone and such. That's a bad practice. Imagine if you are banned by several major mastodon platforms, what do you do then? This is a mob-like approach that I do not support.
:debian: πšœπšŽπš•πšŽπšŠ :fedora:
Well, why would they get banned in the first place? πŸ€”
Rokosun
Email is a federated service just like the fediverse, and now Gmail & Yahoo mail instance is so big that they have more power over the network. And they're blocking other email servers left & right, without much thought. The same thing can happen on fediverse, even now we have big instances like https://mastodon.social with most of the users on the network. This is a limitation of the federation approach, we'd have to move to p2p networks like https://scuttlebutt.nz in the future.
@tio

Mastodon

Server run by the main developers of the project It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome as long as you follow our code of conduct!
Mastodon hosted on mastodon.social
@Tio
Tio
For all kinds of reasons. Instead of users blocking your own personal instance, other instances may block you and thus block you for hundreds/thousands of users who may have not wanted that. Admins deciding these for so many users is very wrong.
Tio
Yah p2p is the way, but scuttlebutt was also talking about some reputation points to kick out "bad" people from connecting with anyone, since you need PUBS to connect with others. We need real p2p connections with no middle man. Or a middleman that just connects the peers and has no say in to who it connects with who.
LPS
Exactly, isn't hub just another way of saying someone elses computer?!
@futureisfoss@selea
@Rokosun @:debian: πšœπšŽπš•πšŽπšŠ :fedora:
Rokosun
From what I understand, scuttlebutt can be used to connect directly with peers. Pubs are just optional, and they have the same power as a user on scuttlebutt, the only difference is that it'll be online most of the time. I hope they don't fuck things up with this reputation system of theirs, but if its a decentralized kinda system that can be used by you & your friends without much global impact, that seems OK to me.
@tio@selea
@Tio @:debian: πšœπšŽπš•πšŽπšŠ :fedora:
Rokosun
I like moderation to be like how adblockers work today, we make a list of users that could be blocked, and we categorise them into topics like nudity, violence, etc. so we can choose what to block. This kinda system should be opt in and shouldn't block anyone by default. Ublock origin allows us to use different blocklists, so we can change from one to other easily, the same should be true here. If a blocklist has problems, we can criticize it and/or fork it if necessary.
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