Think about it; instead of those in charge or the instances deciding who they don’t want to be federated with and thus restricting content for the users, it would be better if users were able to block entire instances instead.
We’d be able to curate our own browsing experience so much better without admin/mod drama influencing the rest of us.
Edit: Alright so maybe not exactly replace defederation, but it should still be an option available to us, and in general should become the default action before defederation IMHO.
I’d rather have that than massive instances with communities for things like fantasy sports and every possible country on earth and not have a way of curating that properly while also being subject to the whims of a few powerhungry admins.
It’s why a lot of people praised the fediverse instead of reddit yet we’re facing the exact same problems.
It is the virtue of the federation system that defederating does not deplatform or silence people. If you want to read content from a server that a server you use defederated from - it’s still there. Just go make an account somewhere more open or directly on whatever instance you feel you’re missing.
I don’t see how that would be impacted by user-based choice instead of mod-based choice.
Both options should be available, yes. Admins can choose what they want on their sites. We should be able to easily curate what we have on our feeds. I’d find this option handy just to block things I have no interest in such as sports.
Also, I would not say admins who run these sites are “power hungry”… instances are their websites and they can do whatever they want with it. If they don’t want fascism or communism or furry porn or whatever on their sites, it’s their choice. It’s not like reddit where mods don’t have a financial investment, or any real liability, and might not have even started the communities they run. It’s also not like reddit where a admin can ban or shadowban you from every community, or a mod can ban or shadowban you from a dozen of the most popular communities. You can always just join a different instance.
